**The students had a short but very busy and productive week. We have finished Unit 1 Families in our Treasures Reading Series. We will take our unit assessment on Monday!
**Parent/Teacher Conferences are set for Tuesday, October 18th, Wednesday, October 19th and Thursday, October 20th. Scheduled times are posted on our entrance door. If you have not confirmed your time, please do so, thanks!
**PLEASE NOTE that school is in session ONLY in the MORNING on Thursday, October 20th and Friday, October 21st. Dismissal will be at 11:00 am. Hephzibah and RFCC pickup will be at 11:00 am.
**The Irving Book Fair is Tuesday through Friday, October 18th-21st in the auditorium. Stop by during conferences, after school and in the evening. We will be going to the fair as a class to "scope out" the books we are interested in on Tuesday. I have already spied some great selections!
**A flyer for our HALLOWEEN PARADE and CELEBRATION is enclosed in the packet. Many of you have signed up to help. I will send additional information next week.
**Alex and Yaya will attend their first Student Council meeting on Tuesday, October 18th. They will report back to us on what is discussed.
**We met our BOOK BUDDIES on Wednesday! Each student has an assigned book buddy for the school year. Book buddies interviewed each other for their book buddy book (sent home on Wednesday) and shared a story or two with each other. Ms. Balicki has a super class of kind and engaging students. We will have lots of fun. Our next meeting is in November.
**Ms. Bell Bey and Ms. Kwiatt taught a lesson in Friendship Club on the importance of being a good listener. They used stories and role play.
**We will have our PAJAMA/CD BOOK DISCUSSION PARTY to celebrate our 93 eagle wings on Thursday, October 20th from 10:00-11:00 am. Our book theme is "famous bed time stories." The students will watch stories from authors, Frank Asch, Jane Yolen and Peggy Rathmann. We will then discuss characters, story development and create a compare and contrast chart. The students CAN come dressed in their pajamas on Thursday. We have early dismissal at 11:00 am. If they need to change.... just send their clothes.
**Don't forget--On line or flyer/money book orders are due October 19th.
**Our age change graph is changing again with Mei-Li and Reuben moving to the land of the 6 year olds. Happy Birthday! Ava also made the move last weekend. Happy Birthday!
This week:
Once again, its Apples, Apples, Apples!! The students continued to compare and contrast different types of apples, took a look at the skin of the apple and the flesh of the apple under a microscope and made a diagram of an apple and labeled its parts. We took a look a what trees in an apple orchard look like in each of the seasons and had a yummy treat voted on by all the students--apple slices dipped in melted chocolate!!!! The students helped use the apple slicer and counted how many slices where in each apple. What a treat! We will conclude our theme next week and begin prep for our next mini cross curricular theme -Pumpkins, Spiders and Bats.
Reading/Social Studies: We have finished Unit 1 Families in our Treasures Series. The students discussed and read about how families can change. They also talked about other members of their family called relatives and who relatives can be--grandma, grandpa, aunt, uncle, cousins etc. I shared the the story, "Peter's Chair," and students listened and made a prediction about what they thought might happen and discussed story structure --what actually happened. We review the sight words WE and THE through chants and rhymes. The students reviewed the isolated sounds of Mm and Aa (both short and long sounds.) We reviewed naming words (NOUNS) that describe a person, place, thing or animal. In our Robust Vocabulary development we discussed the meaning of the words CHANGE, GATHER, RELATIVE, OCCASION, EAGER, CELEBRATE and added them to our word bank. Students orally retold the story, "Peter's Chair" and sequenced events in the story. Students reviewed concept words--big, small, short, tall. We read our pre-decodable books, "We Can See," "Am I? and "Can We?" The students continue to work on reading from left to right, finger pointing each word and picture and noting a statement sentence and question sentence by voice inflection. We read the informational text, "Family Fun." The students responded and retold important facts about families. The students worked with their sound blending boxes to blend phonemes (individual sounds) to form words. They listened to a vocabulary story from Cuba called, "Rooster goes to Tio's Wedding." The students retold the story and pointed out how the rooster needed help but no one would help him until he spoke to the sun. Some of our robust vocabulary words were contained. We concluded our unit by re-reading all our pre-decodable stories for practice. We are ready for our unit assessment on Monday! The students enjoyed their work station activities which included drawing and naming your family members and using a complete sentence to tell what your family likes to do, before and after sequence--drawing yourself before you could walk and drawing yourself now and writing a sentence about each picture, reader's response where you read a book, think about it and write what you think about it and why and mixed up sentences revisited where students take sight words and pictures and create complete sentences with punctuation.
Math: The students worked on a number of math concepts this week. They learned and practiced techniques for drawing using a template with pattern block shapes. They used their knowledge of pattern blocks for Shape Hokey Pokey and spent sometime creating a pattern block design with blocks. The students studied Symmetry and what it means. They looked at examples of symmetry in life and in nature. They worked with a partner to create a symmetrical fold and cut project. They are on display in our classroom. The students also worked with paint bag number making. This sensory activity feels good and helps students with number recognition and form. We also used this activity to write our letters. We continue to work on sequencing numbers 0-20 and played the Monster Squeeze Game with numbers 0-25. We continue to work with concepts what comes next, what comes before. Mr. Packer continued work on an activity called Smart Snips where students create everyday pictures using only 4 shapes in his weekly thinking math sessions with our class. Pretty cool!!
Writing: The students continue to work on reviewing Frog Jump Capitals. Our next set of letters will be the Starting Corner Capitals. Stay tuned! The students continue to work on sentence construction and adding more details to their drawings. We continue to use our writing prompts from our reading series. They are working consistently on recording the sounds they hear in the words they use to describe their pictures.
Literature: "Totally Apples Cook Book," "How do Apples Grow," "Sixteen Runaway Pumpkins," "Leaves," "The Leaf Man," "I Am Picking Apples," "Leaves Fall Down," "The Perfect Pumpkin," "We Share Everything."
