**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."