**There was lots of singing and instrument playing this week. Our class attended the programs
of grades 1-5. Wow! Amazing voices , movement and instrument playing by these classes. The students were completely enthralled by the harp music played by 5th grader and Book Buddy, Ari, as well as the jiembe and drum pieces played by Mr. Williams and Ms. Tarabus' husband. We are sure talented here at Irving School!
**Our kindergarten classes performed wonderfully on Friday! The students had such fun seeing their family and friends in the audience. Our class had a great luncheon and family craft time. Thanks to L. Waste for providing the craft. Our Book Buddies from Ms. Balicki's class joined us in the afternoon for a project using the IPAD and the app, Doodle Buddy. A big thanks to Ms. Applebey for assisting. Stay tuned! I am so thankful for all the parental help this week! You guys are the best! What a perfect ending to a busy week.
**Yaya and Alex finished their time serving as Student Council reps. They had their final update meeting with the class to express their thoughts and tell their favorite parts of their service. We will be looking for 2 new reps in January.
**Mei-Li's mom shared with us the history behind the Winter Solstice. She read a story and Mei-Li helped show the suns position using a flashlight and globe. We toasted the sun by sipping orange juice and listening and singing to the Beatles tune,"Here Comes the Sun." I presented the story of the origin of Kwanzaa which began in 1966. I shared several stories and artifacts. The students pointed out the use of light in the form of candles in the Kinara and what each colored candle symbolized. The festival of Hanukkah (which began on Tuesday) was shared by our own Ms. Applebey. She taught the students a cool math game called the "Dreidel Race."
**Classes resume on Monday, January 9, 2012.
**Mid Year DIBELS Testing will take place the first 2 weeks of January. Route to Reading Rotation 5 will begin on January 23rd.
**Vision Screening for students will take place on Friday, January 20th. Hearing Screening will take place on Tuesday, January 24th.
**Reading Grandma Mary will begin her 5th year listening to young readers and helping them to shape their decoding and comprehension skills.
** Mrs. Donaldson (Mrs. D.) will continue to assist us on Tuesday mornings. We so value her commitment to us.
**For those who are traveling--your travel journals went home. It will great to share them in January.
**Start saving those GIANT BOXES (the kind you can climb in) and other COOL stuff for our space station construction in APRIL during our SPACE theme. I cannot store anything now. I will have you start sending things in after spring break.
**LOOKING AHEAD in 2012.......We will begin our next cross curricular theme-WINTER and Unit 5 Animals in our Treasures Reading series. We will also begin our first Science unit-Properties of Water. In the area of reading, we will continue to focus on sound foundation, sound blending 3, 4, 5, and even 6 phoneme words, work on our decoding strategies, vowel sounds, oral and written comprehension skills and reading fluency. Our Busy Reader Club will begin. In the area of writing, we will begin formal instruction on lowercase letter formation, continue with our inventive spelling, sentence structure, grammar and punctuation and expanding our sentences to include adjectives. In the area of math, we will continue to work on rote counting to 100 and beyond, counting by 2's, 5's, 10's, identifying coins and their values, problem solving, counting down from random numbers and combining and decomposing sets (addition and subtraction) and telling time. We will begin using our math journals to illustrate process. Socially, we will continue to work on becoming more responsible, independent learners and thinkers and continue to form positive relationships and respect all around us. WOW--we will be busy!!
This week:
It was all about community with one another, family and friends. We put up our 'Friendship Tree." The students made friendship chains, working in pairs and groups and then combined the chains for one super long chain to decorate the tree. They wrote messages to friends in class and posted them on the message board next to the tree. Really wonderful thoughts were expressed. I have photographed the tree and board and will post the pictures in the gallery. The students shared a great lunch with their families and worked on a craft together. It was great to observe such care and love. The interaction with our Book Buddies was awesome. My students really look up to the "big" kids for guidance. Their collaborations will be shared with you.
