**The students welcomed WINTER! The sounds of the season filled the auditorium! Our concert was fantastic! The singing, the instruments, the swaying and a few human menorahs!!! Many thanks to our own Ms. Hiolski and Mr. Mayer for their guidance. Our after the concert get togethers (not one , but two!!) were chock full of great treats and crafts. A huge thanks to our fabulous and organized room parents--C. Cummings, D. Frank, K. Jones, E. Loentz and S. Aylward for all their planning. The students were sure delighted to see parents, sisters, brothers and grandparents at the concert. It was great to see the parent/child, parent/parent and parent/teacher/child interactions between our Room 110 families. I am one lucky teacher to have such a supportive group of parents and students!
**Our BOOK BUDDY get together was awesome! Each student from our class was matched up with a 5th grade Book Buddy from Ms. Balicki's class.. They worked together to create a getting to know you book. We had lots of treats left over from our concert get together so all students helped themselves to the food. Our class taught the 5th graders how to play the Roll a Gingerbread Game. Very cool interactions. Some older students shared their favorite kindergarten experiences. Many of them were kindergarteners in my class!! We all ended the day raising our juice cups to salute our achievements of 2012 and welcome in 2013. The students cannot wait for our next meeting in January! A big thanks to Ms. Balicki's room parents for their help!
**Senorita Zaragoza talked to the students about the festival of Las Posadas. She shared a story and music about the procession in the streets re-enacting Mary and Joseph's search for an inn and the stable that became their room. I presented the story of the origin of Kwanzaa which began in 1966. The students pointed out the use of light represented by the special candle holder called a kinara. The students made connections in their own lives while listening to the 7 principle ideas of this African American celebration. I shared some traditional stories--"The Night Before Christmas," "The Nutcracker," "The Twelve Days of Christmas and its Southwestern counterpart, "Twelve Leaping Lizards." The students thanked Ms. D. (Mrs. Donaldson) our Tuesday helper by creating and illustrating a special card.
**A very special SHOUT OUT to Ms. Dennis, our truly dedicated classroom assistant who tirelessly works
to reach all students with her enthusiasm for learning! Cheer! Cheer!
**Classes resume on Monday, January 7th.
**Mid Year DIBELS testing will take place the first 2 weeks of January. Route to Reading Rotation 4 will begin on Tuesday, January 29th. All students are progressing on the Phonemic Awareness Continuum. Some students even moved into the Phonics Continuum!!
**Vision Screening for students will take place on Friday, January 18th.
**Reading Grandma Mary will begin her 6th year listening to young readers and helping them to shape their decoding and comprehension skills. We can't wait to see her!
**For those who are traveling--your travel journals went home. It will be great to share them in January. Safe travels to everyone going to a special place!
**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 bringing things in after spring break.
LOOKING AHEAD in 2013.....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 reading, the students will continue to focus on sound foundation, sound blending and segmenting 3-4-5 and even 6 phoneme words, work on decoding strategies, vowel sounds, oral and written comprehension skills and reading fluency. Our Busy Reader Club will begin. In the area of writing, the students will finish uppercase letter forms and begin formal lowercase letter formation, continue with inventive spelling, sentence structure, grammar and punctuation and expanding sentences to include adjectives. In the area of math, the students will continue rote counting to 100 and beyond, counting by 2's, 5's and 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. The students will begin their process oriented math journals. Socially, the students will continue to work on becoming more responsible, independent learners and thinkers and continue to develop positive relationships with their peers and teachers. Technologically, the students will continue to use the iPad and internet resources to enhance all areas of the curriculum. WOW! We will be really busy!!!!
This week:
It was all about community with one another, family and friends. Our "Friendship Tree" looks amazing. Students worked together in pairs and groups to create chain patterns. Some student groups decided to link their chains together to form one giant one. They are displayed all around the room and cover our tree. The students wrote "Kindness Counts" notes to each other and pinned them to our Friendship board. Their sentiments to each other really touched my heart!
Reading/Social Studies: The students completed Unit 4 Food in the Treasures Reading series. 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, New Years foods, Hanukkah foods, special Birthday foods and traditional Christmas foods. We discussed what a menu was. The students listened to the story, "Yoko." They worked together on making inferences, summarizing and making connections in the story to their own lives. They also reviewed the sight words have and to. These words were added to our daily Wacky sentence. The students are having so much fun unscrambling the daily mixed up sentence. We reviewed our target sounds Cc and Nn in isolation and at the beginning and ending of words. The students continue to use photo cards to sort nouns and verbs. Our Robust vocabulary for this week included MENU, DEVOUR, FRESH and DELICIOUS. Students used their elkonin boxes to sound blend 3-4 phoneme 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? A great journal prompt! The students listened and viewed pictures from the expository text, "Farming Then and Now." They responded about how farming 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 retold it to a partner. There were many opportunities this week for students to practice their reading aloud. One workstations this week was a menu project where small student groups collaborated with each other to come up with a recipe for a food. Their recipe had to include nouns (what you need) and verbs (what you do) and how to sequence the steps. Each group had a different recipe. Maki Sushi, Layer Cake, Lemon Cake, Chicken Soup, Chocolate Gingerbread were the selections. The projects are on display throughout the classroom and hall. Lots of thought and working collaboratively went into these projects! The rest of the workstations included creating 3-4 phoneme word puzzles and sharing them with a partner, creating a store sign and labeling the foods on it and reading aloud and discussing the main idea of a leveled reader.
Math: The students continue to work on rote counting to 100 and beyond and counting by 10's and five's. The students worked on an introduction to the Calculator. They learned how solar power operates the calculators and the terms DISPLAY, ON/CLEAR, REPEAT KEY, PLUS SIGN and locating numbers. The students worked with counting on the calculator and making "one more". They also learned the counting shortcut. Many students participated in the battle of the Dreidel Game. Will was quite a master spinner and consistent winner!
Writing: The students are using their writing for many assignments. We have moved into writing conference mode where the students complete a writing assignment or journal prompt independently and then come to "conference" with me where they read their sentences and together we go over capitalization, grammar, spacing and letter placement. The students are working on starting center capitals A, I, T, J. All gingerbread writing assignments are displayed in the hallway. Ms. Dennis and I both commented this week on the transition most of the students are making in terms of becoming more independent writers! Go Room 110!!
Technology: In reading, students are able to use the iPads when the workstation is completed. Their choices this week have been the apps Spelling Bug Lite, Magic Reading 2 and 3, Rocket Speller.
In math, students have begun a project on using "Tricky Teens" with the app Doodle Buddy. The apps Number Find, Monster Squeeze, Sam Phibian, Top It-Addition and Math Bug are assisting students in reinforcing number recognition, counting, number order, adding numbers and working with number families.
It was great fun to track our first winter storm on weatherunderground. Students are learning to read a weather map. They are very interested in what the colors represent. The animate feature is cool. It allows students to see where the storm is going. Students were making predictions about how much snow we would have!
Literature: "The Nutcracker," "The Twelve Days of Christmas," "Twelve Lizards Leaping," "The Night of Las Posadas," ""Kwanzaa," "How Do Dinosaurs Celebrate Hanukkah?" "Together for Kwanzaa," "The Night Before Christmas," "Bad Boys Get Cookie," "Seven Candles for Kwanzaa," "There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bell," "Zero is the Leaves on the Tree," "How to Dinosaurs Say Merry Christmas?" "The Crunchy, Munchy Christmas Tree," "The Twelve Dogs of Christmas," (thank you, Kanohi!) "Magritte's Imagination" and "Magritte's Marvelous Hat." (thank you, Lucy!)
Friday, December 21, 2012
Monday, December 17, 2012
UPDATES for 12/10-12/14 2012
**It's been a busy week! The students are working on 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 traditions and celebrations and use of lights. Asher's mom came to talk to us about Hanukkah, a celebration in the Frank family. She read a story about the origins of Hanukkah and showed the students Asher's menorah. All students received a Dreidel Game to play at home. The students had great fun spinning the various types of dreidels. We also talked about the celebration in the Nordic countries of St. Lucia. How do those girls wear the candle crowns? The students listened to the story of Christmas. I shared with the students a set of special finger puppets my mom gave me that depict the Nativity Scene. Some students made connections in their own lives about nativity sets they own or special items about the Baby Jesus that they have. We are learning so much from each other! Next week, we will take a look at Kwanzaa, Las Posadas and The Epiphany, as well as the celebration of the New Year.
**Our WINTER CONCERT is THURSDAY, DECEMBER 20th in 2 seatings. The first seating is at 8:15 am and the second seating is at 9:45 am. Be sure to get there early to get a good seat! After each concert, we will have a reception in our classroom with a snack table, juice and water. In between the concerts, we will have family craft time. I am asking all parents to send a snack finger food for our table. It can chips, dip, crackers, fruit, etc. anything that we don't need a fork for. Please send it with your child the day of the concert. Our room parents will provide the juice and water. Hope to see everyone there! All are invited to attend.
**On Friday, December 21st from 1:00-2:15 pm, we will close out the 2012 year with a get together with our Book Buddies from Ms. Balicki's class. Due to their heavy big kid schedule, this will be our first meeting with them. Each student will be matched up with a 5th grade buddy. They will create a interview book together, share some stories and welcome in the new year! We are excited to host them! Beginning in 2013, we will meet monthly with our book buddies.
**Route to Reading Rotation 4 has concluded. All students received notification of their skill development. There is no Route to Reading from December 17th to January 25th. During that time, we will do the midyear DIBELS assessments. Route to Reading Rotation 5 will begin on January 28th. Any questions-please email me.
**Mr. Packer concluded his unit on letters and shapes with the students making a drawing out of a given letter of the alphabet. We have some very imaginative students!!!
**Ms. Bell Bey was absent of Friday. The students continued the discussion about caring, pride in yourself and your work and sharing and caring about the people around us. The students spent some time making friendship chains together to display around our tree and classroom. They wrote Kindness Counts notes to peers in their classroom and posted them for all to read. These notes are so precious and heart felt. Wait until you read them!
**Student Council raised over $3000.00 in pennies in the "Pennies for Sandy" project to help children and schools in the wake of super storm Sandy. Way to go!! Our class raised over 2,735 pennies for the cause. Student Council reps, Isabella and Angus have concluded their service on Student Council. Thanks for a
job well done!!!! In January, we will choose our next student council reps who will serve for a 3 month period. Look for information on that in January.
This week:
It was all about pride! We used the tale of Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer as a spring board 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 own lives of similar experiences. Sometimes, it just takes one person or event to help us see our own worth. In the second tale, Rudolph loses the shine to his nose because he feels sorry for himself and runs away. The students again made connections in their own lives when they wanted to give up or not try. In the end, Rudolph's shiny nose returns as he stops thinking about himself and starts thinking about how to help find the lost bunnies. Simple stories with teachable moments! Our station day activities included creating color by code stain glass menorahs, geome-tree projects, pattern block build analyze count and record and sort, graph, analyze and count the pasta trees.
Reading/Studies: The students continue to work in Unit 4 Food in our Treasures Reading series. The discussion this week centered around types of food you would have for dinner and if you have ever helped make dinner. The students accessed prior knowledge about meals they helped prepare and special meals coming up for the holidays that they will be part of. The students listened to the story, "The Special Sweet Potato Pie." They separated the fact from the fiction--sweet potatoes are real, they do not get bigger as they roll down a hill, you can make a sweet potato pie. They used the retelling cards to tell the story in their own words. They reviewed the sight word have. They "walked their words" and played "Hands Up, Hands Down." The students reviewed the letter Cc and its primary and secondary sounds. 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, SPECIAL. The students used story sequence cards to summarize events and make inferences about what would happen in the Sweet Potato story. They continue to use their elkonin boxes to segment 3-4-5 and even 6 phoneme words. We are adding more blends and digraphs to our sound blending. The students read the decodable story, "We Can!" We read aloud together.
The students then took turns reading to a friend. The students continued to work on listening and responding to the vocabulary from the Puerto Rican tale, "Little Juan and the Cooking Pot." The students read the story, "I Have." They located the speech bubble and what character was doing the talking. Small student groups used their leveled readers for comprehension development as well as reading to each other to build fluency. Our workstations included creating a pretend meal in house corner, photographing it and then writing about your favorite meal and where you got it from, writing 2 question sentences using the sentence starter "Can I have a.......", creating a word web around the sentence "I like to have a...." and writing about a specific food from their web and using the app Montessori Crossword to enhance the study of silent e words, blends and 3 phoneme words during a segmenting activity.
Math: The "Pennies for Sandy" activity really helped the students move toward counting groups of ten pennies. The students continue to work on counting quantities, oral number stories and beginning number sentences. They have become more consistent in writing 2 digit numbers. The concept of place value is becoming more understandable. Students are beginning to locate numbers in the tens and one places. The students used their following direction skills as well as sequencing order in cutting out and putting together Rudolph. They continue to review their number rhymes from 0-9 to form their numbers correctly. They continue to work on their Gingerbread Pattern project using the Starfall Gingerbread app.
Writing: The students completed their Gingerbread Writing project. They designed their gingerbread person and used the word bank to write 2-3 descriptive sentences. Sentence structure and spacing of words in a sentence were stressed. The students also worked on their placement of letters on a given line. The projects came out fantastic! They really did a good job! Our projects are on display in our hallway. Letter forms for upper and lowercase letters were practiced. They continue to work on The Magic "C" center starting capitals.
Technology: In reading, the apps Montessori Crossword and Magic Reading 3 were used in student small groups to strengthen segmenting and blending skills. The students are working on developing fluency using the app Story Kit. In math, the apps Starfall Gingerbread, Number Find, Monster Squeeze and Number Sequencing were used to assist in development of patterning and shape recognition, sequencing numbers, place value and beginning number sentences. Students worked in small groups, partners and individually with these tools.
Literature: "Mooseltoe," "Moosetache," "Celebrations: St. Lucia," "This is the Star," "Rudolph," "Rudolph Shines Again," "Imogene's Antlers," "A Child is Born," "It's Christmas, David," "Count the Days to Hanukkah," "It's Hanukkah," "The Christmas Reindeer."
Tis the season! We continue to talk about traditions and celebrations and use of lights. Asher's mom came to talk to us about Hanukkah, a celebration in the Frank family. She read a story about the origins of Hanukkah and showed the students Asher's menorah. All students received a Dreidel Game to play at home. The students had great fun spinning the various types of dreidels. We also talked about the celebration in the Nordic countries of St. Lucia. How do those girls wear the candle crowns? The students listened to the story of Christmas. I shared with the students a set of special finger puppets my mom gave me that depict the Nativity Scene. Some students made connections in their own lives about nativity sets they own or special items about the Baby Jesus that they have. We are learning so much from each other! Next week, we will take a look at Kwanzaa, Las Posadas and The Epiphany, as well as the celebration of the New Year.
