**The weather has turned cool and brisk, but our class is cozy and warm with the sounds of students working very hard this week on a number of skills and activities. I am thankful for their dedication to their education.
**FINAL REMINDER--Our Field Trip is Monday, November 21st. Don't forget to pack a BAG lunch (put your name on it) and dress for the weather. We will be gone most of the school day. We will tour the Great Bear Wilderness and have a 45 minute classroom experience beginning at 12:30 pm. Before that, the students will have time to walk around and see the exhibits of their choosing. We will all meet up for lunch and then proceed to our classroom. We will return to school by 2:30 pm.
**NO SCHOOL- November 23rd-Teacher Institute Day. School is closed November 24th and 25th for Thanksgiving.
**Route to Reading Rotation 4 will begin Monday, November 28th. At that time, students will receive notification of their skill placement.
**We met with our Book Buddies from Ms. Balicki's Class on Wednesday. Our Book Buddies shared some BEARY good books. Together the students reflected and illustrated in their shared journals. There was great conversation, interactions and respect for one another. Check out the pics in the gallery section of the teacher web. We will meet with again in December.
**Many of our Book Buddies took part in the Annual Turkey Trot on Thursday. Our class made pop up signs using our new sight word--GO!
**Due to the Turkey Trot, we did not have Mr. Packer Math. He will do his whole group activity after Thanksgiving.
**Trimester 1 had ended. Report cards will go home on Friday, December 9th.
**Ms. Henry and Ms. Naber will be assisting us as we make our bear paw snacks and home made butter this coming Tuesday afternoon--thanks!
**Our all school PBIS Olympic Day will take place on Tuesday morning.
**We need lots of help for our annual gingerbread cookie baking on Friday, December 9th in the afternoon. Come join the fun. No baking experience necessary! Email me if interested.
** In Friendship Club this week, Ms. Kwiatt discussed with the students the term "thankful." The students created a turkey and on each feather wrote what they were thankful for.
**Reading Grandma Mary stopped by to meet our class. She will come to our room one afternoon a week to listen to students read and work on comprehension and fluency. She will start in January! We can't wait!
**Looking ahead to our next cross curricular theme--Traditions and Celebrations--I am looking for guest speakers to come to present to the students on their particular family traditions and celebrations. We will be studying the use of types of lights as a unifying theme in many winter celebrations. Email me if interested.
**Kindergarten Winter Concert is Friday, December 23rd at 9:30 am with a reception in our classroom immediately following.
This week:
It continues to be all about bears. This week, our focus was on polar bears. The students learned that polar bears are different from brown and black bears in basic characteristics, habitat, diet and that they do not truly hibernate. Polar bears do not have much trouble finding food in the cold. With plant life scarce, they are mostly carnivores. The students had a lively discussion on how seals are a main part of a polar bears diet. Some students were dismayed by that. We checked out some on line resources on the Artic region. The students made connections in their daily life in the winter months and a polar bears life all year round. Swimming for hours in icy water, the polar bears black skin helping to reflect sunlight and the layer of blubber under their skin that acts like a heavy jacket to keep warm are just some of the interesting facts the students found out. In our station day activities, the students made bear caves with paper bags and leaves, bear paws with noodles and torn paper and graphed polar bears (teddy grahams) and ice bergs (marshmallows) and compared the totals. The students began preparation for their field trip to the Great Bear Wilderness at Brookfield Zoo on Monday. Our field trip, Bear Paw snacks, honey and a blubber glove are some of the highlights for next week. Stay tuned!
Reading/Social Studies: The students continue to work in Unit 3 Transportation of our Treasures series. The students built background knowledge on their travels both far and near. The students listened to the big book story, "On the Go." They observed how the people traveled from one place to another and the vehicles they used. In the story, each page showed a person from a particular country and their form of transportation. We looked up each country on our world map. In their comprehension study, the students compared, contrast, classified and categorized the types of travel and vehicles. The sight word GO was introduced this week. The students reviewed all the sight words they have learned thus far. Our target sound this week was short i. The students used chants and rhymes to reinforce the sound as well as their sound cards. The students continued to review the use of action words or verbs. Our Robust Vocabulary this week included TRAVEL, JOURNEY, PREPARE, RELAX and FAMILIAR. In phonemic awareness, the students used their sound boxes to sound out and blend 3-4 letter words using short i. The students read their pre decodable story, "Go, Go, Go." They made predictions about the content and sounded out the decodable words in the story. During an interactive writing exercise, the students made pop up signs using the word, go to help cheer their book buddies on in the turkey trot race. In our vocabulary card story, "Two Frogs," the students listened to the story of the frogs from two different regions and their quest to see the others areas. The students can share with you the out come of the story. It is pretty cool! We read two poems on transportation, "The Bike," and "Riding the Subway Train." The students noticed the rhyming in both and helped to track the words as I read. The students worked with partners to create sentences using their sight words and picture cards. Our work station activities this week included writing sentences using sight words go and see and creating illustrations, using the transportation cards to talk about what is the same and different about 2 cards picked, discussing it with their table mates and creating a list wheels vs. feet words, creating words using a word wheel with word families am, ap and at and then sorting words by the first letter and read it and add to it where the students each read a story, think about what could happen next and write and draw about it. The students had opportunities to read stories to each other to practice their fluency.
Math: This week the students worked on counting strategies. We continued to work our way to 100. The students began learning rhymes that will help them in forming their numbers. They used their dry erase boards to practice. The students worked on some graphing exercises. We also revisited pattern block shapes, geometric solids and penny power. The students experimented with building on more complex patterns and naming them. The students are beginning to work on the process behind addition and subtraction using manipulatives and drawings for assistance. We continued work on "thinking" math story problems. Many of the students are becoming more interested in listening for key information in the story in order to solve it. Students are also beginning to come up and illustrate their "thinking" on the blackboard.
Writing: The students continued working on sentence structure, placement of words on a given line and using nouns and verbs. This week, our book buddies helped assist in a writing exercise where a story was shared and then both kindergartner and book buddy reflected in writing and drawing their favorite part. It was great fun and very cool watch the care taken by our book buddies in guiding their younger counterparts. Great learning!!! A large portion of our writing time was spent creating our version of the "Brown Bear" story. Each student came up with their idea. They talked it through, wrote their draft, made corrections and then wrote the final copy and illustrated it. Don't forget--inventive spelling is very acceptable at this stage!!! They did a spectacular job! We have finished our Starting Corner Capitals. The "Magic C" letters are next.
Technology: The students continued to explore the many apps on the IPAD in order to enhance their learning. Ms. Applebey was back this week to assist with bringing our version of the "Brown Bear" story up a few notches!! A picture of each students page was taken and each student recorded their sentence with the app Sonic Pics. The "book" was put together and is now part of our blog. Pretty cool! The students used the app Magic Reading 2 (Beginning and Ending Blends.) They tapped the box to listen to each phoneme, sounded out the word and recorded it on their paper. The students used the app Word Family Fun to reinforce beginning letter and rhyme onset. They also used the app Phonics Lite to find short a and short o words.
For math, the students used the app Top It, reviewing concepts more and less, adding the numbers and comparing it to their partners number. The app Monster Squeeze continues to help reinforce number order and recognition. The students also began work with the app Kids Math that illustrates the process of simple addition and subtraction and also shows written format.
Literature: "Polar Bears," "Bears, Claws and Paws," "Looking at Bears," "The Last Polar Bear," "Young Larry," "Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear?" "Panda Bear, Panda Bear, What Do You See?" "Baby Bear, Baby Bear, What Do You See?" "The Polar Bear," "Follow the Polar Bear."