Reading/Social Studies: The students completed Unit 3 Food in the Treasures Reading Series. They took their unit assessment on Thursday. The students built background knowledge around food traditions. This tied in nicely with our ongoing theme of traditions. The students were able to tell about their personal family food traditions including Thanksgiving turkey, Chinese New Year foods, Hanukkah foods and Christmas traditional foods. We discussed what a menu was. The students listened to the story, "Yoko." The students worked on making inferences, summarizing and making connections in the story to their own lives. We reviewed the sight words have and to. The students used these and the rest of their sight vocabulary to create sentences using words and pictures. We reviewed our target sounds Cc and Nn in isolation at the beginning and ending of words. The students continued to used their photo cards to sort nouns and verbs. Our Robust Vocabulary for this week included the words MENU, TRADITION, DEVOUR, FRESH and DELICIOUS. The students used their sound (elkonin) boxes to sound blend 3 and 4 phonemes to create words. They practiced reading their decodable story, "Nat." The students made predictions about story content. The students listened to the tale, "The Three Wishes." They thought about ---What if they had three wishes? What would they be? What were the man and woman's wishes in the story? The students also listened and viewed pictures from the expository (informational) text, "Farming Then and Now." The students responded about how the way to farm has changed over the years. Students observed the use of animals and the gradual change to machines. Each student read the paper story, "I Have To," and then retold it in their own words. The students practiced their reading skills by sharing their story with a partner. For a small group project, the students collaborated with their group members and came up with a recipe for a food. The recipe had to include nouns (flour, sugar, fish etc.) and verbs (mix, stir, peel etc.) The students worked with the headings--what do we need? what do we do? Some of the food recipes include sushi, pancakes and cupcakes. The projects are on display in our classroom. Check them out! Our workstations this week included readers response, where the student reads a story aloud to Ms. D and discusses the story and their reaction to it, creating an ABC book, picking a letter, illustrate and writing the word, sound Tic Tac Toe Game with partners where you look at your game card, point to a letter and say a word that starts with that letter and mark it with the appropriate X or O and read aloud recording where the student practiced their story first, then recorded their story reading on ITALK , played it back and then filled out the reader's checklist.
Math: The students continued work on rote counting to 100 and beyond, counting by tens and fives, using calculators to do simple adding and listening to a number story and illustrating the process and writing a number sentence. All students completed their Gingerbread Man patterning project and shared it with the class.
Writing: All students reviewed writing uppercase letters A-Z. They reviewed which were the Frog Jumps, Magic "C"s, Starting Corner and Starting Center letters. Writing prompts this week included--sample menu writing, writing about the concerts you saw, writing about the Gingerbread person you created, writing about what you will do over break. We continue to stress beginning with a capital letter, spacing between words in a sentence, ending mark at the end of the sentence and placement of letters on a given line.
Technology: The students continue to use the app Whiteboard with a stylus to practice number and letter formation. They continue to record their reading using ITALK and playing it back to critique how they sound. The apps Word Wizard, Montessori Crossword and Sound Sort and Reading Bug helped assist students with sound recognition, sound blending, segmenting sounds and practice spelling their sight words. The apps Math Bug, Top It and Gingerbread Maker helped assist students with adding and subtracting, patterns and place value. The app Doodle Buddy was used with our Book Buddies for collaborative illustration, writing, graphics and fun!
Literature: "Count the Days of Hanukkah," "The Chanukkah Guest," "A Picture Book of Hanukkah," "The Longest Christmas List Ever," "There was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bell," "Merry Christmas Hungry Bear," "The Crunchy, Munchy Christmas Tree," "Bear Stays Up for Christmas," "Fiesta USA," "K is for Kwanzaa," "My First Book of Kwanzaa," "Muslim Holidays," "7 Candles for Kwanzaa."
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
Saturday, December 17, 2011
UPDATES for 12/12-12/16 2011
**The countdown has begun to our final week in school for 2011! The students continue to be busy with concert practice, classroom lessons, thinking about their winter break from school (lots of travel journals to make) and sharing and caring about one another. Tis the season! We continue to talk about family traditions and celebrations and the use of lights. Lottie's father came to talk to our class about the Swedish celebration of St. Lucia. He read a story and Lottie dressed up in her white dress and wore her candle crown. She passed out ginger cookies similar to the ones eaten in Sweden. The students learned some Swedish words and heard the St. Lucia song in Swedish. Thanks so much, Josh for your presentation! I presented the story of Christmas. The students listened to the story. We talked about the North Star and I shared with them a set of special finger puppets that my mother had given to me. Next up is Mei-Li's mom, who will speak about the Winter Solstice celebration their family shares. Also, the students will learn about the traditions of Hanukkah and Posadas, as well as look back at the celebrations of Ramadan and Diwali. We are learning so much from each other.
**Our Kindergarten Winter Concert is Friday, December 23rd beginning promptly at 9:30 am. We are sure to have a full house. Please plan accordingly. Immediately following our concert, please join us in our classroom for craft making and lunch. An invitation is enclosed in the homework packet. Families and friends, please plan to be at school from 9:30-11:30 am if you can. In the afternoon, we will have a special treat. The students will be creating a project with their 5th Grade Book Buddies from Ms. Balicki's class. Our great tech advisor, Ms. Applebey, will help facilitate the event. Don't forget--NO Lunch needed!!!