**Our WINTER CONCERT is THURSDAY, DECEMBER 20th in 2 seatings. The first seating is at 8:15 am and the second seating is at 9:45 am. Be sure to get there early to get a good seat! After each concert, we will have a reception in our classroom with a snack table, juice and water. In between the concerts, we will have family craft time. I am asking all parents to send a snack finger food for our table. It can chips, dip, crackers, fruit, etc. anything that we don't need a fork for. Please send it with your child the day of the concert. Our room parents will provide the juice and water. Hope to see everyone there! All are invited to attend.
**On Friday, December 21st from 1:00-2:15 pm, we will close out the 2012 year with a get together with our Book Buddies from Ms. Balicki's class. Due to their heavy big kid schedule, this will be our first meeting with them. Each student will be matched up with a 5th grade buddy. They will create a interview book together, share some stories and welcome in the new year! We are excited to host them! Beginning in 2013, we will meet monthly with our book buddies.
**Route to Reading Rotation 4 has concluded. All students received notification of their skill development. There is no Route to Reading from December 17th to January 25th. During that time, we will do the midyear DIBELS assessments. Route to Reading Rotation 5 will begin on January 28th. Any questions-please email me.
**Mr. Packer concluded his unit on letters and shapes with the students making a drawing out of a given letter of the alphabet. We have some very imaginative students!!!
**Ms. Bell Bey was absent of Friday. The students continued the discussion about caring, pride in yourself and your work and sharing and caring about the people around us. The students spent some time making friendship chains together to display around our tree and classroom. They wrote Kindness Counts notes to peers in their classroom and posted them for all to read. These notes are so precious and heart felt. Wait until you read them!
**Student Council raised over $3000.00 in pennies in the "Pennies for Sandy" project to help children and schools in the wake of super storm Sandy. Way to go!! Our class raised over 2,735 pennies for the cause. Student Council reps, Isabella and Angus have concluded their service on Student Council. Thanks for a
job well done!!!! In January, we will choose our next student council reps who will serve for a 3 month period. Look for information on that in January.
This week:
It was all about pride! We used the tale of Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer as a spring board 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 own lives of similar experiences. Sometimes, it just takes one person or event to help us see our own worth. In the second tale, Rudolph loses the shine to his nose because he feels sorry for himself and runs away. The students again made connections in their own lives when they wanted to give up or not try. In the end, Rudolph's shiny nose returns as he stops thinking about himself and starts thinking about how to help find the lost bunnies. Simple stories with teachable moments! Our station day activities included creating color by code stain glass menorahs, geome-tree projects, pattern block build analyze count and record and sort, graph, analyze and count the pasta trees.
Reading/Studies: The students continue to work in Unit 4 Food in our Treasures Reading series. The discussion this week centered around types of food you would have for dinner and if you have ever helped make dinner. The students accessed prior knowledge about meals they helped prepare and special meals coming up for the holidays that they will be part of. The students listened to the story, "The Special Sweet Potato Pie." They separated the fact from the fiction--sweet potatoes are real, they do not get bigger as they roll down a hill, you can make a sweet potato pie. They used the retelling cards to tell the story in their own words. They reviewed the sight word have. They "walked their words" and played "Hands Up, Hands Down." The students reviewed the letter Cc and its primary and secondary sounds. 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, SPECIAL. The students used story sequence cards to summarize events and make inferences about what would happen in the Sweet Potato story. They continue to use their elkonin boxes to segment 3-4-5 and even 6 phoneme words. We are adding more blends and digraphs to our sound blending. The students read the decodable story, "We Can!" We read aloud together.
The students then took turns reading to a friend. The students continued to work on listening and responding to the vocabulary from the Puerto Rican tale, "Little Juan and the Cooking Pot." The students read the story, "I Have." They located the speech bubble and what character was doing the talking. Small student groups used their leveled readers for comprehension development as well as reading to each other to build fluency. Our workstations included creating a pretend meal in house corner, photographing it and then writing about your favorite meal and where you got it from, writing 2 question sentences using the sentence starter "Can I have a.......", creating a word web around the sentence "I like to have a...." and writing about a specific food from their web and using the app Montessori Crossword to enhance the study of silent e words, blends and 3 phoneme words during a segmenting activity.
Math: The "Pennies for Sandy" activity really helped the students move toward counting groups of ten pennies. The students continue to work on counting quantities, oral number stories and beginning number sentences. They have become more consistent in writing 2 digit numbers. The concept of place value is becoming more understandable. Students are beginning to locate numbers in the tens and one places. The students used their following direction skills as well as sequencing order in cutting out and putting together Rudolph. They continue to review their number rhymes from 0-9 to form their numbers correctly. They continue to work on their Gingerbread Pattern project using the Starfall Gingerbread app.
Writing: The students completed their Gingerbread Writing project. They designed their gingerbread person and used the word bank to write 2-3 descriptive sentences. Sentence structure and spacing of words in a sentence were stressed. The students also worked on their placement of letters on a given line. The projects came out fantastic! They really did a good job! Our projects are on display in our hallway. Letter forms for upper and lowercase letters were practiced. They continue to work on The Magic "C" center starting capitals.
Technology: In reading, the apps Montessori Crossword and Magic Reading 3 were used in student small groups to strengthen segmenting and blending skills. The students are working on developing fluency using the app Story Kit. In math, the apps Starfall Gingerbread, Number Find, Monster Squeeze and Number Sequencing were used to assist in development of patterning and shape recognition, sequencing numbers, place value and beginning number sentences. Students worked in small groups, partners and individually with these tools.
Literature: "Mooseltoe," "Moosetache," "Celebrations: St. Lucia," "This is the Star," "Rudolph," "Rudolph Shines Again," "Imogene's Antlers," "A Child is Born," "It's Christmas, David," "Count the Days to Hanukkah," "It's Hanukkah," "The Christmas Reindeer."
Sunday, December 9, 2012
UPDATES for 12/3-12/7 2012
**No snow yet but the students are hoping for just a little! The students read about the feast of St. Nicholas and some students even put their shoes out on the eve of December 5th. We also read about the Indian feast of Diwali which is considered a winter festival that took place in November. The festival of Hanukkah has begun. Asher's mom will come and share their family traditions on Monday afternoon. If you have a family tradition that you would like to come and speak about, just email me the day and time. Next week, we will also be learning more about St. Lucia Day, A Scandinavian festival and the Christmas Story. (the Bible version) We have read about the use of lights in all of these celebrations.
**Our gingerbread baking was a huge success! Everyone had a ball--students and parent volunteers alike! The smell of gingerbread filled the school. The cookies themselves were truly works of art! We made so many that our office staff and some of our teachers received a special treat. Hope you enjoyed them too! A big thanks to our volunteers, Mr. Segbawu, Mr. Meagher, Ms. Jones, Ms. Bovio, Ms. Nunes, Ms. Gurgas, Ms. Connelly, Ms. Pointer, Ms. Struckmeyer, Ms. Frank and our beloved Ms. Dennis!
**If you have questions regarding your child's report card, don't hesitate to contact me.
**Route to Reading Rotation 4 is concluding this week. Your child will be bringing home a paper concerning mastery of their particular skill. Route to Reading Rotation 5 will begin in January.
**The Irving Cookie Crumble and Craft Fair was loads of fun! Irving's own Green Team was selling cards, sun catches and cool crayons. Way to go Amare and Ivy!! Ellie was selling cool handmade ornaments and Zaria and her family were selling sweet smelling diffusers. Lots of really nice gifts. I was very impressed at the quality of the items. Hope you made it there.
**The students will begin their rehearsal in the auditorium this week. I think we are set for our performance party. We will have a treat and drink table set up for after the 8:15 am. performance with finger foods on it for participants and guests that will remain up and stocked again for after the 9:45 am performance. In between performances, the students will be working on a craft or two. I am asking all guests to send a finger food with your child the morning of December 20th. It can be veggies and dip, crackers, cookies, fruit, popcorn etc. Our room parents will provide the juice and water. Our Winter Concert featuring Kindergarten and First Grade is Thursday, December 20th --same concert done twice--the first at 8:15 am and the second at 9:45 am. in the Irving Auditorium. It is going to be great!! All are invited!
**In Mr. Packer math, the students worked on problem solving skills using stories and dots to create pictures. Cool use of the students imaginations!
**In Friendship Club, Ms. Bell Bey played Feelings Bingo with the class.
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 a 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, baby, cowboy, fox, wolf, coyote), what the plot of the story was. They had loads of fun. The students wrote in their journals, counted gingerbread men, created their own gingerbread man/woman and graphed patterns following their gingerbread persons trail. They are now in the process of writing 4 sentences about their gingerbread figure using their word bank words. So excited to read them!
Reading/Social Studies: The students began Unit 4 Food in their Treasures Reading series. The unit started with the question about where our food comes from. The students accessed prior knowledge about stores, farms, markets and orchards as places where food is found. Some students offered that they had gardens in their back yard in the summer. 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 farmer's market and bought apples and apple cider. Our target word for this week is to. We added this to our other sight words and it has now become part of our daily Wacky Sentence. Our target letter and sound this week is Nn. The students also reviewed action words or verbs by taking a noun picture and adding their own verb to it. The students used their retelling cards to retell the story in their own words. Our Robust Vocabulary this week included FARMER, MARKET, INGREDIENTS, COMBINE, NUTRITIOUS. Our puppet friend, Mr. Happy helped the students with their phoneme blending and segmenting skills. We continue to use our elkonin boxes and blocks to move the block where we hear the sound or phoneme. The students read their pre decodable story, "Can Nan?" They made predictions about story content. Students took turns reading each page (the other students followed along with their finger.) We reviewed what a question mark was and why we use it at the end of a sentence. Student answered questions about the story and then practiced reading the story to a partner for fluency development. The students listened to the selection, "Pizza Please." They had lots of fun activating their own prior knowledge about making their own homemade pizza, comparing and contrasting the ways and ingredients families use to make pizza and that some students had never made their own pizza but ordered it from a pizza place. The students listened to the expository (informational) text, "From Strawberry Field to Strawberry Salad." They discussed what a diagram is and how to follow a recipe. The students read their paper story, "We Go." They worked in small groups, reading aloud and discussing story elements. Workstations this week included using the sight words can and to and illustrating their sentence, feeling foods--where the students feel into the bag , pull out a food, describe it to a partner and write 2 sentences about it, Word Pies, where the students have to create 4 words-one in each corner of their pie using the letters provided (3-4 phonemes). Some students are beginning to create words using beginning blends and digraphs. Small student groups worked on reading and discussing their leveled reader and completing and answering questions on the story using the iPad Magnetic Letters. Great work on sentence structure!
Math: The students worked on their number forming rhymes from 0-5. They used their dry erase boards and markers to practice. They started to work on creating their number rhyme sticker book. The students continue to work on rote counting to 75. The students created and continued gingerbread patterns on their Starfall iPad app. They played the "Tricky Teen Game" and used tally marks to count from 11-19. They continue to listen for information in their story problems to determine if you add or take away. We are revisiting penny value and counting by tens using pennies. The students got a lot of practice counting all the "Pennies for Sandy." So many groups of ten. We were over 3.000 and I am still not finished tallying the final count!
Writing: The students are working on a Gingerbread Writing project. They created their special gingerbread girl or boy and are now using their word bank to compose 4 sentences about him or her. They began work on the "Magic C" letters which are starting center capitals. They also continue to use their writing prompts from our Treasures series. The emphasis remains on letter formation, naming and telling, spacing between words in a sentence and placement of words on a given line.
Technology: This week in reading, the students worked with the iPad app Magic Letters to complete writing assignments related to their leveled reader. The app Rocket Speller has become a favorite! Can you put the letters in the correct place to spell the word? Student small groups used the app Magic Reading 3 to work on blending and segmenting 3-4 and even 5 phoneme words. The app Story Kit is being used for student fluency checks. In math, the app Starfall-Gingerbread was used for patterning and identifying and describing shapes. The app Monster Squeeze is very popular. We wish it went beyond 30! Student partners used the app Number Find to plot strategies to find the targeted number as fast as they can on the 100's grid.
Literature: "Gingerbread Man," "The Gingerbread Boy," "The Gingerbread Doll," "The Gingerbread Girl," "Gingerbread Jimmy," "The Gingerbread Man Loose in the School," "Gingerbread Fred," "The Gingerbread Baby," "Count the Days to Hanukkah," "Celebrations: St. Nicholas Day," "Celebrate Diwali," "The Story of Hanukkah," "The Gingerbread Cowboy."
**Our gingerbread baking was a huge success! Everyone had a ball--students and parent volunteers alike! The smell of gingerbread filled the school. The cookies themselves were truly works of art! We made so many that our office staff and some of our teachers received a special treat. Hope you enjoyed them too! A big thanks to our volunteers, Mr. Segbawu, Mr. Meagher, Ms. Jones, Ms. Bovio, Ms. Nunes, Ms. Gurgas, Ms. Connelly, Ms. Pointer, Ms. Struckmeyer, Ms. Frank and our beloved Ms. Dennis!
**If you have questions regarding your child's report card, don't hesitate to contact me.
**Route to Reading Rotation 4 is concluding this week. Your child will be bringing home a paper concerning mastery of their particular skill. Route to Reading Rotation 5 will begin in January.
**The Irving Cookie Crumble and Craft Fair was loads of fun! Irving's own Green Team was selling cards, sun catches and cool crayons. Way to go Amare and Ivy!! Ellie was selling cool handmade ornaments and Zaria and her family were selling sweet smelling diffusers. Lots of really nice gifts. I was very impressed at the quality of the items. Hope you made it there.
**The students will begin their rehearsal in the auditorium this week. I think we are set for our performance party. We will have a treat and drink table set up for after the 8:15 am. performance with finger foods on it for participants and guests that will remain up and stocked again for after the 9:45 am performance. In between performances, the students will be working on a craft or two. I am asking all guests to send a finger food with your child the morning of December 20th. It can be veggies and dip, crackers, cookies, fruit, popcorn etc. Our room parents will provide the juice and water. Our Winter Concert featuring Kindergarten and First Grade is Thursday, December 20th --same concert done twice--the first at 8:15 am and the second at 9:45 am. in the Irving Auditorium. It is going to be great!! All are invited!
**In Mr. Packer math, the students worked on problem solving skills using stories and dots to create pictures. Cool use of the students imaginations!
