**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."