**Solar energy has come to Irving School! Our Green Team rep, Salome, has talked about the solar panels that our school was getting through a grant program. They arrived on Friday! We took a look at pictures of solar panels on the web and located information through the Energy Department on how solar energy works. We learned the words renewable and nonrenewable when speaking about energy sources. Solar energy is renewable. We went outside to see one of the panels. There are five in all. They were installed on the library roof. Stay tuned!
**The Girl Scout Toy Drive ends Monday, December 19th.
**Route to Reading Rotation 4 has concluded. All students have received notification of skill development. There is no Route to Reading from December 19th to January 23rd. Mid year DIBELS assessments will take place the first part of January.
** Due to our rehearsal schedule, we did not have Mr. Packer math this week.
**In Friendship Club this week, Ms. Kwiatt read a story and lead a discussion with the students about what it means to be proud, both of themselves and their accomplishments in their everyday lives.
This week:
It was all about pride! We used the tale of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer as a springboard to discussion and dictation about taking pride in yourself and your accomplishments, believing in yourself and taking pride in others. In our first tale, Rudolph was made fun of because of his shiny nose. The students made connections in their lives about times when others put them down or times when they felt they didn't know enough or know how to do something. Sometimes, it just takes one person or event to help us see our worth! In the second tale of Rudolph, he loses the shine on his nose because he feels sorry for himself and runs away. The students shared times in their lives when they wanted to give up or not try. At the end of the story, Rudolph's shiny nose returns as he stops thinking about himself but of how to help find the little bunnies. Simple stories with very teachable moments! Ms. Kwiatt continued the theme of pride in her Friendship Club lesson.
Reading/ Social Studies: The students continue to work in Unit 4 Food of our Treasures Reading Series. The discussion this week centered around the questions, "What is for dinner?" and "Did you ever help to make dinner?" The students accessed prior knowledge about meals
they helped prepare and special meals that are coming up for the holidays that they will be a part of. The students listened to the story, "Our Special Sweet Potato Pie." They made connections in the story discussing parts that could not really happen (the potatoes getting bigger as they rolled down the hill,) and parts that could happen (making a sweet potato pie, having a special birthday dinner.) They used the retelling cards to retell the story in their own words. Our sight word for this week was have. The students reviewed all sight words they learned so far by working with partners and using their words and picture cards to create sentences. The target sound this week was letter Cc. The students used chants and rhymes to help reinforce the letter sound. The students continue to work on using verbs in their daily speech and in their journals. Our Robust Vocabulary this week included APPETITE, FEAST, PREFER, FLAVOR and SPECIAL. The students also used the story to sequence events, summarize and make inferences about what would happen. The students continue to use their sound boxes (elkonin boxes) and blocks to listen, place the block in the correct box and sound blend the phonemes to make the word. We are adding more blends and digraphs to our sound blending. The students read the decodable story, "We Can!" We read aloud together. Students then took turns reading their story to a friend. The students continue to work on their oral language by listening and responding to the vocabulary story from Puerto Rico, called, "Little Juan and the Cooking Pot." They also heard two poems containing the sound of Cc words. The students read their story, "I Have." They located the speech bubble and knew who was talking. Our puppet, Mr. Happy, assisted the students by saying the sounds and the students responded by saying the whole word made. The students continue to work on their small group interactive project--Writing a Recipe--using nouns and verbs to describe what they need and what they do in order to make their group food recipe. Lots of team work involved. Projects will be on display next week. In the Russian folktale, "Grandfather Bear is Hungry," the students listened and responded to the tale. They made prior knowledge connections in thinking back about our unit on Bears. The students topped off the week by playing "Hands Up, Hands Down" with their sight words. Work stations this week included, creating a word web about foods "I like to have" and writing 2 sentences about it, read it and add to it where they choose their own story to read, read it to a friend and write about what could happen next, creating a store sign with magazine pictures and labeling the foods on your sign and making a pretend meal in the house corner area, photographing it and writing about your favorite meal and where you got your food from.