**In Friendship Club, Ms. Bell Bey played Feelings Bingo with the class.
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 a 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, baby, cowboy, fox, wolf, coyote), what the plot of the story was. They had loads of fun. The students wrote in their journals, counted gingerbread men, created their own gingerbread man/woman and graphed patterns following their gingerbread persons trail. They are now in the process of writing 4 sentences about their gingerbread figure using their word bank words. So excited to read them!
Reading/Social Studies: The students began Unit 4 Food in their Treasures Reading series. The unit started with the question about where our food comes from. The students accessed prior knowledge about stores, farms, markets and orchards as places where food is found. Some students offered that they had gardens in their back yard in the summer. 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 farmer's market and bought apples and apple cider. Our target word for this week is to. We added this to our other sight words and it has now become part of our daily Wacky Sentence. Our target letter and sound this week is Nn. The students also reviewed action words or verbs by taking a noun picture and adding their own verb to it. The students used their retelling cards to retell the story in their own words. Our Robust Vocabulary this week included FARMER, MARKET, INGREDIENTS, COMBINE, NUTRITIOUS. Our puppet friend, Mr. Happy helped the students with their phoneme blending and segmenting skills. We continue to use our elkonin boxes and blocks to move the block where we hear the sound or phoneme. The students read their pre decodable story, "Can Nan?" They made predictions about story content. Students took turns reading each page (the other students followed along with their finger.) We reviewed what a question mark was and why we use it at the end of a sentence. Student answered questions about the story and then practiced reading the story to a partner for fluency development. The students listened to the selection, "Pizza Please." They had lots of fun activating their own prior knowledge about making their own homemade pizza, comparing and contrasting the ways and ingredients families use to make pizza and that some students had never made their own pizza but ordered it from a pizza place. The students listened to the expository (informational) text, "From Strawberry Field to Strawberry Salad." They discussed what a diagram is and how to follow a recipe. The students read their paper story, "We Go." They worked in small groups, reading aloud and discussing story elements. Workstations this week included using the sight words can and to and illustrating their sentence, feeling foods--where the students feel into the bag , pull out a food, describe it to a partner and write 2 sentences about it, Word Pies, where the students have to create 4 words-one in each corner of their pie using the letters provided (3-4 phonemes). Some students are beginning to create words using beginning blends and digraphs. Small student groups worked on reading and discussing their leveled reader and completing and answering questions on the story using the iPad Magnetic Letters. Great work on sentence structure!
Math: The students worked on their number forming rhymes from 0-5. They used their dry erase boards and markers to practice. They started to work on creating their number rhyme sticker book. The students continue to work on rote counting to 75. The students created and continued gingerbread patterns on their Starfall iPad app. They played the "Tricky Teen Game" and used tally marks to count from 11-19. They continue to listen for information in their story problems to determine if you add or take away. We are revisiting penny value and counting by tens using pennies. The students got a lot of practice counting all the "Pennies for Sandy." So many groups of ten. We were over 3.000 and I am still not finished tallying the final count!
Writing: The students are working on a Gingerbread Writing project. They created their special gingerbread girl or boy and are now using their word bank to compose 4 sentences about him or her. They began work on the "Magic C" letters which are starting center capitals. They also continue to use their writing prompts from our Treasures series. The emphasis remains on letter formation, naming and telling, spacing between words in a sentence and placement of words on a given line.
Technology: This week in reading, the students worked with the iPad app Magic Letters to complete writing assignments related to their leveled reader. The app Rocket Speller has become a favorite! Can you put the letters in the correct place to spell the word? Student small groups used the app Magic Reading 3 to work on blending and segmenting 3-4 and even 5 phoneme words. The app Story Kit is being used for student fluency checks. In math, the app Starfall-Gingerbread was used for patterning and identifying and describing shapes. The app Monster Squeeze is very popular. We wish it went beyond 30! Student partners used the app Number Find to plot strategies to find the targeted number as fast as they can on the 100's grid.
Literature: "Gingerbread Man," "The Gingerbread Boy," "The Gingerbread Doll," "The Gingerbread Girl," "Gingerbread Jimmy," "The Gingerbread Man Loose in the School," "Gingerbread Fred," "The Gingerbread Baby," "Count the Days to Hanukkah," "Celebrations: St. Nicholas Day," "Celebrate Diwali," "The Story of Hanukkah," "The Gingerbread Cowboy."
Friday, November 30, 2012
UPDATES for 11/26-11/30 2012
**The students appeared to have had a restful break and returned ready to learn! We have begun our new cross curricular theme--TRADITIONS and CELEBRATIONS. We talked about what a tradition is--the handing down of a custom, belief or way of doing something from generation to generation or for long periods of time. Families have traditions. Friends have traditions. Schools have traditions. Classrooms have traditions. I shared with the students my tradition of doing a literature study of Gingerbread stories and comparing the various characters and outcomes. At the end of our study we create, decorate and bake gingerbread cookies to share with family and friends. It has been a tradition of mine for 17 years! Please chat this weekend with your child about traditions in your family. We will be talking more about this next week. If you are interested in coming to talk to our class about a holiday you celebrate, let me know. We will be talking about Diwali (India), St. Lucia (Scandinavia), St Nicholas Day (Germany), Hanukkah, the Christmas story, Epiphany, Boxing Day, Kwanzaa and New Years around the World. If you have a special tradition in your family and want to share it with class, let me know and we can schedule a time.
** A BIG SHOUT OUT for one more volunteer to help us bake Gingerbread Cookies!! We have 7--Ms. Jones, Ms. Struckmeyer, Ms. Frank, Ms. Gurgas, Ms. Bovio, Ms. Pointer and Ms. Connelly who is part of our regular station day for that day. If we could have 1 more--that would be perfect! It is Friday, December 7th from 12:30-2:55 pm. Think about it and email me. All you need to bring is cookie sheets and a spatula. I have the dough, sprinkles, rolling pins and cookie cutters and aprons. (It gets a little dusty with the flour, so don't wear your party clothes!)
**Route to Reading Rotation 4 has begun. Your child has brought home a paper indicating the skill that they are working on.
**Report cards will go home on Tuesday, December 4th.
**The PTO sponsored program of CHINESE ACROBATS was totally awesome! The students loved the balancing of bodies, plates and fun rope tricks as well as the colorful costumes and cool music. The gentleman introducing the show said that the acrobats study for many years to perfect their skills. It was a great event! Thanks to our Irving PTO!
**The students enjoyed their second Pajama Day and literature viewing and discussion. There were fuzzy slippers, interesting pajamas and cuddly stuffed animals. The students viewed the talking book, "Harold and the Purple Crayon." Afterwards, they discussed what it would be like to have a magic crayon and what they would draw. This was a great reward for a job well done on collecting Eagle Wings as an entire class!
**Keep sending in those pennies and other coins for the Student Council sponsored, "Pennies for Sandy" drive to raise money for school children affected by Superstorm Sandy. The drive is from now until 12/7.
**The students did enjoy a dance or two at our all school PBIS outdoor dance party today.
**The students are hard at work practicing their songs and instruments for their Winter Concert featuring Kindergarten and First Grade that will be held on Thursday, December 20th at two showings--one at 8:15 am and the second on at 9:45 am. It will be in the Irving Auditorium. Our room parents are finalizing plans for refreshment table and craft making project for families and students. Families, grandparents, aunts, uncles and friend are invited to attend.
**Our Green Team reps, Amare and Ivy are helping reinforce our recycling efforts at lunch time by reminding students were to place trays and milk cartons.
**In Friendship Club this week, Ms Bell Bey discussed and the students participated in an activity related to working together as a team. She also discussed human kindness words and being thoughtful and kind to others.
This week:
It was all about tying up loose ends--a few more Bear stories, completing Unit 3 Transportation in our Treasures Series, reviewing our sight words, letter sounds, blending and segmenting words, counting and adding up sets and thinking about our next cross-curricular theme--Celebrations and Traditions. The students began an inquiry into not only how they celebrate during the winter months, but also how children in other parts of the world celebrate that time. The students began to look through books and internet web sites for information. They observed that many of the celebrations both in our country and other countries, have lights, candles, or lanterns as part of that particular celebration. Stay tuned for more! Our station day activities included putting together sound blending wheels for homework use and sounding out the words they made, creating candles with glitter and jewels (so sparkly), reading and following the directions in their Gingerbread Color Find Book and playing the "Roll a Gingerbread Man Game" with a partner.
Reading/Social Studies: The completed Unit 3 Transportation in our Treasures series. The students built background knowledge about the different ways wheels are used to move people and things around. They worked on their listening comprehension listening to David Shannon's story, "Duck on a Bike," read both in English and in Spanish! Students identified the characters and the plot (what is happening in the story.) They took a closer look at the way the story is organized (a beginning, middle and end), and responded to the story by discussing the connections that can be made from the story to their daily lives. (Sometimes I see kids riding bikes in my neighborhood.) The students retold the story in their own words using their retelling cards. The students reviewed the sight words go and see using chants and rhymes. This week we started using the Wacky Sentences format. I take their sight words and pictures and create a mixed up sentence lacking such things as punctuation, capitalization, word order. The students analyze the sentence and decide how to move the words and pictures around to make sentence make sense. They are really beginning to think about sentence structure!! The students reviewed target sounds Short Ii and Tt and used their elkonin boxes to sound blend and segment 3-4 phoneme words. Lots of discussion on nouns and verbs. The students used their photo cards to create a sentence with noun/verb order. We also had an introduction to Consonant Blends and Digraphs. Do you know the difference? Ask your child! Our Robust Vocabulary this week included ADVENTURE, WHEELS, ATTACH, HAUL and MASSIVE. The students read their pre decodable story, "I see a Truck Go," and made predictions about story content. The students used their oral vocabulary cards to expand their knowledge of types of trucks. The students read, "I Can Go," and practiced reading to a partner to build fluency. The partners discussed the story noting the characters, setting and what was happening. (plot) Our workstation activities included read it and add to it-where students read and discuss their story and then add a new page about what might happen next and share it, playing the Humpty Dumpty short i and a Game, using the iPad app Magnetic Letters to create sentences using their sight words, using a sentence prompt with go and see and illustrating it, sorting words with consonant blends and digraphs and reading and discussing a story and using the iPad app Story Kit to record the story discussion.
Math: The students worked on rote counting to 60. They used their dry erase boards to listen to a given number and record it. They are working on single and double digit numbers. We continue to work on counting by 2"s and 5's. The students worked on the concept of probability and estimation this week. Next week, I will set up our guessing jar activities. The students experimented with weight and balance scales. They also used nonstandard measurement items such as cubes, bears, tiles and pennies to measure the distance around their classmate, the table, a book, their finger. Next week, we will begin to learn strategies to assist in proper number formation. The students are really beginning to listen for information in our story problems in order to tell if you add something or take away something.
Writing: The students have finished work on the Starting Corner Capitals-H K L U V W X Y Z. We will begin our 'Magic C" Capitals next week. The students writing abilities continue to progress! They are really loving their new journals and working hard at letter formation, grammar, spacing between words in a sentence and placement of letters on a given line.
Technology: The iPads continue to support our overall learning. In reading and literacy, student small groups are using the app Word Wizard to sound blend and spell targeted words with short i and a. Individual students are recording there reading using the app Story Kit. It is also used for small group discussions. The apps Montessori Crossword and Magic Reading 2 are assisting small groups of students with blending and segmenting skills. The app Rocket Speller is used to enhance sequencing of letters in a targeted word. In math, the students are working with partners using the iPad app Top It Addition. They are sharpening their memory, attention, spacial reasoning and problem solving as they work on the app Underwater Memory Match.
Literature: "No Jumping on the Bed," "Celebrations," "The Gingerbread Man," "The Gingerbread Man," "The Gingerbread Boy," "Celebrations Around the World."
** A BIG SHOUT OUT for one more volunteer to help us bake Gingerbread Cookies!! We have 7--Ms. Jones, Ms. Struckmeyer, Ms. Frank, Ms. Gurgas, Ms. Bovio, Ms. Pointer and Ms. Connelly who is part of our regular station day for that day. If we could have 1 more--that would be perfect! It is Friday, December 7th from 12:30-2:55 pm. Think about it and email me. All you need to bring is cookie sheets and a spatula. I have the dough, sprinkles, rolling pins and cookie cutters and aprons. (It gets a little dusty with the flour, so don't wear your party clothes!)
**Route to Reading Rotation 4 has begun. Your child has brought home a paper indicating the skill that they are working on.
**Report cards will go home on Tuesday, December 4th.
**The PTO sponsored program of CHINESE ACROBATS was totally awesome! The students loved the balancing of bodies, plates and fun rope tricks as well as the colorful costumes and cool music. The gentleman introducing the show said that the acrobats study for many years to perfect their skills. It was a great event! Thanks to our Irving PTO!
**The students enjoyed their second Pajama Day and literature viewing and discussion. There were fuzzy slippers, interesting pajamas and cuddly stuffed animals. The students viewed the talking book, "Harold and the Purple Crayon." Afterwards, they discussed what it would be like to have a magic crayon and what they would draw. This was a great reward for a job well done on collecting Eagle Wings as an entire class!
**Keep sending in those pennies and other coins for the Student Council sponsored, "Pennies for Sandy" drive to raise money for school children affected by Superstorm Sandy. The drive is from now until 12/7.
**The students did enjoy a dance or two at our all school PBIS outdoor dance party today.
**The students are hard at work practicing their songs and instruments for their Winter Concert featuring Kindergarten and First Grade that will be held on Thursday, December 20th at two showings--one at 8:15 am and the second on at 9:45 am. It will be in the Irving Auditorium. Our room parents are finalizing plans for refreshment table and craft making project for families and students. Families, grandparents, aunts, uncles and friend are invited to attend.
**Our Green Team reps, Amare and Ivy are helping reinforce our recycling efforts at lunch time by reminding students were to place trays and milk cartons.
**In Friendship Club this week, Ms Bell Bey discussed and the students participated in an activity related to working together as a team. She also discussed human kindness words and being thoughtful and kind to others.
This week:
It was all about tying up loose ends--a few more Bear stories, completing Unit 3 Transportation in our Treasures Series, reviewing our sight words, letter sounds, blending and segmenting words, counting and adding up sets and thinking about our next cross-curricular theme--Celebrations and Traditions. The students began an inquiry into not only how they celebrate during the winter months, but also how children in other parts of the world celebrate that time. The students began to look through books and internet web sites for information. They observed that many of the celebrations both in our country and other countries, have lights, candles, or lanterns as part of that particular celebration. Stay tuned for more! Our station day activities included putting together sound blending wheels for homework use and sounding out the words they made, creating candles with glitter and jewels (so sparkly), reading and following the directions in their Gingerbread Color Find Book and playing the "Roll a Gingerbread Man Game" with a partner.
