Sunday, May 8, 2011

UPDATES for 5/2-5/6 2011

**Our Sports and Fitness Week was great! Team hats, healthy snacks, school colors, group yoga culminating with the Fun Run on Saturday made it a fun time. It was a misty Saturday morning for the run, but everyone participating did their personal best. Let's give a shout out to Henry, Evan, McKenna, Ceci and Peter who ran with me!
**It turned out to be a great day for the Ethnic Festival. I was unable to attend but hope some of you had the chance.
**By now everyone has the information about the Traveling Poets under the direction of Ms. Noonan. All students have their poems with exception of Ethan, Eliyah and Jack. Don't worry--I will get them to you on Monday. This activity is a nice lead in to the 4th Annual Poetry Slam, to be held on Thursday, May 19th at 6:30m pm in the Irving Auditorium. Sign up to join in. Students can use their traveling poets poems or write their own or find a new poem. They can work alone, partner up or in a group. They can say, read it, rap it or even sing it! Please fill out the slam permission sheet so Mr. Williams knows who the participants are. Mr. Williams will be on the playground at lunch time with his microphone so the students can practice it they choose. Fun! Fun! fun!
**We will begin work on an end of the year tech project, beginning May 18th. I will need some parent helpers to assist in the computer lab. Please see me if interested.
**Future field trip--Oak Park Conservatory-Tuesday, May 31st-1-2:30 pm. Permission slips will be sent out next Friday.
**SAVE THE DATE!!! Wednesday, June 1st from 11:00-1:00 pm-Pizza and Play End of the Year Family Picnic at Rehm Park. More info is forthcoming.
**We are also working on planning a field trip to our local Maze Library for a tour and to obtain library cards for students who do not have their own. Stay tuned.
**We are also working on planning a Sibling Hour. It is tentatively scheduled for Friday, afternoon, May 27th. Stay tuned.
**Irving Garage Sale is this Saturday, May 14th from 8-1 pm. Come out and help or donate to help our School Yard Project.
**Oak Park Conservatory's Traveling Seeds will be in our classroom next week. The students will experience seed types, plant types, how seed travel and types and functions of leaves in this traveling hands on curriculum.
**The ULTIMATE VOCABULARY CHALLENGE continues---We have had REPUGNANT, EXEMPLARY, OPTIMISTIC and this week, INTEGRITY (being moral and honest.) This class shows a lot of integrity when it comes to working with others.
** Our last Friendship Club session will be May 20th.
This week: It was all about SEEDS! The students observed their seeds. They carefully watered and nurtured them and placed them in a sunny window. The students reflected in their science journal, charted daily any changes if any and recorded and drew sketches about what they observed. Many of the students thought it would take weeks for seeds to sprout. Some students couldn't believe they didn't have a full plant in 3 days. We did learn that the Morning Glory seeds were the first to sprout. Some of the Marigold seeds and Sunflower seeds came next. Finally, the Nasturtium seeds sprouted. We were all a bit disappointed that some of our Marigold seeds had not sprouted in time for Mother's Day. Keep nurturing your plants at home. Check to see if they need water and place them in a sunny window. Don't transplant them in your outside garden yet. The students observed the different leaf structures emerging on the plants. Each table will now observe one variety of the 4 flower types planted. "Grassy G" is growing slowly. Our inside class garden still has room for more seed types. Bring them in!
Reading: We continue work in Unit 7--Teamwork. We read the big book story, "Swimmy" by Leo Lioni. We discussed how Swimmy was different from all of his brothers and sisters and how traveling in a school might be helpful to fish. The students used the comprehension strategies of visualizing and predicting in talking about the story. They were able to answer questions about how Swimmy was different and how the fish work together as a team at the end. We discussed the use of quotation marks to indicate who is speaking in the story. The students retold the story verbally and then tried their hand at retelling the story in written form. The students continue to work on segmenting and blending 4-5 phoneme words and adding and deleting word parts. We even had some 6-7 phoneme words this week!
Math: We continue to work on solving addition and subtraction story problems in our math journal. We continue to work on recognizing key words in the story to help us identify the process we are going to use. All students are working hard on this! We reviewed digital and analog time by the hour and are beginning to focus on the 5 minute increments when looking at an analog clock. We reviewed recognition of penny, nickel , dime and quarter and their values. Next week, we will look at a dollar. We are continuing to play. "What's my rule?" Check out the function machine in this weeks homework. What's your rule????
Writing: We continue work on refining our upper and lowercase letters. Keep practicing the formation. We have started thinking about expanding our sentences with adjectives. The students continue to practice building sentences using the games, Silly Sentences and Silly Rhymes. It can get pretty silly!!
Science: We took a look at the inside of a seed. (seed dissection) We soaked pinto and pea seeds overnight. We examined seeds not soaked and soaked seeds. The students engaged in lively discussion about the texture, color and size of the seeds. We then split the soaked seed. Why could we do this? Yes! The students recalled that perhaps water had "climbed" up into the tiny spaces in the seed. (We learned this from our water unit.) The students examined the seed parts--Coat-Food-Baby Plant and labeled their drawings. They used their magnifiers to see the details and them we put them under the microscope. Way cool!!! Next week, we will continue looking at sprouts, shoots and root systems.
Literature: "Of Thee I Sing," (great story by Barack Obama to his daughters) "Growing Vegetables," "Counting the Garden," "Cinco de Mouse-o," Eyewitness-"Plants," "Seeds to Plants"-Chapter 2, "Big Bug Surprise," "Sometimes Things Change," "Splat the Cat Sings Flat," "Yes-Day," "Hot Rod Hamster," "Swimmy."

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