Math: The students worked on an introduction to the Calculator. They learned how solar power operates the calculator and terms DISPLAY, ON/CLEAR, REPEAT KEY, PLUS SIGN and locating numbers. The students worked with counting on the calculator and the term, "one more." They also learned the counting shortcut. More to come next week. The students continue to work on counting sequences, oral number stories and beginning number sentences. They have become more consistent in writing 2 digit numbers. Place value has become more understandable. The students are locating numbers in the tens and ones places. The students are working on counting by tens to 100. This weeks station day activities included sorting, graphing and counting trees, creating a tree out of pattern triangles and following directions using shapes to make Rudolph.
Writing: The students are using their writing for many assignments. They finished the starting center capitals A, I, T, J. We will review all upper case letters next week. The students used the writing prompts in their Treasures Series and continue to work on letter formation, spacing of words in a sentence and placement of letters on a given line. Next week, the students will begin using regular #2 pencils. Any special tools will continue to be used on these pencils.
Technology: The students continue to use the stylus and app Whiteboard to practice their number rhymes and letter formation. Groups of students began to using the ITalk to record the story of their choosing. They played back the recording to hear how they sounded. They then filled out a Reader's Checklist form reflecting how they felt about their reading. Some surprising responses! The students were honest about how they sounded. This checklist will be used to help the students self reflect and make them more aware of their volume/projection, fluency and sound blending. Ms. Applebey assisted in guiding them through the process so that I could hear them too. Some of the stories were too long to email. We are working to see what can be done. My hope is for families to get a chance to hear the recording at some point. Stay tuned. Math small groups worked on the apps Math Bug and Top It for enhancement of adding numbers and number order. The students continue to work on their individual projects with the app Gingerbread Maker. We will finished them this week.
Literature: "St. Lucia Day," "The Christmas Story," "Silent Night," "This is the Star," "Too Many Toys," It's Christmas, David," Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer," "Rudolph Shines Again," "Merry Christmas, Splat."
**Our Kindergarten Winter Concert is Friday, December 23rd beginning promptly at 9:30 am. We are sure to have a full house. Please plan accordingly. Immediately following our concert, please join us in our classroom for craft making and lunch. An invitation is enclosed in the homework packet. Families and friends, please plan to be at school from 9:30-11:30 am if you can. In the afternoon, we will have a special treat. The students will be creating a project with their 5th Grade Book Buddies from Ms. Balicki's class. Our great tech advisor, Ms. Applebey, will help facilitate the event. Don't forget--NO Lunch needed!!!
**Solar energy has come to Irving School! Our Green Team rep, Salome, has talked about the solar panels that our school was getting through a grant program. They arrived on Friday! We took a look at pictures of solar panels on the web and located information through the Energy Department on how solar energy works. We learned the words renewable and nonrenewable when speaking about energy sources. Solar energy is renewable. We went outside to see one of the panels. There are five in all. They were installed on the library roof. Stay tuned!
**The Girl Scout Toy Drive ends Monday, December 19th.
**Route to Reading Rotation 4 has concluded. All students have received notification of skill development. There is no Route to Reading from December 19th to January 23rd. Mid year DIBELS assessments will take place the first part of January.
** Due to our rehearsal schedule, we did not have Mr. Packer math this week.
**In Friendship Club this week, Ms. Kwiatt read a story and lead a discussion with the students about what it means to be proud, both of themselves and their accomplishments in their everyday lives.
This week:
It was all about pride! We used the tale of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer as a springboard to discussion and dictation about taking pride in yourself and your accomplishments, believing in yourself and taking pride in others. In our first tale, Rudolph was made fun of because of his shiny nose. The students made connections in their lives about times when others put them down or times when they felt they didn't know enough or know how to do something. Sometimes, it just takes one person or event to help us see our worth! In the second tale of Rudolph, he loses the shine on his nose because he feels sorry for himself and runs away. The students shared times in their lives when they wanted to give up or not try. At the end of the story, Rudolph's shiny nose returns as he stops thinking about himself but of how to help find the little bunnies. Simple stories with very teachable moments! Ms. Kwiatt continued the theme of pride in her Friendship Club lesson.