Reading/Social Studies: The completed Unit 3 Transportation in our Treasures series. The students built background knowledge about the different ways wheels are used to move people and things around. They worked on their listening comprehension listening to David Shannon's story, "Duck on a Bike," read both in English and in Spanish! Students identified the characters and the plot (what is happening in the story.) They took a closer look at the way the story is organized (a beginning, middle and end), and responded to the story by discussing the connections that can be made from the story to their daily lives. (Sometimes I see kids riding bikes in my neighborhood.) The students retold the story in their own words using their retelling cards. The students reviewed the sight words go and see using chants and rhymes. This week we started using the Wacky Sentences format. I take their sight words and pictures and create a mixed up sentence lacking such things as punctuation, capitalization, word order. The students analyze the sentence and decide how to move the words and pictures around to make sentence make sense. They are really beginning to think about sentence structure!! The students reviewed target sounds Short Ii and Tt and used their elkonin boxes to sound blend and segment 3-4 phoneme words. Lots of discussion on nouns and verbs. The students used their photo cards to create a sentence with noun/verb order. We also had an introduction to Consonant Blends and Digraphs. Do you know the difference? Ask your child! Our Robust Vocabulary this week included ADVENTURE, WHEELS, ATTACH, HAUL and MASSIVE. The students read their pre decodable story, "I see a Truck Go," and made predictions about story content. The students used their oral vocabulary cards to expand their knowledge of types of trucks. The students read, "I Can Go," and practiced reading to a partner to build fluency. The partners discussed the story noting the characters, setting and what was happening. (plot) Our workstation activities included read it and add to it-where students read and discuss their story and then add a new page about what might happen next and share it, playing the Humpty Dumpty short i and a Game, using the iPad app Magnetic Letters to create sentences using their sight words, using a sentence prompt with go and see and illustrating it, sorting words with consonant blends and digraphs and reading and discussing a story and using the iPad app Story Kit to record the story discussion.
Math: The students worked on rote counting to 60. They used their dry erase boards to listen to a given number and record it. They are working on single and double digit numbers. We continue to work on counting by 2"s and 5's. The students worked on the concept of probability and estimation this week. Next week, I will set up our guessing jar activities. The students experimented with weight and balance scales. They also used nonstandard measurement items such as cubes, bears, tiles and pennies to measure the distance around their classmate, the table, a book, their finger. Next week, we will begin to learn strategies to assist in proper number formation. The students are really beginning to listen for information in our story problems in order to tell if you add something or take away something.
Writing: The students have finished work on the Starting Corner Capitals-H K L U V W X Y Z. We will begin our 'Magic C" Capitals next week. The students writing abilities continue to progress! They are really loving their new journals and working hard at letter formation, grammar, spacing between words in a sentence and placement of letters on a given line.
Technology: The iPads continue to support our overall learning. In reading and literacy, student small groups are using the app Word Wizard to sound blend and spell targeted words with short i and a. Individual students are recording there reading using the app Story Kit. It is also used for small group discussions. The apps Montessori Crossword and Magic Reading 2 are assisting small groups of students with blending and segmenting skills. The app Rocket Speller is used to enhance sequencing of letters in a targeted word. In math, the students are working with partners using the iPad app Top It Addition. They are sharpening their memory, attention, spacial reasoning and problem solving as they work on the app Underwater Memory Match.
Literature: "No Jumping on the Bed," "Celebrations," "The Gingerbread Man," "The Gingerbread Man," "The Gingerbread Boy," "Celebrations Around the World."
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
UPDATES for 11/12-11/20 2012
**All of us have much to be thankful for. I am thankful for my students dedication to their education. I am so thankful for our wonderful and hard working assistant, Ms. Dennis, who is always anticipating my every thought! I am so happy to have Mrs. D., who volunteers her time to work with my students every Tuesday. I am thankful for the great support and help of all my kindergarten families. You truly make a difference! Please enjoy your family time together as I will. I hope you have had a chance to listen to our talking story book at the end of this blog. The students have worked so hard on it. Enjoy!!!
**Route to Reading Rotation 4 will begin on Tuesday, November 27th. At that time, you will receive notification of your child's skill level.
**The Irving PTO will sponsor the CHINESE ACROBATS on Tuesday, November 27th at 1:30 pm.
**Trimester 1 has ended. Report cards will go home on Tuesday, December 4th.
**Calling all cooks! We need lots of volunteers for our annual Gingerbread Cookie Baking. We will cut, create, decorate, bake and share on FRIDAY, DECEMBER 7th from 12:30-2:55 pm. I will provide the dough, sprinkles and cookie cutters. You can provide the baking sheets and spatulas and aprons! Please email if you can help. It would be great to have 6-8 parents!
**Our Winter Concert featuring our own KINDERGARTEN and FIRST GRADE is Thursday, December 20th. We have 2 seatings--the first is at 8:15 am. The second one is at 9:45 am. Come share the joy! I will be working with our room parents to coordinate a get together after each program.
**Our field trip to the Brookfield Zoo was awesome!! We had a beautiful day to walk around and see our animal friends. The students spent their free time exploring the world of big cats, gorillas, monkeys, rhinos, kangaroos, bison, wolves, bats, snakes, frogs to name a few and various activities at the Hamill Family Play Zoo. At the Great Bear Wilderness Exhibit, we enjoyed a classroom experience with our instructor, Fay. She guided us through an introduction on bears of all kinds, looking at artifacts and providing activities where the students could compare themselves to the height of a each types of bear. The students saw a black bear skull, touched black bear and polar bear fur and experimented with a grizzly paw print and compared it to their own hand. She took us out to the bear wilderness where the students saw a grizzly, sloth and polar bears up close and personal. The students also viewed Christmas trees decorated by local towns in the area. Our own Irving Girl Scouts and Daisys had a great tree decorated. The bus ride home was quiet and reflective (some napping students!) A special shout out to our volunteers-M. Schwager, C. Cummings, L. Banghart and S. Connelly for their assistance!
This week:
We completed our cross curricular unit on bears. It was all about illustrating and practicing our reading for our recording of our talking story book. What fun! The students listened to a story about life on the Mayflower and what it was like for adults and children in 1620. We took a look of what it was like once they arrived in Jamestown. The students made butter using their gross motor skills to shake the cream as hard as they could. Liquid changing into a solid. A child in the 1620's may have churned the butter from cream and the students made some comparisons. The students used their butter and honey to accompany the Bear Paw Snacks they made. The students had a flat circle of dough and used another circle to shape and roll little circles to make the toes. We all had a mini science lesson on gluten. Our gluten free students used a rice dough. We talked about how gluten is what makes it elastic and rubbery so the toes will stick. The rice flour did not have gluten so it was very hard for the toes to stick. We baked up our paws and served them with our butter and honey. YUM!!!! Our station day activities included creating YES/NO bear pop ups and answering the questions, creating pattern block turkeys, making bear caves (mixed media) and graphing, comparing, counting and recording brown bears and polar bears using teddy grahams.
Reading/Social Studies: The students continue to work in Unit 3 Transportation in our Treasurers Reading series. The students built background knowledge on their travels both near and far. The students listened to the big book story, "On the Go." They observed how people traveled from one place to another and the vehicles they used. We looked up each country on our world map. In their comprehension study, the students compared, contrasted and categorized the types of travel and vehicles. The sight words go and see were reviewed. The students worked on their target sound short i. The students used chants and rhymes to reinforce the sound. 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 elkonin boxes (sound boxes) to sound blend 3 and 4 letter words using short i. The students read their pre-decodable story, "Go, Go, Go." They made predictions about story content and sound blended the word unknown. During an interactive writing exercise, the students made pop up signs using the word GO to help cheer on kids they knew in the Turkey Trot. We read two poems on transportation. "The Bike" and "Riding the Subway." The students noticed the rhyming in both and help to track the words as I read them. The students worked with partners to create sentences using their sight words and pictures. They shared stories with each other to build fluency. Our workstations this week included reading a story and making your own retelling cards, playing the Long Ride Game with a partner creating words using the word families ip, it, im, at, am, ap, creating a sentence using go and see and illustrating it, creating and categorizing real and nonsense words using the app, Word Wizard and practicing reading their story sentence for our talking story book.
Math: The students began work on sorting by common attribute. They participated in a game called "What's My Rule?" where the students listened and looked for obvious attribute being described by me. 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 were revealed and outlined and colored the shapes. How many 3 sided? How many 4 sided? Any 5 sided shapes? The students wrote numbers from 0-50 on their way to 100 and continue to work on place value.
Writing: The students are working very hard in their yellow writing journals. They are beginning to be more aware of where they write their upper and lowercase letters when writing their sentences. We did have a discussion on where tall lowercase letters are written and where some lowercase are written that fall below the bottom line. The students continue to work on practicing the Starting Corner Capitals they have learned thus far. The students continue to use the writing prompts from their reading series and have also made reflections based on their growing knowledge of bears. We continue to stress beginning with a capital letter, spacing between words in a sentence and using an ending mark. Students are recognizing nouns and now--action words (verbs ) in their sentences.
Technology: In reading, student small groups used the app Word Wizard to create real and nonsense words using the word families--in, ip, it. The students continue to use the app iTalk to record what they sound like when they read. The students are beginning to recall how to email their work to me, They read their page of the talking book using the app Sonic Pics. The students are learning about speaking louder and clear when reading aloud. A shout out to our tech coach, Ms. Ortega for her assistance on our talking book! Students also used the app Montessori Crossword to reinforce segmenting and blending skills. In math, students small groups are using the app Starfall Patterns to practice generating and continuing a pattern. The apps Number Find, Sam Phibian, and Addition are very helpful in their skill development.
Literature: "Baby Bear, Baby Bear, What do you See," Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What do you Hear," "Friends," "A Day in the Life of a Bear Cub," "Polar Bear Cubs,' "Maybe a Bear Ate It," "When Will It Be Spring," "Sleep Big Bear, Sleep." "Polar Bears," "Panda Bear, Panda Bear, What do you See?" "Black Bear Cubs," "Bears in the Forest," "If You Lived in the Time of the Mayflower," "Thanksgiving Is.." "Thanksgiving is for Giving Thanks," "Little Bear Comes Home."
**Route to Reading Rotation 4 will begin on Tuesday, November 27th. At that time, you will receive notification of your child's skill level.
**The Irving PTO will sponsor the CHINESE ACROBATS on Tuesday, November 27th at 1:30 pm.
**Trimester 1 has ended. Report cards will go home on Tuesday, December 4th.
**Calling all cooks! We need lots of volunteers for our annual Gingerbread Cookie Baking. We will cut, create, decorate, bake and share on FRIDAY, DECEMBER 7th from 12:30-2:55 pm. I will provide the dough, sprinkles and cookie cutters. You can provide the baking sheets and spatulas and aprons! Please email if you can help. It would be great to have 6-8 parents!
**Our Winter Concert featuring our own KINDERGARTEN and FIRST GRADE is Thursday, December 20th. We have 2 seatings--the first is at 8:15 am. The second one is at 9:45 am. Come share the joy! I will be working with our room parents to coordinate a get together after each program.
**Our field trip to the Brookfield Zoo was awesome!! We had a beautiful day to walk around and see our animal friends. The students spent their free time exploring the world of big cats, gorillas, monkeys, rhinos, kangaroos, bison, wolves, bats, snakes, frogs to name a few and various activities at the Hamill Family Play Zoo. At the Great Bear Wilderness Exhibit, we enjoyed a classroom experience with our instructor, Fay. She guided us through an introduction on bears of all kinds, looking at artifacts and providing activities where the students could compare themselves to the height of a each types of bear. The students saw a black bear skull, touched black bear and polar bear fur and experimented with a grizzly paw print and compared it to their own hand. She took us out to the bear wilderness where the students saw a grizzly, sloth and polar bears up close and personal. The students also viewed Christmas trees decorated by local towns in the area. Our own Irving Girl Scouts and Daisys had a great tree decorated. The bus ride home was quiet and reflective (some napping students!) A special shout out to our volunteers-M. Schwager, C. Cummings, L. Banghart and S. Connelly for their assistance!
This week:
We completed our cross curricular unit on bears. It was all about illustrating and practicing our reading for our recording of our talking story book. What fun! The students listened to a story about life on the Mayflower and what it was like for adults and children in 1620. We took a look of what it was like once they arrived in Jamestown. The students made butter using their gross motor skills to shake the cream as hard as they could. Liquid changing into a solid. A child in the 1620's may have churned the butter from cream and the students made some comparisons. The students used their butter and honey to accompany the Bear Paw Snacks they made. The students had a flat circle of dough and used another circle to shape and roll little circles to make the toes. We all had a mini science lesson on gluten. Our gluten free students used a rice dough. We talked about how gluten is what makes it elastic and rubbery so the toes will stick. The rice flour did not have gluten so it was very hard for the toes to stick. We baked up our paws and served them with our butter and honey. YUM!!!! Our station day activities included creating YES/NO bear pop ups and answering the questions, creating pattern block turkeys, making bear caves (mixed media) and graphing, comparing, counting and recording brown bears and polar bears using teddy grahams.
Reading/Social Studies: The students continue to work in Unit 3 Transportation in our Treasurers Reading series. The students built background knowledge on their travels both near and far. The students listened to the big book story, "On the Go." They observed how people traveled from one place to another and the vehicles they used. We looked up each country on our world map. In their comprehension study, the students compared, contrasted and categorized the types of travel and vehicles. The sight words go and see were reviewed. The students worked on their target sound short i. The students used chants and rhymes to reinforce the sound. 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 elkonin boxes (sound boxes) to sound blend 3 and 4 letter words using short i. The students read their pre-decodable story, "Go, Go, Go." They made predictions about story content and sound blended the word unknown. During an interactive writing exercise, the students made pop up signs using the word GO to help cheer on kids they knew in the Turkey Trot. We read two poems on transportation. "The Bike" and "Riding the Subway." The students noticed the rhyming in both and help to track the words as I read them. The students worked with partners to create sentences using their sight words and pictures. They shared stories with each other to build fluency. Our workstations this week included reading a story and making your own retelling cards, playing the Long Ride Game with a partner creating words using the word families ip, it, im, at, am, ap, creating a sentence using go and see and illustrating it, creating and categorizing real and nonsense words using the app, Word Wizard and practicing reading their story sentence for our talking story book.
Math: The students began work on sorting by common attribute. They participated in a game called "What's My Rule?" where the students listened and looked for obvious attribute being described by me. 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 were revealed and outlined and colored the shapes. How many 3 sided? How many 4 sided? Any 5 sided shapes? The students wrote numbers from 0-50 on their way to 100 and continue to work on place value.
