Hi KA parents,

PSB has decided that schools will be closing one hour early due to the forecast. West Kent Kindergarten students will dismiss at 1:20pm today. If you need to change your early dismissal plan, please call Lena at the main office.

Thanks,

Lisa 🙂

Hi Team KA, 

We had a short but busy week here in KA. We started the week off on Tuesday morning by learning that we were the upstairs winners of the tidy hallway challenge! Students enthusiastically congratulated each other and celebrated their hard work. As a reward, students received a popsicle at lunch time on Thursday. 

On Tuesday we also had our belated Valentine’s Day party in class. Students were very independent in placing their Valentines in their classmates’ ‘mailboxes’, and we were lucky enough to enjoy some Valentine treats in class. Even Blue received some Valentines! 

Happy Lunar New Year to all! We read both fiction and non-fiction books to learn more about Lunar New Year and then we made some lanterns to hang in the hallway. We learned about the year of the horse and made headbands to celebrate. 

Today we enjoyed Winter Wellness Day. We took part in an outdoor UFit class with other classes. Students really enjoyed the music and movement. We also got to shop at the used book sale, and then participated in an Olympic themed scavenger hunt around the school. 

Students in KA have been enthusiastically following Team Canada at the Olympics. Although as a rule we do not watch shows in our class, during eating times we have been turning on live Olympic coverage in order to learn about sports we normally don’t follow and help cheer on Team Canada. This week we were treated to watching Canada’s Women’s Team Pursuit win gold in real time. The reaction in our class was priceless with students cheering, hugging and some even shedding tears in their excitement for our Canadian athletes. It’s safe to say that KA has caught the Olympic spirit!

Students have been proudly sharing their writing with their classmates. We have been working hard to independently write short messages that match the accompanying illustration. Students are stretching our words and writing down the sounds that they hear. 

We continue to practice and strengthen our numeracy skills in a variety of ways. We have started to learn more about 3D objects and will learn more about their attributes and how to classify them starting next month. 

Pink Shirt Day will take place on Wednesday, February 25. All students are invited to wear a pink shirt on the day in order to promote an awareness on anti-bullying. We will spend some extra time in class next week learning about ways to be kind to everyone. 

Last week we sent home papers in the homework bags with instructions on how to sign up for Parent-Teacher Interviews. A reminder that in KA the students will be leading their interviews so please sign up for a time that your child is able to accompany you. When you sign up online, it will give you  a 15min time slot. Our interview will last an extra 5-10mins beyond that and I have times blocked off so that KA parents can only sign up every 30mins. Please keep this in mind if you are scheduling an interview for a sibling after our time together. Also, if you would like to have a private chat without your child present, please let me know and we can arrange that as well. 

Next Week in KA:

Monday, February 23, Day 3: Music

Tuesday, February 24, Day 4: Mrs. Mac & Phys. Ed 

Wednesday, February 25, Day 5: Music & Pink Shirt Day 

Thursday, February 26, Day 6: Mrs. Mac & Phys. Ed 

Friday, February 27, Day 1: Music

Have a great weekend, 

Lisa 😊

A reminder that tomorrow, Friday, February 20 is West Kent’s Used Book Sale in support of Easter Seals! All books are either $1 or $2 and 100% of the money goes directly to Easter Seals fundraising.

Hi KA families, 

Mother Nature decided to turn our long weekend into an even longer one! Because we missed Thursday, we will go ahead with our Valentine’s Day party when we return on Tuesday. Students will have the opportunity to exchange cards then and are invited to wear red and pink. 

The KA class has been very interested in following Team Canada at the Milano-Cortina Olympics. Students are excited to cheer on our Canadian athletes and have been learning about different winter sports. We have also been graphing the medals won by Team Canada and hope to add more to that when we return next week. 

On Wednesday, we were invited to the 1/2Z class to learn about animals that each student researched. KA students were extremely respectful while visiting the other class and showed great interest by asking questions and listening to the grade one and two students. 

Our youngest authors have been working really hard on their writing. Students have been taking great pride in their attention to detail and in using new strategies. The two writing strategies that we have been practicing are stretching each word out and writing down the sounds that they hear (which ends up being mostly consonants at this point) and copying words found in their environment. 

Students continue to build up their decoding skills while reading. It’s so encouraging to see their pride while solving new words and being able to comprehend a story line. We will continue to build on their skills to increase confidence and fluency. 

On Wednesday we sent home papers in the homework bags with instructions on how to sign up for Parent-Teacher Interviews. A reminder that in KA the students will be leading their interviews so please sign up for a time that your child is able to accompany you. When you sign up online, it will give a 15min time slot. Our interview will last an extra 5-10mins beyond that and I have times blocked off so that KA parents can only sign up every 30mins. Please keep this in mind if you are scheduling an interview for a sibling after our time together. Also, if you would like to have a private chat with your child present, please let me know and we can arrange that as well. 