Reading/ Social Studies: The students continue to work in Unit 4 Food of our Treasures Reading Series. The discussion this week centered around the questions, "What is for dinner?" and "Did you ever help to make dinner?" The students accessed prior knowledge about meals
they helped prepare and special meals that are coming up for the holidays that they will be a part of. The students listened to the story, "Our Special Sweet Potato Pie." They made connections in the story discussing parts that could not really happen (the potatoes getting bigger as they rolled down the hill,) and parts that could happen (making a sweet potato pie, having a special birthday dinner.) They used the retelling cards to retell the story in their own words. Our sight word for this week was have. The students reviewed all sight words they learned so far by working with partners and using their words and picture cards to create sentences. The target sound this week was letter Cc. The students used chants and rhymes to help reinforce the letter sound. The students continue to work on using verbs in their daily speech and in their journals. Our Robust Vocabulary this week included APPETITE, FEAST, PREFER, FLAVOR and SPECIAL. The students also used the story to sequence events, summarize and make inferences about what would happen. The students continue to use their sound boxes (elkonin boxes) and blocks to listen, place the block in the correct box and sound blend the phonemes to make the word. We are adding more blends and digraphs to our sound blending. The students read the decodable story, "We Can!" We read aloud together. Students then took turns reading their story to a friend. The students continue to work on their oral language by listening and responding to the vocabulary story from Puerto Rico, called, "Little Juan and the Cooking Pot." They also heard two poems containing the sound of Cc words. The students read their story, "I Have." They located the speech bubble and knew who was talking. Our puppet, Mr. Happy, assisted the students by saying the sounds and the students responded by saying the whole word made. The students continue to work on their small group interactive project--Writing a Recipe--using nouns and verbs to describe what they need and what they do in order to make their group food recipe. Lots of team work involved. Projects will be on display next week. In the Russian folktale, "Grandfather Bear is Hungry," the students listened and responded to the tale. They made prior knowledge connections in thinking back about our unit on Bears. The students topped off the week by playing "Hands Up, Hands Down" with their sight words. Work stations this week included, creating a word web about foods "I like to have" and writing 2 sentences about it, read it and add to it where they choose their own story to read, read it to a friend and write about what could happen next, creating a store sign with magazine pictures and labeling the foods on your sign and making a pretend meal in the house corner area, photographing it and writing about your favorite meal and where you got your food from.
Math: The students worked on an introduction to the Calculator. They learned how solar power operates the calculator and terms DISPLAY, ON/CLEAR, REPEAT KEY, PLUS SIGN and locating numbers. The students worked with counting on the calculator and the term, "one more." They also learned the counting shortcut. More to come next week. The students continue to work on counting sequences, oral number stories and beginning number sentences. They have become more consistent in writing 2 digit numbers. Place value has become more understandable. The students are locating numbers in the tens and ones places. The students are working on counting by tens to 100. This weeks station day activities included sorting, graphing and counting trees, creating a tree out of pattern triangles and following directions using shapes to make Rudolph.
Writing: The students are using their writing for many assignments. They finished the starting center capitals A, I, T, J. We will review all upper case letters next week. The students used the writing prompts in their Treasures Series and continue to work on letter formation, spacing of words in a sentence and placement of letters on a given line. Next week, the students will begin using regular #2 pencils. Any special tools will continue to be used on these pencils.
Technology: The students continue to use the stylus and app Whiteboard to practice their number rhymes and letter formation. Groups of students began to using the ITalk to record the story of their choosing. They played back the recording to hear how they sounded. They then filled out a Reader's Checklist form reflecting how they felt about their reading. Some surprising responses! The students were honest about how they sounded. This checklist will be used to help the students self reflect and make them more aware of their volume/projection, fluency and sound blending. Ms. Applebey assisted in guiding them through the process so that I could hear them too. Some of the stories were too long to email. We are working to see what can be done. My hope is for families to get a chance to hear the recording at some point. Stay tuned. Math small groups worked on the apps Math Bug and Top It for enhancement of adding numbers and number order. The students continue to work on their individual projects with the app Gingerbread Maker. We will finished them this week.
Literature: "St. Lucia Day," "The Christmas Story," "Silent Night," "This is the Star," "Too Many Toys," It's Christmas, David," Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer," "Rudolph Shines Again," "Merry Christmas, Splat."
Sunday, December 11, 2011
UPDATES for 12/5-12/9 2011
**What a great week! The tiny bit of snow we had created excitement of the coming of winter....at least if you are a five or six year old!!! We had our first guest speaker, Salome's mom, who came to talk to us about the legend of St. Nicholas. A native of France near the German border, she read a picture story in French about St. Nicholas and taught the students a song that their family sings to invite St. Nicholas to come. Each student received a special cookie (somewhat like gingerbread!) and got to color a picture of St. Nicholas (who looks a bit like Santa Claus!) Thanks so much, Isabel, for your presentation. Next up is Lottie's dad who will speak about the Swedish celebration of St. Lucia Day, celebrated by Lottie's family.