Writing: The students are working very hard in their yellow writing journals. They are beginning to be more aware of where they write their upper and lowercase letters when writing their sentences. We did have a discussion on where tall lowercase letters are written and where some lowercase are written that fall below the bottom line. The students continue to work on practicing the Starting Corner Capitals they have learned thus far. The students continue to use the writing prompts from their reading series and have also made reflections based on their growing knowledge of bears. We continue to stress beginning with a capital letter, spacing between words in a sentence and using an ending mark. Students are recognizing nouns and now--action words (verbs ) in their sentences.
Technology: In reading, student small groups used the app Word Wizard to create real and nonsense words using the word families--in, ip, it. The students continue to use the app iTalk to record what they sound like when they read. The students are beginning to recall how to email their work to me, They read their page of the talking book using the app Sonic Pics. The students are learning about speaking louder and clear when reading aloud. A shout out to our tech coach, Ms. Ortega for her assistance on our talking book! Students also used the app Montessori Crossword to reinforce segmenting and blending skills. In math, students small groups are using the app Starfall Patterns to practice generating and continuing a pattern. The apps Number Find, Sam Phibian, and Addition are very helpful in their skill development.
Literature: "Baby Bear, Baby Bear, What do you See," Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What do you Hear," "Friends," "A Day in the Life of a Bear Cub," "Polar Bear Cubs,' "Maybe a Bear Ate It," "When Will It Be Spring," "Sleep Big Bear, Sleep." "Polar Bears," "Panda Bear, Panda Bear, What do you See?" "Black Bear Cubs," "Bears in the Forest," "If You Lived in the Time of the Mayflower," "Thanksgiving Is.." "Thanksgiving is for Giving Thanks," "Little Bear Comes Home."
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
Saturday, November 10, 2012
UPDATES for 11/5-11/9 2012
**What qualities make a strong leader? The students pondered that question as well as learning about the process of voting for a president. The students learned about the candidates and found that they are men with families and pets and interests just like everyone else. They both have a strong desire to lead the country. The students listened to the story, "I Can Be President Too." We had a great discussion about the qualities of a strong leader. Many students talked about our own school's Eagle Essentials. Some of the girls wondered if there would ever be a woman president. Some wondered if they could be president when they are older. It was so cool to see how they saw themselves as citizens wanting to make a difference. The students cast their ballot in a school wide election under the direction of Mr. Packer. They got to sign in and go to a voting booth. Many students expressed a interest in going with their parents to view the voting process up close and personal.
**Don't forget to send in permission slip and money for our Field Trip to Brookfield Zoo. I would like them all in by Wednesday. I will email those of you who have expressed an interest in volunteering to come with us. Our trip is Monday, November 19th. We will leave school at 9:30 am. and return by 2:00 pm. Students and teachers will ride our school bus. Parent volunteers will carpool. I have money for your parking fee. Students need to bring a bag lunch and dress for the weather.
**There has been a change in the date of author Fran Manushkin's visit. It has been changed to Monday, November 19th. We will not be able to attend due tour field trip but your child can still order books if you choose to. The order blank is in you child's homework folder.
**Picture Retake Day is Tuesday, November 13th most likely in the morning. Please note that if you ordered pictures you will automatically receive a class picture too.
**The Turkey Trot Race for grades 3-5 is Thursday, November 15th at 2:00 pm. We will be out to cheer them on. Who will win the turkey??!!
**Our Student Council reps, Angus and Isabella were so excited to share with us that there were so many boxes of food collected, it was all over Mr. Gray's room. Great Job! They also reported that they are discussing ways to help the people affected by Superstorm Sandy. More info will follow--stay tuned.
**The Wellness Committee sponsored another Taste Test on Wednesday. This time they served quinoa and asked for reactions. Some students had heard of it and even tasted it before. Some students said NO WAY to trying it but others were more adventurous.
**Route to Reading Rotation 2 will conclude on Wednesday. At that time, you will receive information on your child's skill mastery. Route to Reading Rotation 3 will begin on Tuesday, November 27th.
**CALLING ALL COOKS!! We will need several volunteers for our annual gingerbread cookie baking on Friday, December 7th from 12:30-2:l55 pm. No experience needed!! Create, decorate, bake and share. Email me if interested. This activity is part of our cross-curricular unit on Traditions and Celebrations.
**SAVE the DATE! Our WINTER CONCERT featuring Kindergarten and First Grade is Thursday, December 20th. Because of our large class sizes, the concert will be held twice--first performance is at 8:15 am.--the second performance is at 9:45 am. in the Irving Auditorium. The students are already practicing!!
This week:
It was all about BEARS! We continued our inquiry on black and brown bears. The students gather information from books and online resources on habitats, characteristics and food. We have a black bear skull, bear fur, bear claw and some other interesting artifacts courtesy of the Field Museum on our nature table. The students learned that the black bear is the most common bear in North America. The students began to notice some differences between the brown and black bears (smaller paws, smaller claws, loves honey!) Stay tuned--our study will include polar bears next week. Our station day activities this week included, creating a pattern block design and counting and recording the number of shapes used, writing and illustrating a page for our talking book (our take on the Brown Bear, Brown Bear story,) sequencing the stages in a bears growth and development, creating a bear paw using mixed media and word search with short i words.
Reading/Social Studies: The students have begun work on 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 predictions about story content using the title and picture. The students made connections in their own lives about the various vehicles showcased in the story. The sight words see and go were introduced. Our target sounds for this week are Tt and short i. They worked on activities that had Tt as the first and last sound in a word and hearing short i in the middle of words. (think of Pickles the Pig!!) In our grammar section, the students learned about action words or verbs. They had a blast acting out an action word and having others guess it. As part of listening comprehension, the students listened to the big book story for a second time and then used the retelling cards to retell the story in their own words. The students had a lively discussion about vehicles mentioned in the story and their function. Our Robust Vocabulary this week included TRANSPORTATION, VEHICLE, RAPIDLY, GLIDE and CONTINUE. In our phonemic awareness study, the students used their sound boxes to mark where they heard the sound. They practiced blending 3-4 letter words using their sound boxes. The students read their predecodable story, "I am Sam." They continue to finger point each word and picture. They are beginning to take note of how they read--choppy or smooth? They are working toward becoming more fluent readers. In our story, "Tam Can See," students practiced their sound blending and share their story with a partner. Our workstation activities this week included, contributing to a graph about how we travel to school, writing a sentence about how we travel to school, illustrating and writing about a vehicle, reading a selected story, discussing it with a partner and filling out a Readers Response form, recording their sight words and creating real and nonsense words using the word family in on the iPad.
Math: The students reviewed all basic shapes and pattern block shapes. They worked on recognizing geometric solids--cones, cubes, cylinders, spheres and finding examples in the classroom. They continue to work on creating and continuing a pattern and finding patterns in math. (what is the pattern in counting by 5's?) The students worked on counting on from a random number, counting by 10's to 60 and recognizing numbers 0-75. The activities Top It Tally --draw 2 cards--what person has the higher number--you get a tally--was introduced as well as Top It Tally Addition on the iPad. They continue to explore creating multidimensional structures. Lots of team work in the creating!!
Writing: The students are working on Starting Corner Capitals--H, L, K. They worked on their mini boards with chalk and sponges. In our journals this week, the student used the last of their beginning journal
folders. They wrote about what they knew about bears. Next week, they will be starting in their Yellow Journals. These journal have lines for upper and lowercase letters. The students are very excited about this. They are beginning to take a much closer look at where they place letters. There is a place for upper case--dark lines on top and bottom, and a place for lowercase--dotted line. The students were also made aware of tall lowercase and lowercase letters that go below the black line. I notice them being more aware of where they place letters on lined paper.
Technology: In reading, small student groups worked with the app Montessori Crossword to listen and create 3 letter words. The app Magnetic Letters was used as students made sentences containing their sight words and learned to save the image and then recorded themselves reading their sentences and critiquing how they sound. Small student groups use the app Reading Magic to create real and nonsense words using the word family in. Students continue to read into the app iTalk to hear how they sound when reading. In math, small groups, students were introduced to the app Top It Addition and worked with a partner to add the number to see who had the greater sum. Monster Squeeze, Dot to Dot Lite, Into to Math, Sam Phibian and Number Find continue to be favorites to enhance skills being taught in the classroom.
Literature: "I Can be President Too," "So You Want to be the President?" "Amazing Bears," "Bears in the Forest," "A Baby Bear," "Black Bear Cubs," "Hibernation," "Hibernation Station," "Bears," "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do You See?" "Black Bears-Osos Negros," "Every Autumn Comes a Bear."
**Don't forget to send in permission slip and money for our Field Trip to Brookfield Zoo. I would like them all in by Wednesday. I will email those of you who have expressed an interest in volunteering to come with us. Our trip is Monday, November 19th. We will leave school at 9:30 am. and return by 2:00 pm. Students and teachers will ride our school bus. Parent volunteers will carpool. I have money for your parking fee. Students need to bring a bag lunch and dress for the weather.
**There has been a change in the date of author Fran Manushkin's visit. It has been changed to Monday, November 19th. We will not be able to attend due tour field trip but your child can still order books if you choose to. The order blank is in you child's homework folder.
**Picture Retake Day is Tuesday, November 13th most likely in the morning. Please note that if you ordered pictures you will automatically receive a class picture too.
**The Turkey Trot Race for grades 3-5 is Thursday, November 15th at 2:00 pm. We will be out to cheer them on. Who will win the turkey??!!
**Our Student Council reps, Angus and Isabella were so excited to share with us that there were so many boxes of food collected, it was all over Mr. Gray's room. Great Job! They also reported that they are discussing ways to help the people affected by Superstorm Sandy. More info will follow--stay tuned.
**The Wellness Committee sponsored another Taste Test on Wednesday. This time they served quinoa and asked for reactions. Some students had heard of it and even tasted it before. Some students said NO WAY to trying it but others were more adventurous.
**Route to Reading Rotation 2 will conclude on Wednesday. At that time, you will receive information on your child's skill mastery. Route to Reading Rotation 3 will begin on Tuesday, November 27th.
**CALLING ALL COOKS!! We will need several volunteers for our annual gingerbread cookie baking on Friday, December 7th from 12:30-2:l55 pm. No experience needed!! Create, decorate, bake and share. Email me if interested. This activity is part of our cross-curricular unit on Traditions and Celebrations.
**SAVE the DATE! Our WINTER CONCERT featuring Kindergarten and First Grade is Thursday, December 20th. Because of our large class sizes, the concert will be held twice--first performance is at 8:15 am.--the second performance is at 9:45 am. in the Irving Auditorium. The students are already practicing!!
This week:
It was all about BEARS! We continued our inquiry on black and brown bears. The students gather information from books and online resources on habitats, characteristics and food. We have a black bear skull, bear fur, bear claw and some other interesting artifacts courtesy of the Field Museum on our nature table. The students learned that the black bear is the most common bear in North America. The students began to notice some differences between the brown and black bears (smaller paws, smaller claws, loves honey!) Stay tuned--our study will include polar bears next week. Our station day activities this week included, creating a pattern block design and counting and recording the number of shapes used, writing and illustrating a page for our talking book (our take on the Brown Bear, Brown Bear story,) sequencing the stages in a bears growth and development, creating a bear paw using mixed media and word search with short i words.
Reading/Social Studies: The students have begun work on 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 predictions about story content using the title and picture. The students made connections in their own lives about the various vehicles showcased in the story. The sight words see and go were introduced. Our target sounds for this week are Tt and short i. They worked on activities that had Tt as the first and last sound in a word and hearing short i in the middle of words. (think of Pickles the Pig!!) In our grammar section, the students learned about action words or verbs. They had a blast acting out an action word and having others guess it. As part of listening comprehension, the students listened to the big book story for a second time and then used the retelling cards to retell the story in their own words. The students had a lively discussion about vehicles mentioned in the story and their function. Our Robust Vocabulary this week included TRANSPORTATION, VEHICLE, RAPIDLY, GLIDE and CONTINUE. In our phonemic awareness study, the students used their sound boxes to mark where they heard the sound. They practiced blending 3-4 letter words using their sound boxes. The students read their predecodable story, "I am Sam." They continue to finger point each word and picture. They are beginning to take note of how they read--choppy or smooth? They are working toward becoming more fluent readers. In our story, "Tam Can See," students practiced their sound blending and share their story with a partner. Our workstation activities this week included, contributing to a graph about how we travel to school, writing a sentence about how we travel to school, illustrating and writing about a vehicle, reading a selected story, discussing it with a partner and filling out a Readers Response form, recording their sight words and creating real and nonsense words using the word family in on the iPad.
Math: The students reviewed all basic shapes and pattern block shapes. They worked on recognizing geometric solids--cones, cubes, cylinders, spheres and finding examples in the classroom. They continue to work on creating and continuing a pattern and finding patterns in math. (what is the pattern in counting by 5's?) The students worked on counting on from a random number, counting by 10's to 60 and recognizing numbers 0-75. The activities Top It Tally --draw 2 cards--what person has the higher number--you get a tally--was introduced as well as Top It Tally Addition on the iPad. They continue to explore creating multidimensional structures. Lots of team work in the creating!!
Writing: The students are working on Starting Corner Capitals--H, L, K. They worked on their mini boards with chalk and sponges. In our journals this week, the student used the last of their beginning journal
folders. They wrote about what they knew about bears. Next week, they will be starting in their Yellow Journals. These journal have lines for upper and lowercase letters. The students are very excited about this. They are beginning to take a much closer look at where they place letters. There is a place for upper case--dark lines on top and bottom, and a place for lowercase--dotted line. The students were also made aware of tall lowercase and lowercase letters that go below the black line. I notice them being more aware of where they place letters on lined paper.
Technology: In reading, small student groups worked with the app Montessori Crossword to listen and create 3 letter words. The app Magnetic Letters was used as students made sentences containing their sight words and learned to save the image and then recorded themselves reading their sentences and critiquing how they sound. Small student groups use the app Reading Magic to create real and nonsense words using the word family in. Students continue to read into the app iTalk to hear how they sound when reading. In math, small groups, students were introduced to the app Top It Addition and worked with a partner to add the number to see who had the greater sum. Monster Squeeze, Dot to Dot Lite, Into to Math, Sam Phibian and Number Find continue to be favorites to enhance skills being taught in the classroom.
Literature: "I Can be President Too," "So You Want to be the President?" "Amazing Bears," "Bears in the Forest," "A Baby Bear," "Black Bear Cubs," "Hibernation," "Hibernation Station," "Bears," "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do You See?" "Black Bears-Osos Negros," "Every Autumn Comes a Bear."
