Letter to Parents

Dear Parents,

In my classroom, which will also be your child’s classroom, we do not focus on worksheets and seat work but instead focus on play. Children learn through play. Play in the classroom can look different at different times. Some of the play is self directed and full of free exploration. But there are times when the play is more structured, as I hope to steer the children into practicing certain concepts and stretching their brains to understand the subject at hand. For example in math, we will play with numbers; learn that they can be taken apart and put back together with manipulatives. In literacy, we participate in story workshop where children learn the art of story telling, literary elements such as setting, characters, beginning, middle, end, draw their story and eventually write their story all through play! Play is the central theme of Kindergarten. It is my strong belief, which is validated by research and educational theories that have been practiced for decades, that children learn best through play. 

I also believe in teaching the whole child and honouring your child. I take time to watch and observe your child, to get to know them, so I can guide and nudge them from where they are to where they can be. I am not a cut and paste craft kind of teacher, but instead trust that your child is fully capable to represent their thinking in their own way. We work together in creating a classroom that we can all learn from and to celebrate our learning by having the children help co-construct what goes on our classroom walls. 

In addition, I focus not only on curricular competencies but the core competencies as well. We learn that we are communicators and what that looks like. We learn we can think both critically and creativity. We learn that we can interact with others, respect others and in the process get to know ourselves, our likes, our emotions and how we learn best. It is through noticing, naming, sharing, and using stories, sometimes using Aboriginal stories to learn, recognize and reflect on the development of the competencies.

One area of focus in my classroom is on strengthening the social emotional aspect of learning. A child who is not emotionally ready is not ready to learn. We learn about emotions and how they make us feel and can affect our learning. We practice strategies to get our minds and bodies ready to learn. We also learn to respect the emotions of others and in the process understand how we can help others in our classroom community. We focus on this daily, so that it becomes a part of our day and so your child develops a deep understanding of who they are, how to regulate their emotions so that they can be the best they can be!

My hope for this year is to focus on more project and inquiry based learning. It is my strong belief that children learn best not by being told what they should know but instead through exploration and collaboration. I hope we can explore the Big Ideas in science, career education, social studies, math, art, English Language Arts and physical education through inquiry and projects such as playing in the forest behind the school to observe seasonal changes, look closely and develop a sense of place. 

In Kindergarten it is not expected for your child to learn how to read, instead the focus in Kindergarten is to play with language, and work on skills to get them ready to read and comprehend. We do this through play; playing with letters, sounds, rhyme, exploring words, listening to stories, re-telling stories and creating stories.  We learn to write using “kindergarten writing”, and not focus on “book spelling.” as I want to foster the confidence in writing and have your child see themself as a writer.  If you want to encourage writing and reading, read with your child books that they enjoy to listening to. Look at the pictures, pick out letters, and play with the sounds. Give them pencils and paper and celebrate when they write, whether it makes sense or not!

I use Freshgrade as a way to document learning. I find the traditional paper report only captures a small fraction of learning. Since Kindergarteners are not able to read or write, it is difficult for them to express their understandings and ideas if we relied on paper assessments. Instead the beauty of Freshgrade is that you are able to take photos of moments, record their thinking through video or audio and get a deeper understanding of what they understand, and can do. It also gives you a glimpse into the classroom and an understanding of our classroom community. I will supplement Freshgrade by documenting our learning journey as a class through learning stories. My hope is to allow for inquiry and project learning this year and to document the process, capturing the voices of the students as they wonder, explore and discover.

I look forward to this upcoming year and to learn alongside your child and be part of their journey. 

Sincerely,
Mrs. Matson