**If you have any questions about your child's report card, please contact me.
**Our Gingerbread Baking was fabulous! Everyone had a ball--students and volunteers alike. The smell of gingerbread was in the air! Lots of detail went into decorating these cookies. They were really works of art. A big thanks to our volunteers--B. Chyna , J. Chyna, C. Bravo, T. Naber, J. Brock. P. Hamblin, T. Orozco and M. Chlebek for their great assistance.
**The Girl Scouts have collected many donations of toys and books but could always use more. The drive goes on until December 19th.
**Route to Reading Rotation 4 will conclude on Wednesday, December 14th. At that time, you will receive notification of skill development. There is no Route to Reading 12/19-12/22.
**I was not able to attend Irving's Annual Cookie Crumble and Craft Show but heard it went very well!
**Mr. Packer's lesson continued to focus on Probability /Chance this week.
**In Friendship Club, Ms. Kwiatt worked an activity where the students had to take turns, be respectful and give clues about a particular animal card they held so that the other students could guess what animal is was. Great clue giving!
**The students will begin rehearsing for their concert in the auditorium this week. They sound really great!
**Families and other guests--please join us after our concert for a light luncheon in our classroom. We will have sandwiches, a veggie tray, fruit, yogurt tubes and dessert. There will be plenty for all. The concert is December 23rd at 9:30 am. in the Irving Auditorium.
This week:
It was all about the gingerbread!! The students gathered information from books and internet sources to find out how gingerbread began and why it is so popular at this time of year. Ginger was valuable spice a long time ago traced back to the Greeks and Romans. A cake like treat was made using ginger. As time went on, Europeans began using flour, ginger and other spices to create cookies, cakes and houses. We read many stories about various gingerbread characters. The students worked on a compare/contrast project where they discussed each story we read and how it ended (was he/she eaten?), who the characters were (boy, girl, cowboy, baby, fox, wolf, coyote?), what the plot of the story was. They had loads of fun! The students wrote in their journal about gingerbread, counted gingerbread, created their own gingerbread man and graphed patterns following their gingerbread person's trail. The students were quite inventive as they rolled out their dough and decorated their cookies. I can't wait to read their homework assignment on their favorite gingerbread tale!
Reading/Social Studies: The students began Unit 4 Food in our Treasures Reading Series. The unit started with a question about where our food comes from. The students accessed prior knowledge about stores, farms, markets, orchards as places where food can be found. The students listened to the big book story, "Apple Farmer Annie." The students listened and discussed where Annie lived and her daily activities as an apple orchard farmer. Students made connections about their recent theme on apples and the types of apples that Annie grew and what she made with them. Some students related that they had gone to a farmers market and bought apples and apple cider. Our target word for this week was to. We added this word to our other sight words and created sentences using words and our picture cards. Our target letter and sound was Nn. We reviewed our sound toys and picture cards and read a rhyme/chant containing the Nn words and the sight word to. The students reviewed action words or verbs by taking a noun picture and adding their own verb to it. The students use the retelling cards to tell the story in their own words. Our Robust vocabulary this week contained the words FARMER, MARKET, INGREDIENTS, COMBINE, NUTRITIOUS. Our puppet, Mr. Happy, helped the students with their phoneme blending. We continue to use our sounds boxes (elkonin boxes) and blocks to move block where we hear the phoneme. We continue to work on 3-4 phoneme words. The students read their decodable book, "Can Nan?" They made predictions about content. Students took turns reading each page (the other students finger pointed to follow along.) We also read each sentence together. We reviewed what a question mark is and the students orally answered questions about the story. Using our vocabulary cards, the students listened to the selection, "Pizza Please!" The students had great fun activating their own prior knowledge about making their own home made pizza, comparing and contrasting the ways and ingredients families use to make pizza and that some students never made their own pizza but ordered it from a pizza place. The students listened to an expository (informational) text "From Strawberry Field to Strawberry Salad." We discussed what a diagram is and how you follow a recipe. The students read their pre-decodable story, "We Go!" The students took turns reading aloud. They continued to work on voice quality when reading aloud and their reading fluency. The students spent time rereading their story to a partner and talking about story elements. Workstations this week included using the sight word Can to write a question sentence and illustrating it, story retelling where the students read a story, retell it to a partner and make retelling cards, feeling foods, where the students feel into a bag of foods, describe what they feel, pull out the food, show it and describe it to a partner and then write 2 sentences to describe their food and Word Pies, where the students have to create 4 words-one in each part of their pie, recording the words and writing a sentence using one of their words. The students could make a word containing 3-4 phonemes. Some students are exploring 5-6 phoneme words!