Saturday, November 3, 2012
UPDATES for 10/29-11/2 2012
**It has been an exciting week at Irving School! Our leaf collection is complete. The students categorized leaves by their color, shape, edges (pointy.) Students were chosen to label each leaf group. Smile for the group photo!! On Halloween, the students made their bat origami and had a chance to fly their bats inside the classroom. Our Halloween Parade and Party were fun. There was a chill in the air but Super Heroes, Jedi Knights, Princesses, Bumble Bees, Furry Animals, Mummies and Prairie Girls were among the highlights of our classroom costumes. There was even a giant spider and Human M and M. The students enjoyed refreshments and leaf and spider rubbings when they returned to the classroom. A BIG THANKS to our Room Parents and Volunteers for assistance on a very busy day. Our 50th Day of School was full of the number 50. In the afternoon, the students worked in math stations playing "Race to 50," creating 50's inspired patterns and completing our number grid to 50.
**MILLION MINUTES UPDATE : Sophie's mom reports that 19 students have read 300 minutes!!
That qualifies them for a red ribbon!! Our class has read a total of 15,000 minutes!!! WOW! Let's keep reading everyone. We can do it! The next benchmark will be 600 minutes.
**Students participated in an informative presentation by Ms. Allen of the Multicultural Center on Dia De Los Muertos, a Mexican celebration of the dead. Ms. Allen used a variety of pictures and artifacts in her presentation. At the end, the students were able to go up close and personal and look as well as try some of the instruments and artifacts. Great presentation!
**Thanks to all of you who sent food for ROCK the PANTRY. It was a total success and Room 110 were all rock stars. I am told that Student Council has an amazing amount of food to give to the Food Pantry. Our reps, Angus and Isabella will help pack it up for shipping at their Tuesday meeting.
**Information and permission slip for our field trip to BROOKFIELD ZOO is in your child's folder. The cost of the trip is $7.00. It will take place on Monday, November 19th. Please send in your slip and money ASAP. Thanks!
**NO SCHOOL on Tuesday, November 6th--Election Day. This is a Teacher's Institute Day.
**Students at Irving School will cast their own ballots on Monday, November 5th. Who will be our next president??!! Mr. Packer will have our school results by the end of the day.
**The Wellness Committee is having another Taste Test on Wednesday, November 7th at 2:00 pm. The clue is--something you can eat with a spoon!
**Picture Retake Day is Tuesday, November 13th in the morning.
**Irving School's Annual Turkey Trot is Thursday, November 15th at 2:15 pm. Come on out and cheer students from Grades 3-5. Who will win the turkey this year????
**Author Fran Manushkin of the Katie Woo stories fame will be visiting Irving School on Tuesday, November 20th at 9:00 am.
**SAVE the DATE! Our WINTER CONCERT featuring Kindergarten and First Grade is Thursday, December 20th. Because of our large class sizes, the concert will be held twice--first performance is at 8:15 am.--the second performance is at 9:45 am. in the Irving Auditorium. It is going to be great!
**Mr. Packer continues to work with student small groups on a Probability and Chance project.
**Ms. Bell Bey continued with her unit on Personal Safety.
This week:
It was all about skeletons, the number 50 and leaves! Skeletons are not so scary. Everyone has one! The students viewed a human leg bone (courtesy of my brother, Dr. Gullo,) animals bones, a lizard bone, a backbone of a mouse and of course examined our own resident skeleton, Mr. Skelly. The students read informational texts about the human body. They learned that we would just be blobs without our skeletons. We have 206 bones in our bodies but babies have more! That is because their bones are not fully fused together. Our own Lucy, shared a great book called, "Dem Bones." The story took a look at how all the bones connect! We will see the story and music version on Monday. The number 50 will be cover in the Math section. The students did have fun dressing up in 50's garb--white shirts, slicked back hair, pony tail ans even a pink poodle skirt! The students discussed, labeled and photographed their leaf collection. We began our second author study on author and illustrator Lois Elhert and read the story, "Leaf Man." We also began pour prep inquiry on our next cross-curricular theme--Bears. Station Day activities this week included creating our own leaf man or animal--we will write about it on Monday, sponge painted bears, patterns block bears, unifix cube build, count and record and writing 50 words.
Reading/Social Studies: The students are working to complete Unit 2 Friends in our Treasures Reading series. This week centered around friends who solve problems together. The students listened to the story, "Simon and Molly Plus Hester." They asked and answered questions and responded to the literature by making connections in their own lives. The students reviewed the sight words a and like and used them in their written sentences. They reviewed letter sounds Pp and Ss and what a noun is. Students took turns in small group retelling our story using the retelling cards. In phonemic awareness, the students categorized and blended phonemes (individual sounds) to create 3 letter words. The students read their pre decodable story, " I Like, We Like." They made predictions about story content and practiced reading to a partner. We used our oral vocabulary cards to develop our Robust Vocabulary in the tale from Haiti called, "The Turtle and the Sheep." Robust Vocabulary this week included PROBLEM, SOLVE, GRATEFUL, THOUGHTFUL and INCLUDE. Our reading puppet, Mr. Happy assisted in our blending of 3 letter words. The students used their dry erase boards to record the sound they heard at the beginning or at the end of a given word. In our read aloud folktale, "The Little Red Hen," the students listened to fluent reading, recurring phrases and discussed what the lesson of the story was. The students sequenced events in the story. The students read their predecodable stories, "Pam" and "We Like" and practiced reading for fluency. We continue to review asking questions, nouns, colors and initial sounds Pp, Ss, Aa and Mm. Workstations this week included, creating a sentence 2 friends might say to each other and putting it in a speech bubble, expressing your feelings by drawing yourself happy and sad and writing a sentence about both, reading and discussing a story and creating a new page, using iTalk to record students reading and playing it back for their own critique and working with blends or short a word construction using Word Wizard.
Math: The students practiced counting to 50 by 1's and by 10's. They practiced writing their numbers to 50. The students continued work on creating 2 and then 3 dimensional structures using straws and pipe cleaners, Magneetos, Mini Magneetos and Konnects. Some students worked together with others for a combined project. We are in the process of setting up a Structure Museum! Students are working on telling a number story--tell a 2 plus 1 story --tell a 5 minus 2 story. The students are beginning to understand the combining and decomposing of sets. We continue to work on counting by 10's and place value.
Writing: We have begun looking at the formation of our Starting Corner Capitals--H, K, L. The students are using wooden pieces to assist in formation understanding, They continue to use their mini boards, chalk, sponges. The students are beginning to use more lowercase in their journals and are beginning to locate where to write an uppercase letter and lowercase letter on lined paper. Students continue to use inventive spelling and their sight vocabulary to create sentences. I am stressing starting with a capital letter and making sure there is a space between every word. All sentences have some sort of ending mark.
Technology: In reading, student small groups used the app Montessori Crossword to sound out words with 3 sounds--Look at the picture-- touch the box--listen to the sound--find the letter and move it to the box to spell the word, the same app was used with student small groups working with beginning blends. Partners worked on the app iCardSort to move words into categories--colors--not colors. Students are practicing their listening to a recording of themselves reading using the app iTalk. In math, students continue to work with the apps Monster Squeeze, Dot to Dot Lite, Intro to Math and Sam Phibian. This week we introduced the app Number Find.
Literature: "Leaf Man," "Creak, Thump, Crack," "Dem Bones," "Your Bones," "The Thirteen Nights of Halloween," "Skeleton Cat," "Skeletons," "Mi Cuerpo," "The Human Body," "Going on a Bear Hunt," "Amazing Bears," "Bears."
**MILLION MINUTES UPDATE : Sophie's mom reports that 19 students have read 300 minutes!!
That qualifies them for a red ribbon!! Our class has read a total of 15,000 minutes!!! WOW! Let's keep reading everyone. We can do it! The next benchmark will be 600 minutes.
**Students participated in an informative presentation by Ms. Allen of the Multicultural Center on Dia De Los Muertos, a Mexican celebration of the dead. Ms. Allen used a variety of pictures and artifacts in her presentation. At the end, the students were able to go up close and personal and look as well as try some of the instruments and artifacts. Great presentation!
**Thanks to all of you who sent food for ROCK the PANTRY. It was a total success and Room 110 were all rock stars. I am told that Student Council has an amazing amount of food to give to the Food Pantry. Our reps, Angus and Isabella will help pack it up for shipping at their Tuesday meeting.
**Information and permission slip for our field trip to BROOKFIELD ZOO is in your child's folder. The cost of the trip is $7.00. It will take place on Monday, November 19th. Please send in your slip and money ASAP. Thanks!
**NO SCHOOL on Tuesday, November 6th--Election Day. This is a Teacher's Institute Day.
**Students at Irving School will cast their own ballots on Monday, November 5th. Who will be our next president??!! Mr. Packer will have our school results by the end of the day.
**The Wellness Committee is having another Taste Test on Wednesday, November 7th at 2:00 pm. The clue is--something you can eat with a spoon!
**Picture Retake Day is Tuesday, November 13th in the morning.
**Irving School's Annual Turkey Trot is Thursday, November 15th at 2:15 pm. Come on out and cheer students from Grades 3-5. Who will win the turkey this year????
**Author Fran Manushkin of the Katie Woo stories fame will be visiting Irving School on Tuesday, November 20th at 9:00 am.
**SAVE the DATE! Our WINTER CONCERT featuring Kindergarten and First Grade is Thursday, December 20th. Because of our large class sizes, the concert will be held twice--first performance is at 8:15 am.--the second performance is at 9:45 am. in the Irving Auditorium. It is going to be great!
**Mr. Packer continues to work with student small groups on a Probability and Chance project.
**Ms. Bell Bey continued with her unit on Personal Safety.
This week:
It was all about skeletons, the number 50 and leaves! Skeletons are not so scary. Everyone has one! The students viewed a human leg bone (courtesy of my brother, Dr. Gullo,) animals bones, a lizard bone, a backbone of a mouse and of course examined our own resident skeleton, Mr. Skelly. The students read informational texts about the human body. They learned that we would just be blobs without our skeletons. We have 206 bones in our bodies but babies have more! That is because their bones are not fully fused together. Our own Lucy, shared a great book called, "Dem Bones." The story took a look at how all the bones connect! We will see the story and music version on Monday. The number 50 will be cover in the Math section. The students did have fun dressing up in 50's garb--white shirts, slicked back hair, pony tail ans even a pink poodle skirt! The students discussed, labeled and photographed their leaf collection. We began our second author study on author and illustrator Lois Elhert and read the story, "Leaf Man." We also began pour prep inquiry on our next cross-curricular theme--Bears. Station Day activities this week included creating our own leaf man or animal--we will write about it on Monday, sponge painted bears, patterns block bears, unifix cube build, count and record and writing 50 words.
Reading/Social Studies: The students are working to complete Unit 2 Friends in our Treasures Reading series. This week centered around friends who solve problems together. The students listened to the story, "Simon and Molly Plus Hester." They asked and answered questions and responded to the literature by making connections in their own lives. The students reviewed the sight words a and like and used them in their written sentences. They reviewed letter sounds Pp and Ss and what a noun is. Students took turns in small group retelling our story using the retelling cards. In phonemic awareness, the students categorized and blended phonemes (individual sounds) to create 3 letter words. The students read their pre decodable story, " I Like, We Like." They made predictions about story content and practiced reading to a partner. We used our oral vocabulary cards to develop our Robust Vocabulary in the tale from Haiti called, "The Turtle and the Sheep." Robust Vocabulary this week included PROBLEM, SOLVE, GRATEFUL, THOUGHTFUL and INCLUDE. Our reading puppet, Mr. Happy assisted in our blending of 3 letter words. The students used their dry erase boards to record the sound they heard at the beginning or at the end of a given word. In our read aloud folktale, "The Little Red Hen," the students listened to fluent reading, recurring phrases and discussed what the lesson of the story was. The students sequenced events in the story. The students read their predecodable stories, "Pam" and "We Like" and practiced reading for fluency. We continue to review asking questions, nouns, colors and initial sounds Pp, Ss, Aa and Mm. Workstations this week included, creating a sentence 2 friends might say to each other and putting it in a speech bubble, expressing your feelings by drawing yourself happy and sad and writing a sentence about both, reading and discussing a story and creating a new page, using iTalk to record students reading and playing it back for their own critique and working with blends or short a word construction using Word Wizard.
Math: The students practiced counting to 50 by 1's and by 10's. They practiced writing their numbers to 50. The students continued work on creating 2 and then 3 dimensional structures using straws and pipe cleaners, Magneetos, Mini Magneetos and Konnects. Some students worked together with others for a combined project. We are in the process of setting up a Structure Museum! Students are working on telling a number story--tell a 2 plus 1 story --tell a 5 minus 2 story. The students are beginning to understand the combining and decomposing of sets. We continue to work on counting by 10's and place value.
Writing: We have begun looking at the formation of our Starting Corner Capitals--H, K, L. The students are using wooden pieces to assist in formation understanding, They continue to use their mini boards, chalk, sponges. The students are beginning to use more lowercase in their journals and are beginning to locate where to write an uppercase letter and lowercase letter on lined paper. Students continue to use inventive spelling and their sight vocabulary to create sentences. I am stressing starting with a capital letter and making sure there is a space between every word. All sentences have some sort of ending mark.
Technology: In reading, student small groups used the app Montessori Crossword to sound out words with 3 sounds--Look at the picture-- touch the box--listen to the sound--find the letter and move it to the box to spell the word, the same app was used with student small groups working with beginning blends. Partners worked on the app iCardSort to move words into categories--colors--not colors. Students are practicing their listening to a recording of themselves reading using the app iTalk. In math, students continue to work with the apps Monster Squeeze, Dot to Dot Lite, Intro to Math and Sam Phibian. This week we introduced the app Number Find.
Literature: "Leaf Man," "Creak, Thump, Crack," "Dem Bones," "Your Bones," "The Thirteen Nights of Halloween," "Skeleton Cat," "Skeletons," "Mi Cuerpo," "The Human Body," "Going on a Bear Hunt," "Amazing Bears," "Bears."
Saturday, October 27, 2012
UPDATES for 10/22-10/26 2012
**Fall is in the air. The students are commenting on the falling leaves, leaf colors, animals looking for food in their neighborhood, cooler weather and having to wear jackets and even gloves and hats.
**The students have a marvelous leaf collection ongoing! They continue to sort all types of leaves. Currently they have sorted by color, characteristic (dots) and shape (pointed). Stay tuned--our sorting and labeling will conclude next week.
