Welcome to Distance Learning

Dear Families,
     Thank you for joining us on this new digital learning journey! Mrs. Rhodes and I are working together to provide daily phonics learning opportunities for your children. These activities will be short and simple, but important to strengthen their foundational reading skills. We will be available to answer any questions or concerns you have during this digital learning time. Our office hours are Monday-Friday from 9-10:30.

Queridas familias,

      ¡Gracias por acompañarnos en este nuevo viaje de aprendizaje digital! La Sra. Rhodes y yo estamos trabajando juntas para brindarles oportunidades diarias de aprendizaje de fonética a sus hijos. Estas actividades serán cortas y simples, pero importantes para practicar a medida que vamos

desarrollando sus habilidades fundamentales de lectura. Estaremos disponibles para responder cualquier pregunta o inquietud que tenga durante este tiempo de aprendizaje digital. Nuestro horario de atención es de lunes a viernes de 9 a 10:30.

Gracias!

catherine.simonson@cobbk12.org

nannette.rhodes@cobbk12.org

February Fun

• We added several sounds to our bank of letters this month! Students are beginning to master all of the short vowel sounds. Knowing each short vowel sound helps students become more fluent at decoding words they find in our leveled books. 
• We love learning science facts about animals with each new letter introduced during our Zoo-phonics lessons. Students learned facts about umbrella birds when we learned the short /u/ sound. They even made an umbrella bird to hold their writing. They also learned interesting facts about weasels and kangaroos. Did you know adult weasels are only 7 inches long? We used our rulers to investigate the size of Willy Weasel while we were making his "sound."
• Although students may use their letter-sound knowledge to read very slowly at first, this improves with repetition. Eventually, their reading becomes more fluid and meaningful. The best thing you do to grow is read, read, read! 
• Check out the links on the side of our blog page for ways to practice letters and sounds.

Sight word practice in the sand. 

Learning about the letter Bb with buttons. 

We love to form our letters with Play-doh!

Celebrating Books in the New Year

We are starting a new book series called "The King School." This week, we read about great places to read books like the library or the park. Students stretched out the sounds in words to read about fun places to enjoy books.
We read a poem called Camping and practiced rhyming words. We set up a fun camp in our room with a tent, sleeping bag, and flashlights. Students had a great time sharing books with their friends in our campsite. We practiced the give and take of conversation. Students practiced taking turns listening and speaking. We practiced asking questions to show interest in our partners books.
This month, we are reviewing the letter sounds /k/, /h/, and /b/. We love to sort picture cards using the first sounds that we hear in words. We are also practicing reading and writing the sight words and and with. 

Working together to sort pictures using the first sound. 

We pretended to camp while we read a poem about camping. 

Fun with Phonics

We spent the first 9 weeks of school learning the names of letters. Now we are reinforcing letter sounds. Students are listening for the first sound they hear in spoken words. They are also beginning to recognize simple words by sight like it, am, and go.
We had fun painting trees in November when we learned about the letter n. Students put word cards in order to create sentences about Fall. This week, we read stories about growing flowers. Did you know that retelling stories can help students understand them better? We like to share five things we remember from each book that we read together.
One of our favorite activities this month was observing real worms. We are learning about the letter i and Inny Inchworm. Students made labels to describe the worms and created their own Inny Inchworm. Ask your child to tell you about all of the Zoo-phonics animals we have studied this year!

Outstanding October

We finished learning the names of all letters in the alphabet! Now we are learning about the sound(s) each letter makes. Students are making connections between letters and sounds by pointing to the print as we read. They are listening for the beginning sounds of words in the books we read together. This month, we shared the stories Room on the Broom and There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Leaves. We had fun listening to the rhyming words and retelling each story.

Matching letter beads to an alphabet card with friends

Putting Pumpkin Cards in Alphabetical Order

Working with partners to clap syllables in words

Painting our letters with watercolors

Super September

We have been very busy this month! We are learning to recognize and write the letters A-N. They really enjoy our letter scavenger hunts! We have also started our guided reading groups. Students are beginning to frame and count the words on a page. They can track simple sentences from left to right with their finger. My small groups of students especially enjoyed our first Flashlight Friday. They learned about reading "stamina" and how to focus on their books for several minutes.

Letter detectives are searching for the lowercase h. 

Location

Welcome to Kindergarten!

We are happy to have you in our Smyrna Elementary family! I am looking forward to a new year with our Smyrna Stars. We are beginning our journey to becoming readers. Not only will we learn to read and write, we will also develop leadership skills. At Smyrna, we believe that readers are leaders!
In our classroom, I will provide daily letter practice activities using Zoo-phonics. We are already learning to identify and name the letters in the alphabet with our large animal cards. This week, we reviewed the letters A-G, with a focus on the G in Gordo Gorilla. Ask your child to show you the signal for Gordo Gorilla.

We used Wikki Stix to form the letter G. 

We learned that letters are made of circles, curves, and sticks.