Math: The students finished their number rhymes for numbers 6-9. They continue to work on creating their number rhyme sticker book. The students continue to work on rote counting to 75, revisiting pattern block shapes and geometric solids, taking a look at distance in terms of number of steps to various places in the classroom and out and writing 1 digit, 2 digit and 3 digit numbers on their dry erase boards. They continue to work on listening for key information in oral addition an subtraction story problems.
Writing: The students work on the "Magic C" letter, Ss and reviewed the starting center letter A. The students continue to use the writing prompts from their Treasures Reading Series. The students also wrote about gingerbread. The emphasis remains on spacing between words in a sentence, using lowercase letters and knowing where to place them on a given line and making their writing readable. We will finish our center starting uppercase letters next week.
Technology: The students took turns using their stylus and app Whiteboard to practice both "Magic C" letters and their number rhymes. Each table got a chance to work with this app. Ms. Applebey worked with workstation groups on word building with an app called Montessori Crossword. The students tapped the box to listen to each phoneme and dragged the letters to form the word. They then wrote down all the words they made. The app was differentiated to produce crosswords puzzles for students too. The app Sound Sort was also used by individual students to reinforce letter/sound correspondence. Students also used the stylus and the app Intro to Math to practice reproducing their number rhymes. Students worked with a partner on the app Top It (both 1 and 2 digit) to reinforce knowledge of addition. Students explored the app Math Bug to work on addition and subtraction with pictures. The students are continuing to work on a project with the app Gingerbread Maker. Here they create a gingerbread person of their choice, with shapes for the features. The students then touch and take their gingerbread boy or girl to follow the random pattern. They draw the pattern on the activity sheet and then do it 2 more times. The patterns can get tricky!! The students then make a picture of the gingerbread person they made on the app.
Literature: "The Gingerbread Man," "The Gingerbread Boy," "Gingerbread Baby," "Gingerbread Friends," "Gingerbread Man Loose in the School," "The Gingerbread Girl," "The Gingerbread Girl Goes Animal Crackers," "Bad Boys Gets Cookie," "Gingerbread Fred," "The Gingerbread Cowboy," "Ten Gingerbread Men."
**If you have any questions about your child's report card, please contact me.
**Our Gingerbread Baking was fabulous! Everyone had a ball--students and volunteers alike. The smell of gingerbread was in the air! Lots of detail went into decorating these cookies. They were really works of art. A big thanks to our volunteers--B. Chyna , J. Chyna, C. Bravo, T. Naber, J. Brock. P. Hamblin, T. Orozco and M. Chlebek for their great assistance.
**The Girl Scouts have collected many donations of toys and books but could always use more. The drive goes on until December 19th.
**Route to Reading Rotation 4 will conclude on Wednesday, December 14th. At that time, you will receive notification of skill development. There is no Route to Reading 12/19-12/22.
**I was not able to attend Irving's Annual Cookie Crumble and Craft Show but heard it went very well!
**Mr. Packer's lesson continued to focus on Probability /Chance this week.
**In Friendship Club, Ms. Kwiatt worked an activity where the students had to take turns, be respectful and give clues about a particular animal card they held so that the other students could guess what animal is was. Great clue giving!
**The students will begin rehearsing for their concert in the auditorium this week. They sound really great!
**Families and other guests--please join us after our concert for a light luncheon in our classroom. We will have sandwiches, a veggie tray, fruit, yogurt tubes and dessert. There will be plenty for all. The concert is December 23rd at 9:30 am. in the Irving Auditorium.
This week:
It was all about the gingerbread!! The students gathered information from books and internet sources to find out how gingerbread began and why it is so popular at this time of year. Ginger was valuable spice a long time ago traced back to the Greeks and Romans. A cake like treat was made using ginger. As time went on, Europeans began using flour, ginger and other spices to create cookies, cakes and houses. We read many stories about various gingerbread characters. The students worked on a compare/contrast project where they discussed each story we read and how it ended (was he/she eaten?), who the characters were (boy, girl, cowboy, baby, fox, wolf, coyote?), what the plot of the story was. They had loads of fun! The students wrote in their journal about gingerbread, counted gingerbread, created their own gingerbread man and graphed patterns following their gingerbread person's trail. The students were quite inventive as they rolled out their dough and decorated their cookies. I can't wait to read their homework assignment on their favorite gingerbread tale!