**Our walking field trip to the Maze Library was great. We had a very pleasant walk there and back. Maze librarian, Ms. Pulliam was fantastic! The students had tour of the library, learned where certain types of books (fiction and nonfiction, readers, chapter books) dvds, cds are located. In our classroom experience downstairs, Ms. Pulliam used a variety of songs, poetry, stories and movement. The students favorite story was called, "Press Here." A big Thanks to Amare's Dad, Cobie's Mom and Grandma, Ellie's Mom, Isabella's Mom and Will's Mom for volunteering to help. All students who filled out their applications received their library cards. They are in their backpacks. Let's go to the library!!
**The students listened to the very animated story teller, Chris Fascione. He was part of our Million Minutes Reading pep rally. Let's keep reading! More Minutes!! More Minutes!!
**Reminder--Wednesday, October 31st our Halloween Parade and Celebration. We will have a semi-regular morning. The students will bring their costumes and accessories in a bag. At 10:00 am, our class will do our bat origami project. I have some parent volunteers for this, but the more the merrier! Emma's Mom has donated a leaf scraping activity too! Cool! We will have regular lunch hour. After lunch, all parent volunteers are needed to assist in the students changing into their costumes. We will have a story time and then get ready to line up for the parade. Our all school parade begins at 1:00 pm. We will parade around the block and then into the playground to form a spiral. After the parade, our room parents have provided a treat of juice boxes and popcorn. In keeping with our non violent classroom atmosphere, please do not send toy guns, swords, hooks, light sabers, poles, knives, brooms or handcuffs. Students may bring a treat for the class if they wish. We will be making treat bags in our classroom. Everyone is invited to attend!
**Thursday, November, 1st is our 50th day of school! We will be half way to 100!! On Monday, the students will learn a little about what is was like to live in the 1950's. On Thursday, the students can dress up like the 50"s. It can be as simple as a white tee shirt and jeans, slick back hair for the boys and pony tails for the girls. If you should have a poodle skirt--WOW! Our math workstations on Thursday afternoon will center on activities and games that feature the number 50.
**Our student council reps, Isabella and Angus spoke to us about an event the student council is planning called ROCK THE PANTRY. Kindergarten students bring in CANNED FRUIT, APPLESAUCE and DRIED FRUIT for the food drive. Student council has provided 2 boxes for us to put our goods in. If you can bring in one of these items--you are a rock star and can wear your sunglasses to school on Friday, November 2nd!
**Our Helping Grandma, Ms. D has returned from her trip to China. She shared with the students bits of her travels including books that kindergarten students use, a picture of the Great Wall, pointing out areas on our world map where she visited, a Chinese coin and a special gift to all the students of a piece of Chinese candy and a pencil. These items are in your child's back pack.
**Information including a permission slip for our future field trip to the Brookfield Zoo will be sent out next Friday. We need many parent volunteers. Our trip is Monday, November 19th for 9:00-2:00 pm.
**There is a very important board meeting concerning the Irving Schoolyard Project which will be held on Tuesday, October 30th at 7:30 pm. in the District 97 Board Room. Please attend if you can.
**In Friendship Club, Ms. Bell Bey continued her lessons on Feelings and Personal Safety.
**Mr. Packer continues to work on his unit on Probability and Chance with small student groups.
**The Wellness Committee had a Taste Test to get kids interested in trying new foods. The only clue that was given was that the food was orange. Some of the students did try the food. Many thought it was sweet potatoes but in fact it was SQUASH! Next taste test is in two weeks!
This week:
It was all about spiders and our growing leaf collection! Those spiders are not so spooky. They are really very helpful to our earth. The students learned the difference between spiders and insects and viewed some spider specimens. The students learned the term--arachnid. The students learned that spiders live almost everywhere on earth and that they hatch from eggs. Little babies are called spiderlings. Spiders can be very colorful. Students listened to fiction and nonfiction stories about spiders. We accessed information on the internet on spiders of interest like tarantulas and black widows. Many spiders eat pesty insects and bugs that bother humans and plants. Our station day activities included creating a marble painted spider web, coloring their special spider and sorting and counting "treats," in greater than 10 and less than 10 columns. Next week--skeletons!
Reading/Social Studies: The students continued work in Unit 2 Friends in our Treasures series, They built background knowledge about how friends in different parts of the word share activities, The students listened to the Big Book story, "Friends Around Us." They made connections looking and listening to the activities and places in the world where the friends lived. We located the countries on the map so students could get an idea of where they lived in relation to the friends in the story. The sight word a was added to our sight word list. We reviewed all other sight words and played "Hands Up, Hands Down." Our letter in isolation this week was Pp. The brainstormed words that began with the sound of Pp. Our Robust Vocabulary words included WORLD, GAMES, PLEASANT, ASSIST and HONEST. The students worked on listening comprehension skills using our big book story. We also used the photos on our retelling cards to tell the order of events. Our puppet friend, Mr. Happy, assisted the students in practicing the blending of letter sounds to make 3 letter words. The students used their sound boxes to isolate where they heard the Pp sound--at the beginning or the ending of a word. We read our pre decodable story, "I am a Doctor." The students tracking skills are really developing! They also read their pre decodable story, "I Am." The students practiced reading to a partner to practice their beginning fluency development. Workstations this week included choosing a puppet too read to, drawing a picture of your puppet and you and writing a sentence retelling and event in the story, Using the app Magnetic Letters to practice spelling your sight words, recording the reading of the sight words and beginning to learn how to email your work to the teacher, sound picture sort with beginning sounds--M, S, P, A, blending sounds to create 3 letter words. What is a phoneme?
Math: The students continue to work on counting sequence from 0-50, what number comes before or after a random number, the concept of greater than and less than and beginning place value. The students began experimenting with creating 2-3 dimensional shapes using straws and pipe cleaners. We talked about flat shapes and shapes that have depth. The students used vocabulary words--corners, sides and angles as they built their structures. Magneetos and Connects were also included in their experimentation and creation. We are also beginning to work with geometric solids.
Writing: The students continue to use writing prompts from our Treasures series. This week, they wrote about bats. We reviewed all of our Frog Jump letters and began talking about our Starting Corner Capitals.
Technology: In reading this week, students used the app Word Wizard to work on CVC word practice, small group work focused on the the app Montessori Crossword and short a words. Students are beginning to use the camera function to take pictures of their work. Small groups of students used the apps Magic Reading, Spelling Bug and iWrite Words to work on spelling, blending and letter formation. In math, student used the app Dot to Dot Lite, Sam Phibian and Monster Squeeze to work on sequencial order, greater than and less than and counting quantities. The students are learning how to email their completed work to me.
Literature: "Diary of a Spider," "Three Hungry Spiders and 1 Fat Fly," "Book of Spiders," "The World of Spiders," "Fly Guy, Fly Girl," "Cock a Doodle HOOOOO," "Spiders of the Midwest," "The Halloweener."
**The students have a marvelous leaf collection ongoing! They continue to sort all types of leaves. Currently they have sorted by color, characteristic (dots) and shape (pointed). Stay tuned--our sorting and labeling will conclude next week.
**Our walking field trip to the Maze Library was great. We had a very pleasant walk there and back. Maze librarian, Ms. Pulliam was fantastic! The students had tour of the library, learned where certain types of books (fiction and nonfiction, readers, chapter books) dvds, cds are located. In our classroom experience downstairs, Ms. Pulliam used a variety of songs, poetry, stories and movement. The students favorite story was called, "Press Here." A big Thanks to Amare's Dad, Cobie's Mom and Grandma, Ellie's Mom, Isabella's Mom and Will's Mom for volunteering to help. All students who filled out their applications received their library cards. They are in their backpacks. Let's go to the library!!
**The students listened to the very animated story teller, Chris Fascione. He was part of our Million Minutes Reading pep rally. Let's keep reading! More Minutes!! More Minutes!!
**Reminder--Wednesday, October 31st our Halloween Parade and Celebration. We will have a semi-regular morning. The students will bring their costumes and accessories in a bag. At 10:00 am, our class will do our bat origami project. I have some parent volunteers for this, but the more the merrier! Emma's Mom has donated a leaf scraping activity too! Cool! We will have regular lunch hour. After lunch, all parent volunteers are needed to assist in the students changing into their costumes. We will have a story time and then get ready to line up for the parade. Our all school parade begins at 1:00 pm. We will parade around the block and then into the playground to form a spiral. After the parade, our room parents have provided a treat of juice boxes and popcorn. In keeping with our non violent classroom atmosphere, please do not send toy guns, swords, hooks, light sabers, poles, knives, brooms or handcuffs. Students may bring a treat for the class if they wish. We will be making treat bags in our classroom. Everyone is invited to attend!
**Thursday, November, 1st is our 50th day of school! We will be half way to 100!! On Monday, the students will learn a little about what is was like to live in the 1950's. On Thursday, the students can dress up like the 50"s. It can be as simple as a white tee shirt and jeans, slick back hair for the boys and pony tails for the girls. If you should have a poodle skirt--WOW! Our math workstations on Thursday afternoon will center on activities and games that feature the number 50.
**Our student council reps, Isabella and Angus spoke to us about an event the student council is planning called ROCK THE PANTRY. Kindergarten students bring in CANNED FRUIT, APPLESAUCE and DRIED FRUIT for the food drive. Student council has provided 2 boxes for us to put our goods in. If you can bring in one of these items--you are a rock star and can wear your sunglasses to school on Friday, November 2nd!
**Our Helping Grandma, Ms. D has returned from her trip to China. She shared with the students bits of her travels including books that kindergarten students use, a picture of the Great Wall, pointing out areas on our world map where she visited, a Chinese coin and a special gift to all the students of a piece of Chinese candy and a pencil. These items are in your child's back pack.
**Information including a permission slip for our future field trip to the Brookfield Zoo will be sent out next Friday. We need many parent volunteers. Our trip is Monday, November 19th for 9:00-2:00 pm.
**There is a very important board meeting concerning the Irving Schoolyard Project which will be held on Tuesday, October 30th at 7:30 pm. in the District 97 Board Room. Please attend if you can.
**In Friendship Club, Ms. Bell Bey continued her lessons on Feelings and Personal Safety.
**Mr. Packer continues to work on his unit on Probability and Chance with small student groups.
**The Wellness Committee had a Taste Test to get kids interested in trying new foods. The only clue that was given was that the food was orange. Some of the students did try the food. Many thought it was sweet potatoes but in fact it was SQUASH! Next taste test is in two weeks!
This week:
It was all about spiders and our growing leaf collection! Those spiders are not so spooky. They are really very helpful to our earth. The students learned the difference between spiders and insects and viewed some spider specimens. The students learned the term--arachnid. The students learned that spiders live almost everywhere on earth and that they hatch from eggs. Little babies are called spiderlings. Spiders can be very colorful. Students listened to fiction and nonfiction stories about spiders. We accessed information on the internet on spiders of interest like tarantulas and black widows. Many spiders eat pesty insects and bugs that bother humans and plants. Our station day activities included creating a marble painted spider web, coloring their special spider and sorting and counting "treats," in greater than 10 and less than 10 columns. Next week--skeletons!
Reading/Social Studies: The students continued work in Unit 2 Friends in our Treasures series, They built background knowledge about how friends in different parts of the word share activities, The students listened to the Big Book story, "Friends Around Us." They made connections looking and listening to the activities and places in the world where the friends lived. We located the countries on the map so students could get an idea of where they lived in relation to the friends in the story. The sight word a was added to our sight word list. We reviewed all other sight words and played "Hands Up, Hands Down." Our letter in isolation this week was Pp. The brainstormed words that began with the sound of Pp. Our Robust Vocabulary words included WORLD, GAMES, PLEASANT, ASSIST and HONEST. The students worked on listening comprehension skills using our big book story. We also used the photos on our retelling cards to tell the order of events. Our puppet friend, Mr. Happy, assisted the students in practicing the blending of letter sounds to make 3 letter words. The students used their sound boxes to isolate where they heard the Pp sound--at the beginning or the ending of a word. We read our pre decodable story, "I am a Doctor." The students tracking skills are really developing! They also read their pre decodable story, "I Am." The students practiced reading to a partner to practice their beginning fluency development. Workstations this week included choosing a puppet too read to, drawing a picture of your puppet and you and writing a sentence retelling and event in the story, Using the app Magnetic Letters to practice spelling your sight words, recording the reading of the sight words and beginning to learn how to email your work to the teacher, sound picture sort with beginning sounds--M, S, P, A, blending sounds to create 3 letter words. What is a phoneme?
Math: The students continue to work on counting sequence from 0-50, what number comes before or after a random number, the concept of greater than and less than and beginning place value. The students began experimenting with creating 2-3 dimensional shapes using straws and pipe cleaners. We talked about flat shapes and shapes that have depth. The students used vocabulary words--corners, sides and angles as they built their structures. Magneetos and Connects were also included in their experimentation and creation. We are also beginning to work with geometric solids.
Writing: The students continue to use writing prompts from our Treasures series. This week, they wrote about bats. We reviewed all of our Frog Jump letters and began talking about our Starting Corner Capitals.
Technology: In reading this week, students used the app Word Wizard to work on CVC word practice, small group work focused on the the app Montessori Crossword and short a words. Students are beginning to use the camera function to take pictures of their work. Small groups of students used the apps Magic Reading, Spelling Bug and iWrite Words to work on spelling, blending and letter formation. In math, student used the app Dot to Dot Lite, Sam Phibian and Monster Squeeze to work on sequencial order, greater than and less than and counting quantities. The students are learning how to email their completed work to me.
Literature: "Diary of a Spider," "Three Hungry Spiders and 1 Fat Fly," "Book of Spiders," "The World of Spiders," "Fly Guy, Fly Girl," "Cock a Doodle HOOOOO," "Spiders of the Midwest," "The Halloweener."
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
UPDATES for 10/15-10/19 2012
**Thank you so much for your attendance at Parent/Teacher Conferences. I enjoyed chatting with you about your child's progress. We are working hard in Kindergarten!
**The Irving Book Fair was very busy! There were many great book choices. I did purchase some great titles for our classroom. A BIG THANKS to families who also purchased books from our classroom wish list. Reading is the way to go!
**FIELD TRIP REMINDER--Friday, October 26th is our walking field trip to the Maze Branch Library. We will begin walking at 8:30 am. Our tour of the library and classroom experience will be from 9-10 and we will be back at Irving by 10:30 am. It looks like it will be chillier weather. Please have your child dressed accordingly. We have field trip volunteers--D. Bovio, N. Smith and A. Struckmeyer to assist our class.