Lastly, but certainly not least: Thank you so much for all the support you’ve shown through our Home & School this staff appreciation week. As a staff we felt very appreciated 🙂

Next Week in KA:

Monday, February 16: Islander Day (NO CLASSES)

Tuesday, February 17, Day 5: Music and Red & Pink Day with Valentine’s Day Party

Wednesday, February 18, Day 6: Mrs. Mac & Phys. Ed 

Thursday, February 19, Day 1: Music

Friday, February 20, Day 2: Mrs. Mac,  Phys. Ed, Library and Winter Wellness Day

Enjoy the long weekend, 

Lisa 😊

Hello again everyone, 

This week we had half the class make the correct prediction about Groundhog Day. Shubenacadie Sam did not come out of his burrow this year due to the weather, so they counted it as a no shadow year. Even though this is a pretty silly tradition, it provided us opportunities to talk about weather patterns, seasonal changes and cultural traditions. 

We started learning about the Olympics this week and we will be following Canadian athletes over the next few weeks of the Olympics and Paralympics. We will be practicing our graphing skills while we track our medal count. We will continue to learn about the different winter Olympic sports and then the Paralympic sports as the games continue.  

We also started to learn about Black History Month and will be focusing on reading books featuring characters and authors from the Black community.

We continue with our daily learning centers in both numeracy and literacy. These centers are an excellent opportunity for students to practice previously taught skills. It also allows me an opportunity to work with small groups so that we can work together on a more personal level to help students with reading, teach more complex skills to a smaller group or complete assessments. 

This week we began writing, and the students were very proud to be considered official authors. The prompt was to write about their favorite winter activity and to draw a detailed picture portraying that activity. Students took great pride in listening to the sounds of each word and writing down the sounds that they heard. The goal with our first few writing pieces will be to build confidence and independence. As we progress, we will focus more on writing correct letters to match the sounds and hear all of the sounds in a word.

Next Thursday, February 12 we will have a small Valentine’s party in class. Students are invited to exchange Valentines as part of the party. Below you will find a list of all the first names of our class members for the Valentine cards. West Kent students are also invited to dress in red and pink for the day as well.

On Tuesday, February 10, the Grade 6 classes are hosting a Bake Sale to raise money for their year end activities. All West Kent students are invited to make a purchase and each item will be $1. If you would like to send money for your child to participate in the bake sale, please send the money labelled in their homework bag on Tuesday.

This Spring, KA will be participating in Student-Led Interviews. This is different from a traditional Parent-Teacher Interview and will take the place of the traditional interview. Your child will attend the interview with you and will show you some of the skills they have been learning. I will help your child along the process and will be contributing as well. This will take a little longer than traditional interviews, so when you sign up for your time (which will be made available online after February 17), it will be for a 30min slot. The goal is for the parents to be able to see what their child is learning, rather than just listening to me describe it, and for the students to feel a sense of pride and ownership in their abilities. If for any reason you would like a time to chat with me without your child present, please just let me know and we can arrange that as well.

Next Week in KA:

Monday, February 9, Day 1: Music

Tuesday, February 10, Day 2: Mrs. Mac, Phys. Ed, Library & Bake Sale

Wednesday, February 11, Day 3: Music

Thursday, February 12, Day 4: Mrs. Mac & Phys. Ed

Friday, February 13: PD Day (NO CLASSES)

Enjoy the weekend, 

Lisa 😊

Class List:

Stuart

Milla

Renn

Airlie

Leon

Kalina

Vos

Alexander

Piper

Peter

Hi KA grown-ups, 

We had a bit of an interrupted week here with the snow day on Tuesday and the early dismissal on Monday. I owe you all a debt of gratitude for Monday: that was the easiest/smoothest early dismissal that I have experienced in my career. Everyone followed the plan that was made in September and was right on time. It really makes everything at the school so much less chaotic when that happens. So, thank you!

On Thursday we had our Best Kent Assembly with the rest of the school, we celebrated those who demonstrated excellent skills in Encouraging Others (our last school-wide skill to focus on), and we had a presentation about Responsibility (our next school-wide skill). 

Even though our Dress Like our Favorite Book Character day was postponed due to the storm, we had fantastic participation and all students were able to talk about their favorite character. Many also talked about doing the literacy scavenger hunt at home on the snow. Thanks for helping promote a love of literacy that will carry your children far in life. 

This week we continued to strengthen our decoding skills to read books independently. Next week we will also add some writing center time and become authors! We are very excited to reach this next learning milestone! 