Reading/Social Studies: The students began Unit 4 Food in our Treasures Reading Series. The unit started with a question about where our food comes from. The students accessed prior knowledge about stores, farms, markets, orchards as places where food can be found. The students listened to the big book story, "Apple Farmer Annie." The students listened and discussed where Annie lived and her daily activities as an apple orchard farmer. Students made connections about their recent theme on apples and the types of apples that Annie grew and what she made with them. Some students related that they had gone to a farmers market and bought apples and apple cider. Our target word for this week was to. We added this word to our other sight words and created sentences using words and our picture cards. Our target letter and sound was Nn. We reviewed our sound toys and picture cards and read a rhyme/chant containing the Nn words and the sight word to. The students reviewed action words or verbs by taking a noun picture and adding their own verb to it. The students use the retelling cards to tell the story in their own words. Our Robust vocabulary this week contained the words FARMER, MARKET, INGREDIENTS, COMBINE, NUTRITIOUS. Our puppet, Mr. Happy, helped the students with their phoneme blending. We continue to use our sounds boxes (elkonin boxes) and blocks to move block where we hear the phoneme. We continue to work on 3-4 phoneme words. The students read their decodable book, "Can Nan?" They made predictions about content. Students took turns reading each page (the other students finger pointed to follow along.) We also read each sentence together. We reviewed what a question mark is and the students orally answered questions about the story. Using our vocabulary cards, the students listened to the selection, "Pizza Please!" The students had great fun activating their own prior knowledge about making their own home made pizza, comparing and contrasting the ways and ingredients families use to make pizza and that some students never made their own pizza but ordered it from a pizza place. The students listened to an expository (informational) text "From Strawberry Field to Strawberry Salad." We discussed what a diagram is and how you follow a recipe. The students read their pre-decodable story, "We Go!" The students took turns reading aloud. They continued to work on voice quality when reading aloud and their reading fluency. The students spent time rereading their story to a partner and talking about story elements. Workstations this week included using the sight word Can to write a question sentence and illustrating it, story retelling where the students read a story, retell it to a partner and make retelling cards, feeling foods, where the students feel into a bag of foods, describe what they feel, pull out the food, show it and describe it to a partner and then write 2 sentences to describe their food and Word Pies, where the students have to create 4 words-one in each part of their pie, recording the words and writing a sentence using one of their words. The students could make a word containing 3-4 phonemes. Some students are exploring 5-6 phoneme words!
Math: The students finished their number rhymes for numbers 6-9. They continue to work on creating their number rhyme sticker book. The students continue to work on rote counting to 75, revisiting pattern block shapes and geometric solids, taking a look at distance in terms of number of steps to various places in the classroom and out and writing 1 digit, 2 digit and 3 digit numbers on their dry erase boards. They continue to work on listening for key information in oral addition an subtraction story problems.
Writing: The students work on the "Magic C" letter, Ss and reviewed the starting center letter A. The students continue to use the writing prompts from their Treasures Reading Series. The students also wrote about gingerbread. The emphasis remains on spacing between words in a sentence, using lowercase letters and knowing where to place them on a given line and making their writing readable. We will finish our center starting uppercase letters next week.
Technology: The students took turns using their stylus and app Whiteboard to practice both "Magic C" letters and their number rhymes. Each table got a chance to work with this app. Ms. Applebey worked with workstation groups on word building with an app called Montessori Crossword. The students tapped the box to listen to each phoneme and dragged the letters to form the word. They then wrote down all the words they made. The app was differentiated to produce crosswords puzzles for students too. The app Sound Sort was also used by individual students to reinforce letter/sound correspondence. Students also used the stylus and the app Intro to Math to practice reproducing their number rhymes. Students worked with a partner on the app Top It (both 1 and 2 digit) to reinforce knowledge of addition. Students explored the app Math Bug to work on addition and subtraction with pictures. The students are continuing to work on a project with the app Gingerbread Maker. Here they create a gingerbread person of their choice, with shapes for the features. The students then touch and take their gingerbread boy or girl to follow the random pattern. They draw the pattern on the activity sheet and then do it 2 more times. The patterns can get tricky!! The students then make a picture of the gingerbread person they made on the app.
Literature: "The Gingerbread Man," "The Gingerbread Boy," "Gingerbread Baby," "Gingerbread Friends," "Gingerbread Man Loose in the School," "The Gingerbread Girl," "The Gingerbread Girl Goes Animal Crackers," "Bad Boys Gets Cookie," "Gingerbread Fred," "The Gingerbread Cowboy," "Ten Gingerbread Men."
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