Back to School handout

Welcome to Kindergarten

Our Back-to-School Night tonight might be more appropriately titled

“Welcome to School Night” since it likely marks your child’s first step into public education. How exciting! No matter what it’s called, tonight is the beginning of a year-long team effort between your home and our classrooms that leads to a lifetime of learning for your child.

This information packet is designed to give you a general overview of your child’s classroom activities and procedures here in kindergarten at LeGette. Please use this as a reference, and feel free to contact us with any questions you may have. Open communication between parents and teachers results in the best education for children. We value your input!

Please contact us by email, note, or in person (not voicemail) if you have any questions or concerns. We look

forward to working with you to make your child’s kindergarten

experience a successful and memorable one.

The curriculum standards for your kindergarten student are listed in the San Juan Unified School District Academic Standards brochure. The following is an overview of the instructional strategies that will be used to support these standards.

Our language arts program integrates the areas of listening, speaking, reading and writing. We use Houghton Mifflin’s A Legacy of Literacy along with SIPPS (Systematic Instruction in Phoneme Awareness/Phonics and Sight words). We also incorporate other resources as needed. Selecting materials from a variety of sources allows us to address different learning styles and abilities. This enables the children to be successful in meeting the language arts standards. Our focus is on learning to distinguish individual sounds (phonemic awareness), associating those sounds with letters (phonics), and blending sounds to form words. We will be using whole group instruction, as well as flexible small groups, to best fit your child’s needs.

Attached you will find a handout of “continuous stroke” handwriting which is taught in grades K, 1, and 2. Please work with your child to write using these letters. We’ll start working on writing first names beginning with an upper case letter (i.e. a capital letter) and all lower case letters for the remainder.

Our math program is California Mathematics published by Houghton Mifflin. We use manipulatives designed to help your child learn a wide range of mathematical concepts as well as ensuring knowledge of basic skills. This method emphasizes real-life mathematical experiences rather than pages of abstract drill. The children become actively involved with concrete materials and make many discoveries using pattern blocks, linker cubes, geoboards, tangrams, and collections of small items. Over the school year the children will work with patterns, sorting, classifying, graphing, measurement, addition and subtraction, probability, geometry, and problem solving.

We will be teaching science using our school district’s adopted science curriculum, FOSS (Full Option Science System) to teach three units: Animals 2x2, Wood and Paper, and Trees. Our social studies text, Scott Foresman’s History, Social Science for California, includes chapters on: Symbols, Work, Where We Are, Calendars, and Times Past.

The two AM classes will begin at 8:10 and dismiss at 11:30. The two PM classes will begin at 11:30 and dismiss at 2:50 on M, T, W, and F. On Thursdays all students (including the PM classes) come from 8:10-11:30; this gives us opportunities for team curriculum planning, parent education, and makes it convenient for field trips, assemblies, and other school wide events. It is of utmost importance that your child attends school regularly, and on time. This not only enables his/her successful learning, but also establishes a discipline for learning in the future. Children entering the classroom late are a distraction to the rest of the class. Please help your child see the value of learning by getting him/her to school every day on time. However, if your child is going to be absent, please call 979-8430 to confirm the absence.

Our philosophy on discipline is to maintain a positive learning environment through emphasis on positive reinforcement. Our school-wide LeGette Eagle Expectations are as follows:

All year long we will be learning about behaviors that demonstrate an understanding of these expectations, reinforcing them with Eagle tickets. This has proven to be a very successful program and reinforces our emphasis on firm limits coupled with high expectations, delivered in a caring way. When problems do arise we work with the child to help him/her identify strategies to solve the difficulty. As needed, further steps for problematic behavior will be tailored to the situations and may include: warnings, followed by a time-out, and referral to parent or principal as necessary. Conference/Report Cards/Visitations

All K-6 teachers are using the same Reporting to Parents guidelines. Standards Based Report Cards are issued three times a year. Student progress is reported in the following areas: academics and classroom effort, social skills and work habits. The first report card is issued at a parent teacher conference in Nov/December. Kindergarten Progress Notices are issued during the second and third trimester when the student is in jeopardy of not meeting grade level standards. You may request a conference at any time during the year. You are welcome to visit our classroom, but please allow us an initial few weeks’ time to settle into our routine. Visitors always need to stop at the office for a visitor’s pass, even when working in the classroom.

Our two main purposes for homework are: to provide practice or enrichment on skills learned in class, and to teach responsibility. The Monthly Homework Sheet is a list of activities to do with your child. Each completed Homework Sheet will be due the last school day of the month. Occasional extra homework papers may be sent home. Please return these the next day or as indicated on the homework sheet.

We always want to encourage healthy habits for kindergartners! Consequently, each child will be asked to provide a nutritious snack for the entire class approximately once a month. Snacks should be: ready to eat, easy to distribute quickly, all the same, and serve 24 students. Please select snack foods from the attached list (we do have students with severe food allergies). Please notify us if your child has a food allergy! Your child’s assigned snack day will be sent home on a calendar a few days before the end of each month.

We do celebrate birthdays at school! You may send in a special birthday treat on their birthday or on the school day closest to his/her birthday. Please make sure they are ready to eat and easy to distribute quickly. No drinks please! Please do not send party invitations to school. You may sign up to have your child’s name and phone number on our class directory; this provides you with contact information for play dates and party invitations.

Your child’s snack day is also his/her sharing day. Please send the sharing in a bag, with the sharing sheet (which will be sent home each month with the snack calendar) completed and attached. At first you will most likely be the one writing the clues, later in the year please encourage your child to do the writing! Please help your child practice “reading” the clues and rehearse what s/he is going to say when in front of the class. Classmates will have the opportunity to guess what’s inside, based on the information given in the clues. Kindergarten sharing is always a time of great anticipation, and an important part of language development.

Volunteers are needed for: working with children on an as-needed basis, daily clerical help, daily work centers, tallying book orders, typing up class directories, organizing the snack calendar, photography and memory book organizer, organizing field trips and class assemblies, preparation of materials in class or at home, art docent, and room parents. We appreciate your help and couldn’t run our program without you. Thanks!

1. When arriving at school each day, please say goodbye quickly at the classroom door to allow your child time to interact with the other children. Past experience has shown us that long goodbyes can result in more tears. Help us teach your child confidence and independence!

2. For everyone’s safety, as well as liability issues, the kindergarten playground is to be used only by kindergarten students under teacher supervision during the school day. Parents and siblings need to say good-bye at the classroom door.

3. Please send your child to school in play clothes. (Refer to LeGette’s policy on dress code.) Also, please mark all sweaters, jackets, etc. with your child’s first and last name.

4. Leave toys at home.

5. Send a folder to school every day to carry work and school notes home. Folders should have pockets in the bottom rather than on the sides. Please check this folder every day and remove contents.

6. Send bus riders to school wearing bus tags every day.

7. We will be dismissing the children in front of the office area. It is critically important that the students are picked up on time. If you are more than 5 minutes late your child will be waiting for you in the office. Please pick up your child on time.

8. Inform us in writing or in person regarding a change in your child’s travel home plans. We will only release your child to someone for whom we have written permission to do so, either on an emergency card or a note.