This morning we made predictions for Groundhog Day that is coming up on Monday. This helped us make a graph in order to organize and interpret data, and we will be able to compare the result against our predictions next week. In case the weather prevents us from checking on Shubenacadie Sam’s Prediction at school on Monday, this is the link that you can watch at home. 

The most exciting part of the week was the addition of our class member: Blue the Betta Fish! Blue was added to our class on Friday and students were very excited to meet him and to learn about him. His name was voted on by the class and they were very eager to introduce him to anyone who stopped by our class today. 

Next Week in KA:

Monday, February 2, Day 2: Mrs. Mac, Phys. Ed & Library

Tuesday, February 3, Day 3: Music

Wednesday, February 4, Day 4: Mrs. Mac & Phys. Ed 

Thursday, February 5, Day 5: Music

Friday, February 6, Day 6: Mrs. Mac & Phys. Ed 

Have a great weekend, 

Lisa 😊

Hi everyone,

I don’t always resend information that the main office has already sent, but there are three important points I don’t want people to miss out on. Please read below:

Since school was cancelled today, we will have our dress as your favorite book character day tomorrow, Wednesday, January 28^th.

There have been several confirmed cases of head lice at our school. Notices were sent out in homework bags yesterday. Please remind students to not share combs, hairbrushes, hats or hair accessories. Contact the office if you do find your child has head lice or if you have any questions or need support. For more information on head lice visit the Canadian Pediatric Society, Caring for Kids Website.

On Monday February 2 until February 18, we will be collecting gently used books for a used book sale on Friday, February 20^th. We ask that books are in good condition and are for grades K-6 level. All books will cost $1 to $2 and money raised will go to Easter Seals.

I hope you all have a good snow day,

Lisa 🙂

Welcome to our first early closure! We will be dismissing at 12:20 and we will be following the early closure plans that you filled out in September. I hope everyone has are travels today!

Happy Friday Team KA, 

Today West Kent tried a new form of Morning Announcements where each class could see Ms. Waye and Ms. MacKenzie on the Smart Boards in each classroom. They even hosted a song contest on the announcements and the KA class won. Our prize was TimBits at snack time! But more importantly, it really lifted the energy on a raining morning.

We are so lucky to start the new year off with two full weeks of learning. This is setting us up for a strong winter learning term, and this is arguably the most important learning time. Soon, students will put their tapping/decoding skills to use and start reading simple books. This is always an exciting time that I celebrate with each student when they experience this big learning milestone. I do my best to introduce book reading to each student at a time that is best for them in order to build their confidence and self image as a reader, so the timeline will differ for each student. I am confident that each student will reach this milestone by the beginning of March. 

This group has been working hard to grow their numeracy skills. Our focus has been on accumulating different strategies and learning when to use different strategies. This is an exciting but messy time of learning. Students are aware of many different strategies but can often confuse the difference between strategies and they aren’t great yet at knowing when to use certain ones. This is a totally normal part of learning, and with more practice over the next few weeks they will begin to select strategies more independently and accurately. It’s still important to ask your child to show off their learning at home, but don’t be alarmed if their counting and number work seems messy right now. It’s not that your child is struggling, it’s just the stage of learning that we’re at. 

Our West Kent hallway challenge finished up this week. Our class did a fantastic job of keeping our coat hooks tidy and organized the entire time. We had a respectable showing in the Wessy points, but we were not the popcorn party winners. The students in our class (and others) were very invested in this friendly competition and checked the scoreboard in the hallway regularly. This was a fantastic opportunity for students to practice their counting and comparing skills independently. I was most impressed with how students from our class would talk about how it was important to continue these good organizational habits after the challenge. Their social awareness and sense of responsibility is impressive and I’m so lucky to spend each day with such a conscientious group of students. 

This coming Friday will be our rescheduled Wild Child session. Please keep your fingers crossed that the weather is more cooperative for us this time. 

Family Literacy Day will take place on Tuesday, January 27. At West Kent, one of the ways we celebrate this day is by inviting students and staff to dress as their favorite book character for the day. This will help strengthen student’s connections and engagement in literacy which provides a strong foundation for their current and future education. Please keep in mind that costumes should be something that students can manage independently, that are appropriate for recess and Phys Ed, and little pieces/accessories are better left safely at home so that they have less chance of getting lost. 

Next Week in KA:

Monday, January 19, Day 6: Mrs. Mac & Phys. Ed

Tuesday, January 20, Day 1: Music

Wednesday, January 21, Day 2: Mrs. Mac, Phys. Ed & Library

Thursday, January 22, Day 3: Music

Friday, January 23, Day 4: Mrs. Mac, Phys. Ed & Wild Child

Lisa 😊