**We have had a seemingly fast but very productive week. It is hard to believe that it is November and that we are about half way to our 100th day!
**There was no school last Friday in observance of Veteran's Day. A shout out to all serving in the military--a personal shout out to my niece and nephew--Go Air Force!
**Thanks to everyone that contributed their $1.00 for "Hats off for Cancer." Our classroom raised $27 for the cause and many cool hats were worn. Thanks to our reps, Yaya and Alex for helping to spread the word.
**Don't forget to send in your child's permission slip and money for our Field Trip to Brookfield Zoo. Student and Volunteer information will be in next weeks homework packet.
**We have a few more baby pictures to collect, but our SEASONAL BABIES project looks spectacular! Come check out some of Irving's own faculty on our wall. Yes--you will see black and white photos! Some of us were around before color pics!!!
**PICTURE RETAKE DAY is Wednesday, November 16th. You received information in the homework packet.
**Route to Reading Rotation 3 will be concluding next week. Students will be assessed on their skill and you will receive notification indicating the result. Route to Reading Rotation 4 will begin on Monday, November 28th.
**Here's a continued shout out for old magazines. We use them to find pictures and for collage activities.
**Mr. Packer's Math continues to focus on Probability. Next week, he will do a whole group activity and I will assist.
**We will have an ALL SCHOOL PBIS Olympic Day Tuesday, November 22nd. Kindergarten will participate in the morning. More info will follow next week.
**We will need 2-3 volunteers to help us with a special cooking activity in the afternoon of Tuesday, November 22nd. Please email me if interested.
**Please note--the end of Trimester 1 is Friday, November 18th. Report Cards will go home on Friday, December 9th.
**CALLING ALL COOKS!!! We need several volunteers for our annual gingerbread cookie baking on Friday, December 9th, all afternoon. No experience needed! Create, decorate, bake and share!! I have 2 station day parents signed up but we need more. The more, the merrier!! Email me if interested.
**Students have begun preparing for the Kindergarten Winter Concert to be held Friday, December 23rd at 9:30 am in the Irving Auditorium. A reception will immediately follow in our classroom.
This week:
It continues to be all about our cross curricular theme on Bears. We continued our inquiry on brown bears and also began the study of black bears. The students continue to gather information from books and our online source, The North American Bear Center. The students learned where black bears are found, how they live, distinguishing characteristics and habitats. The students specifically looked at the North American Black Bear. We learned that it is America's most common bear. The students began to observe some differences between the brown and black bear. (smaller paws, shorter claws, smaller stature, loves honey!) The students learned that bears are omnivores. Big word! On our nature table, the students experimented with trying on a brown bear paw, matching color bears, creating a bear claw out of clay using a template and writing about bears in their journal. Stay tuned--We will talk about polar bears next week.
Reading/Social Studies: The students have begun working in Unit 3 Transportation in our Treasures Reading series. The students discussed what is meant by transportation--a way to move people and things from one place to another. They brainstormed ways that they get around and discussed forms of transportation that move fast and slow. They listened to the big book story, "A Bus for Us." The students made a prediction about what the story could be about using the title and picture. The students made connections in their own life about the various vehicles showcased in the story. The sight word see was introduced. The students defined it and wrote it as well as reviewed all the sight words we have learned thus far. Our target sound this week is Tt. The students made the sound and began locating items and words around the room that start with the sound. The students took a look a how the letter is made in both upper and lower case form. In our grammar section, the learned about action words or verbs. They had great fun coming up with an action and having the rest of the class guess what is was. As part of listening comprehension, the students listened to the big book story for the second time and then used the retelling cards to retell the story in their own words. The students had a lively discussion about the vehicles mentioned in the story and their function. Our Robust Vocabulary for this week included TRANSPORTATION, VEHICLE, RAPIDLY, GLIDE, and CONTINUE. In our phonemic awareness activities, the students listened for and recorded when they heard the sound of Tt. They used their sound boxes to mark where they heard the sound of Tt, at the beginning or the end of the word. They practiced blending 3-4 letter words using their sound boxes. The students read their pre-decodable story, "I am Sam." They continue to finger point each word and picture. They are beginning to take note about how they are reading the sentences--choppy? smooth? They are working toward becoming fluent readers. The students listened to the informational text, "Signs in the Park." They took note of several things--types of signs, where you would see them, looking at a map, how to read the map symbols. The students practice reading their sight word see in sentences they created. In our read aloud story, "The Turtle and the Rabbit," many students had heard this fable before and were quick to retell and say what they thought the lesson of the story was. In the pre-decodable story, "Can Tam See?" the students had the opportunity to sound blend the name of the characters and share the story with a partner. Our work station activities this week included reading a story, retelling it and creating their own retelling cards, contributing to a graph of how students travel to school and writing about it, using their IPAD to spell their sight words, record reading their sight words and writing sentences containing their sight words, matching pictures to their initial sound letter and creating real and nonsense words for word family _in on their IPAD.
Math: The students began work on learning to sort based on common attribute. They participated in a game called, "What's My Rule?" where the students listened and looked for the obvious attribute being described by the teacher. Great for enhancing listening skills! The students continued to participate in generating, continuing and copying patterns using blocks, tiles and bears. In our folding paper geometry activity, the students randomly folded their paper, creasing it well. They unfolded it to see what shapes it revealed and outlined and colored the shapes. How many 3 sided shapes? How many 4 sided shapes? The students continue to work on writing and recognizing numbers 0-35 on our way to 100. They also continue to with place value and counting by 10's.
Writing: The students began working in their yellow lined journals. They are beginning to be more aware of where they write their upper and lower case letters when writing their sentences. We had a discussion on where tall lower case letters are written and where some lower case letters are written that fall below the bottom line. The students continue to work on practicing our Starting Corner Capitals they have learned thus far. The students continue to use the writing prompts from our reading series and have also made reflections based on their growing knowledge of bears. We continue to stress beginning with an upper case letter and ending with a period. We name and tell in our sentences. We are recognizing nouns and now--action words (verbs) in our sentences.
Technology: The students continue their study of and use of the IPAD as an enhancement tool for learning. The students welcomed Ms. Applebey, our great technology leader, to provide training and assistance to all of us. In reading, the students used the app Magnetic Letters along with Sonic Pics to spell their sight words, record themselves reciting them and emailing them to me so I could hear them too! The students then wrote 3 sentences using the words. The students used the app Word Wizard to work with the word family _in using their sound blending skills. They created a list of words and then recorded whether they were real words or nonsense words. After studying verbs, the students used their sponge painted bears and wrote a sentence describing an action the bear could perform. We then used the app ITALK to record each student reading their sentence and then emailing it to me. They loved hearing the playback--you will too! We learned a lot about speaking strong and clear when reading aloud. In math, the students used the app Number Find to challenge them to find 10 numbers hidden on the grid. It was all about finding a pattern to use to find all the numbers. The numbers ranged from 1-100. Challenging!!! The students also used the app Sam Phibian where they needed to find a targeted amount of each fish for the Sam's breakfast, lunch and dinner. Watch out!! Some of those fish travel fast!!! These activities were done in partners and small group. All the students sought information from the app Enchanted Learning in order to compare and contrast brown bears and black bears for our Venn Diagram.
Literature: "Black Bear Cubs," "Bears in the Forest," "Bears, Paws, Claws and Jaws," "Jesse Bear, What Will You Wear," "We're Going on a Bear Hunt," "Black Bears," "Hibernation Station," "Every Autumn Comes a Bear."
