(we snapped a celebratory photo after realizing that all of the teammates were here. just look at those faces!)

Dear Sweet Briar families,

You’ve received your child’s first kindergarten Progress Report. Yay!

I’ve said that I have a love/hate relationship with them. I love the clarity that putting all of the pieces together brings, but the subjective parts? Oof. Those are challenging. That kind of work doesn’t come easy to me – demonstrating how to use glue to real get a ‘good stick’ or how to braid, gathering the perfect supplies to build robots, finding just the right book to bring a topic of conversation to life, teaching how to read and write and how to solve an equation and what is an equation anyway? Those come easy. The synthesizing and putting it all down in black and white is the tricky party. How to distill the wonder of being 5 and 6 and all of the richness of their day into a few paragraphs. No easy feat.So, with that, thank you for the messages that you shared about the time and care that you saw went into them. I really appreciate it. 

Here’s a little behind the scenes note about the progress report process:

I use these as an opportunity to really, really look closely at each child – both as an individual and as part of the group.

I reflect daily on student learning and growth, but this captured moment in time forces me to strip away the superfluous and consider all of the information available – daily observations, and formative and summative assessments – then put to paper what it all means and how it fits together.
I use it to inform future instruction, get information on how to support and stretch students to their growing edge, and it helps me see patterns in a child’s learning and behavior. Even with all that, I know that these reports are but a blip in time, serving as a baseline from which to mark ongoing progress. I delight in observing the ways children can move into a spectacular new way of understanding, sometimes even in a day! There may be areas where I have missed the mark on a discrete skill by a bit or what you are seeing at home doesn’t match what we are seeing at school. If you are seeing glaring discrepancies, let’s talk! 

When you look at the two types of criteria AC (Area of Concern): B (Beginning); AE (Approaching Expectations);  ME (Meeting Expectations); EE (Exceeding Expectations), or AC  (Area of Concern); R  (Rarely);  S  (Sometimes); O  (Often); AA  (Almost Always); NA  (Not Applicable),  please remember that these do not correlate to grades. Often families are concerned when seeing Beginning or Approaching Expectation box checked, believing that these can be compared to a D or C; this is not the case and simply shows that children are new to the skills. If there are any wonderings or concerns, we would be talking about them. 
It might be tempting to compare your child to others, to siblings, even to yourself at the same age, but remember that children learn different things at different rates. 

Here’s an explanation of how we use these criteria:

• Exceeding Expectations: Student consistently exceeds grade-level expectations, independently applying higher order thinking skills and in-depth understanding. These skills and behaviors are internalized such that a child demonstrates them as a matter of course. It is incorporated into a child’s behavior, approach, or thinking with little to no energy.
• Meeting Expectations: Student consistently meets grade-level expectations, independently applying skills and understandings. The key here is the consistent demonstration of a skill, with the occasional clarification or affirmation from the teaching adult. 
• Approaching Expectations: With intermittent support, student is demonstrating skills and understandings near or at grade-level expectations. This is the next stage of learning, and a child may spend a long time in this phase, as he/she is practicing, and then applying newly acquired skills to a variety of formats or situations. Typically a child who is developing a skill will gradually transition from requiring frequent teacher support to becoming more independent. In kindergarten, “Not yet!” is a familiar refrain. When someone says, “I can’t read that whole line!” We’ll answer with, “Not yet, but you’re on your way!” When someone says, “I can’t count all those numbers.” We say, “Not yet!” It’s a powerful simple statement that says, “Even though you aren’t able to reach that goal in this minute, I believe and trust that you’ll get there!” I like to think of the Approaching Expectations mark, a “Not every time” or “Not yet.” The trust and belief is there that they are working hard to get the skill or idea into their bodies and their brains and and it’s just not quite there…yet.
• Beginning: With consistent teacher support, student is making progress toward meeting grade level expectations. For kindergartners, given the transition to a new school and new set of routines, it is typical that many are receiving first exposure and then exploring certain skills, trying them on, acclimating. A level of confidence often needs to be gained before a child moves past this stage of learning
• Area of Concern: Student progress toward grade-level expectations is not sufficiently evident despite significant support.

*To note: Our next scheduled Conference Days are March 13 and 14. You’ll receive another written Progress Report at year’s end.

Looking back:

December was a whirlwind of learning about different winter holidays: Kwanzaa, Christmas, and Hanukkah, and Winter Solstice; reading and comparing different gingerbread stories; learning about wants and needs, praticing our patience muscles, formative assessments; gingerbread buddy exchange with classrooms across the country; practicing giving and receiving gifts (and what to do what you open something that you weren’t expecting or is not your taste); making adorable family gifts; learning about snowflakes and how they are formed (thanks, Snowflake Bentley for sharing your fascination of those little flakes with us)

As we read different gingerbread tale, we created our own gingerbread buddies. We exchanged them with different classrooms across the country. Each gingerbuddy sent had a letter about the classroom, school, and students sending it! Randy and Lizette helped us run our envelopes through the postage machine; we really loved that part!

We learned a bit about different December holiday – noticing that lighting the darkness of winter is a theme. We continued reading about all kinds of families and created our own families in snowperson likenesses and got them wrapped up to give as gifts; brought out some old-fashioned shrinky dinks to create winter themed backpack tags; marveled at the colors in our table team giant coffee filter painting and then problem solved how to cut them into huge snowflakes; took our decorating skills to the windows; finished our December self portraits; set up a table full of sweet treats and sang and laughed and oohed and aahed as we created gingerbread cottages for our gingerbread neighborhood (when we came in the next morning, we found a tiny little ginger plush in each of our ‘yards’; and celebrated getting the last sticky note off of our Popcorn, hot chocolate, pajama, movie party poster with a party of the same name!

Welcome January!

We eased into the New Year by creating together – using chromatography to design the bags we’ll use during Reading Round-up; started learning about robots and started making our own; reintroduced routines and revisited our job chart to talk about what is working well and what we need to switch up – we asked why things weren’t working and problem solved solutions; and ended the week with Student Council led Cozy Day. Day 4 and we’re off to a really good start. Coming up: animal research projects, Dr. King’s birthday, Lunar New Year, new Science unit: Our 5 Senses, and all the regular good stuff – reading, writing, and ‘rithmatic!

Dates to note:

January 31 -Music teacher, Aaron, leads kinders in an Abi Yoyo inspired performance for our assembly. Families are invited to a PA coffee and then to the assembly

February 14 – We’ll celebrate the 100th day of school (but it’s really the 99th, the 100th is our first day back from the February Break) today. Families are invited in after the assembly, to see the 100th Day homework projects created by Sweet Briar and Blackberry Creek, the group projects created by the kindergartners, and the 1,000s projects created by the 3rd graders in Temescal Creek. More about this beloved tradition as the day comes  closer.

Thanks for sharing your children with me; we’ve got a pretty good thing going here in Sweet Briar Creek, and as always, I am open to questions, comments, or concerns…just let me know!

In gratitude and partnership,

Danette