**Halloween will soon be here! I have been in contact with our room parents and they have been in contact with you. We have 8 volunteers also signed up. Wednesday, October 31st is an early dismissal day. We will have a regular morning, but from 10:00-11:00 am, I would like to do our culminating craft from our study of bats. We will have no time to do this in the afternoon. Our room parents will contact our volunteers to see if we can get some assistance with our craft. The rest of the schedule is as follows: We will have a regular lunch hour. All volunteers please come to school at noon. The students will be bringing their costumes in a bag to change into after lunch. You can help assist with this and any make up or hair props. In keeping with our non violent classroom atmosphere, please do not send toy guns, swords, hooks, light sabers, poles, knives, brooms or hand cuffs to school. Thanks! The students will line up for the parade around 12:40 and the parade will begin around 1:00 pm. The all school parade will be around the block and then continue into the playground in a spiral form. We will then return to the classroom for our party. Our room parents will provide a juice boxes and a snack for our us. The students will be making treat bags. Students can bring a treat for their classmates that will go in their bags. All parents and sibs are invited to come and hang out with us!
**The FUN RUN was great! Our school raised over $15,000!!! Our class raised $1,300. Way to Go!!!
Everybody ran. The proceeds from the run will go to our Schoolyard Project. Many thanks to our participants.
**Ms. Howell reports that our class has read 9,500 minutes. Keep reading and recording those minutes!!
**Route to Reading Rotation 1 has concluded. You should have a received information on skill mastery. Route to Reading Rotation 2 begins on Tuesday, October 23rd. You will receive information on your child's current skill level at that time.
**Our wonderful art teacher, Ms Tague sent each student their screen name and security code to view their art work on ARTSONIA. It is in your child's homework folder.
**Future Field Trip--Our next cross curricular theme is Bears. The students will be taking a field trip to the Brookfield Zoo for a classroom experience and tour of the Bear Grotto on Monday, November 19th. The permission slips and info for this trip will be sent out next week. We will need lots of volunteers. We will leave at 9:00 am and be back by 2:00 pm. Students need to bring a bag lunch. Students and teachers will ride a school bus. Parent volunteers will car pool. We will pay for your parking.
**In Friendship club this week, Ms. Bell Bey worked with the students on the topic of FEELINGS.
**We have E. Hagedorn and E. Cummings as Station Day volunteers for Friday, October 26th.
This week:
It was all about bats!! We took the fright out of these amazing creatures. The students listened to informational texts as well as fiction texts on bats. They viewed a bat skeleton, a Brown Bat and an Indian Flying Fox courtesy of the Field Museum. Ellie was our student bat expert and amazed her classmates and teacher!) with knowledge of bat habitats, bat physiology and bat diets. The students learned that humans and bats have something in common--they are both mammals. Ask your child what a mammal is. The students sought information about bat types, diet, characteristics (super long fingers and a tiny thumb) and bat baby facts (pink pups.) The students counted bats, wrote about them in their journals and read about them. They are in the process of learning to play BAT GAMES in reading and math. Those games will come home next week. Next week: spiders!
Reading/Social Studies: The students began work in Unit 2 Friends in our Treasures Reading Series. They built background knowledge about what a friend is and what types of activities you can do with a friend. We listened to the song, "The More We Get Together." Many students recalled this song from their time in preschool. The students listened to the Big Book story, "What Do You Like?" They responded and made connections about different activities they do with their friends. The sight word LIKE was introduced. We reviewed our previous words and created sentences with them. Our sound in isolation this week is Ss. We used our sound toys and sounds cards to guide us. The students used chants and rhymes to reinforce the sound. The students made the sound/symbol connection by writing the letter Ss. They reviewed what a noun was and looked for examples throughout the room. We added the Robust Vocabulary words FAVORITE, FRIENDS, PARTNER, HOBBY and COMPLETE to our list. The students worked on listening comprehension and retelling skills. They reviewed their color words. Our puppet, Mr. Happy helped the students work on blending sounds to form 3 letter words. The students read their pre decodable story, We Like," and made predictions about story content. The student shared their story with a partner. The students listened and responded to the informational text, "Friends Follow Rules." They read their story, "I Like," and discussed what a speech balloon or bubble was. Workstation activities this week included working on a mural about friendship and using the sentence starter--We can.....to tell about the pictures they selected, reading a story and creating their own retelling cards, picture sort with sounds A, M, S and vocabulary review--saying and using the app Magnetic Letters to practice their spelling.
Math: The students worked on a variety of math concepts this week. They are up to numbers 1-30 in our MONSTER SQUEEZE game. The students continue to review number recognition 0-20, counting quantities and telling what number comes before or after a random number. They continued their exploration of symmetry by dripping paint and folding the paper to create two symmetrical sides. What does it look like to you? The students recorded their responses. The students continue work using tally marks to count by 5's and straws and rubber bands to count by 10's.
Writing: The students completed their Frog Jump Capitals. They continue to work on starting at the top of the page to make a letter. The students are working on their writing posture--sitting up straight, one hand holding the pencil and the other holding down the paper. They use writing prompts from our Treasures Series. Beginning sentence structure is stressed-- an uppercase letter starts the sentence, space between words in a sentence and some type of mark is needed at the end. Our sentences name and tell!
Technology: The students continue to use the iPad as a tool for enhancement of skills taught. This week the students are learning how to take a picture of their work. They are practicing a steady aim! Our app Monster Squeeze is now using numbers 1-30. The apps Number Find, Dot to Dot and Sam Phibian are assisting with recognition, sequencing and counting. Some students are experimenting with the app Hundred's Board and Patterns. In reading the students continue to enjoy the apps Montessori Crossword, Sound Sort, Magnetic ABC's and Word Find.
Literature: "Little Red Bat," "Bats," "Bats Big Game," "Boo To You," "Pumpkin Soup," "Stellaluna," "Blackout! Animals That Live in the Dark," "Night Creatures," "Extremely Weird Bats."
**The Irving Book Fair was very busy! There were many great book choices. I did purchase some great titles for our classroom. A BIG THANKS to families who also purchased books from our classroom wish list. Reading is the way to go!
**FIELD TRIP REMINDER--Friday, October 26th is our walking field trip to the Maze Branch Library. We will begin walking at 8:30 am. Our tour of the library and classroom experience will be from 9-10 and we will be back at Irving by 10:30 am. It looks like it will be chillier weather. Please have your child dressed accordingly. We have field trip volunteers--D. Bovio, N. Smith and A. Struckmeyer to assist our class.
**Halloween will soon be here! I have been in contact with our room parents and they have been in contact with you. We have 8 volunteers also signed up. Wednesday, October 31st is an early dismissal day. We will have a regular morning, but from 10:00-11:00 am, I would like to do our culminating craft from our study of bats. We will have no time to do this in the afternoon. Our room parents will contact our volunteers to see if we can get some assistance with our craft. The rest of the schedule is as follows: We will have a regular lunch hour. All volunteers please come to school at noon. The students will be bringing their costumes in a bag to change into after lunch. You can help assist with this and any make up or hair props. In keeping with our non violent classroom atmosphere, please do not send toy guns, swords, hooks, light sabers, poles, knives, brooms or hand cuffs to school. Thanks! The students will line up for the parade around 12:40 and the parade will begin around 1:00 pm. The all school parade will be around the block and then continue into the playground in a spiral form. We will then return to the classroom for our party. Our room parents will provide a juice boxes and a snack for our us. The students will be making treat bags. Students can bring a treat for their classmates that will go in their bags. All parents and sibs are invited to come and hang out with us!
**The FUN RUN was great! Our school raised over $15,000!!! Our class raised $1,300. Way to Go!!!
Everybody ran. The proceeds from the run will go to our Schoolyard Project. Many thanks to our participants.
**Ms. Howell reports that our class has read 9,500 minutes. Keep reading and recording those minutes!!
**Route to Reading Rotation 1 has concluded. You should have a received information on skill mastery. Route to Reading Rotation 2 begins on Tuesday, October 23rd. You will receive information on your child's current skill level at that time.
**Our wonderful art teacher, Ms Tague sent each student their screen name and security code to view their art work on ARTSONIA. It is in your child's homework folder.
**Future Field Trip--Our next cross curricular theme is Bears. The students will be taking a field trip to the Brookfield Zoo for a classroom experience and tour of the Bear Grotto on Monday, November 19th. The permission slips and info for this trip will be sent out next week. We will need lots of volunteers. We will leave at 9:00 am and be back by 2:00 pm. Students need to bring a bag lunch. Students and teachers will ride a school bus. Parent volunteers will car pool. We will pay for your parking.
**In Friendship club this week, Ms. Bell Bey worked with the students on the topic of FEELINGS.
**We have E. Hagedorn and E. Cummings as Station Day volunteers for Friday, October 26th.
This week:
It was all about bats!! We took the fright out of these amazing creatures. The students listened to informational texts as well as fiction texts on bats. They viewed a bat skeleton, a Brown Bat and an Indian Flying Fox courtesy of the Field Museum. Ellie was our student bat expert and amazed her classmates and teacher!) with knowledge of bat habitats, bat physiology and bat diets. The students learned that humans and bats have something in common--they are both mammals. Ask your child what a mammal is. The students sought information about bat types, diet, characteristics (super long fingers and a tiny thumb) and bat baby facts (pink pups.) The students counted bats, wrote about them in their journals and read about them. They are in the process of learning to play BAT GAMES in reading and math. Those games will come home next week. Next week: spiders!
Reading/Social Studies: The students began work in Unit 2 Friends in our Treasures Reading Series. They built background knowledge about what a friend is and what types of activities you can do with a friend. We listened to the song, "The More We Get Together." Many students recalled this song from their time in preschool. The students listened to the Big Book story, "What Do You Like?" They responded and made connections about different activities they do with their friends. The sight word LIKE was introduced. We reviewed our previous words and created sentences with them. Our sound in isolation this week is Ss. We used our sound toys and sounds cards to guide us. The students used chants and rhymes to reinforce the sound. The students made the sound/symbol connection by writing the letter Ss. They reviewed what a noun was and looked for examples throughout the room. We added the Robust Vocabulary words FAVORITE, FRIENDS, PARTNER, HOBBY and COMPLETE to our list. The students worked on listening comprehension and retelling skills. They reviewed their color words. Our puppet, Mr. Happy helped the students work on blending sounds to form 3 letter words. The students read their pre decodable story, We Like," and made predictions about story content. The student shared their story with a partner. The students listened and responded to the informational text, "Friends Follow Rules." They read their story, "I Like," and discussed what a speech balloon or bubble was. Workstation activities this week included working on a mural about friendship and using the sentence starter--We can.....to tell about the pictures they selected, reading a story and creating their own retelling cards, picture sort with sounds A, M, S and vocabulary review--saying and using the app Magnetic Letters to practice their spelling.
Math: The students worked on a variety of math concepts this week. They are up to numbers 1-30 in our MONSTER SQUEEZE game. The students continue to review number recognition 0-20, counting quantities and telling what number comes before or after a random number. They continued their exploration of symmetry by dripping paint and folding the paper to create two symmetrical sides. What does it look like to you? The students recorded their responses. The students continue work using tally marks to count by 5's and straws and rubber bands to count by 10's.
Writing: The students completed their Frog Jump Capitals. They continue to work on starting at the top of the page to make a letter. The students are working on their writing posture--sitting up straight, one hand holding the pencil and the other holding down the paper. They use writing prompts from our Treasures Series. Beginning sentence structure is stressed-- an uppercase letter starts the sentence, space between words in a sentence and some type of mark is needed at the end. Our sentences name and tell!
Technology: The students continue to use the iPad as a tool for enhancement of skills taught. This week the students are learning how to take a picture of their work. They are practicing a steady aim! Our app Monster Squeeze is now using numbers 1-30. The apps Number Find, Dot to Dot and Sam Phibian are assisting with recognition, sequencing and counting. Some students are experimenting with the app Hundred's Board and Patterns. In reading the students continue to enjoy the apps Montessori Crossword, Sound Sort, Magnetic ABC's and Word Find.
Literature: "Little Red Bat," "Bats," "Bats Big Game," "Boo To You," "Pumpkin Soup," "Stellaluna," "Blackout! Animals That Live in the Dark," "Night Creatures," "Extremely Weird Bats."
Friday, October 12, 2012
UPDATES for 10/1-10/5 and 10/9-10/12 2012
**These last 2 weeks have gone by so quickly. It is hard to believe we are in the middle of October! The students continue to learn to work together and also independently. They are learning valuable lessons about themselves and others. I have seen some nice growth in their skill acquisition. Hats off to their successes!
**WOW! Our class has raised over $900 in pledges for the RUN FUN!!! We have 11 students from our class participating. Come out and cheer on Tuesday, October 16th. We are running at 8:30 am. Kindergarten runners are wearing BLUE. Let's all wear BLUE to show our support!!!!
**WALKING FIELD TRIP to the MAZE BRANCH LIBRARY on Friday, October 26th from 8:30-10:30 am. All applications for new cards needed to be in today! Please send back permission slip ASAP. I will contact parents who are interested in walking with us.
**Ms. Howell has recorded 4,200 minutes for our class in the Million Minutes Reading Challenge so far. Keep reading and recording those minutes!
**Picture Day was successful. We had our group picture taken outside. Great smiles! A big thanks to C. Mims, M. Shwager and L. Pointer for their help!
**All students participated in Walk to School Day. Students who did not have a chance to walk to school, walked at lunch time with Mr. Hancock. All students received a hand stamp and colored their shoe. Mr. Hancock will decorate the gym with them.
**Don't forget to send back your Parent Conference response forms. I have finished up my fall assessments in preparation. I am looking forward to meeting with you to share your child's progress.
**Please Note that school is in session only in the morning on Thursday, October 18th and Friday, October 19th. Dismissal is at 11:00 am. Hephzibah and Magical Minds pick up at 11:00 am. as well the district school bus.
**Route to Reading Rotation 1 will conclude on Thursday, October 17th. At that time you will receive information on skill mastery. Route to Reading Rotation 2 will begin on Tuesday, October 23rd.
**Congratulations to our Student Council Reps--Isabella and Angus! That had their first meeting on Tuesday. In their report they indicated the they will sponsor a food drive.
**Green Team Reps Ivy and Amare reported that their team discussed ways to be "green" in the classroom. We talked about it as a class.
**Our Parent Helper Station Day began today. K. Jones was on hand to assist with a learning station. Look on the left side of my blog for the schedule. If you still would like to sign up....just email me!
**The October Book Order is due October 16th. You may order on line or through the magazine.
**In Friendship Club, Ms. Bell Bey has begun a unit on safety which includes lessons from Second Step and Talking about Touching (personal safety curriculum.)
**Mr. Packer is beginning a unit of study on Chance and Probability in math enrichment.
The past 2 weeks:
It continues to be about apples. We explored types of apples and apple names and how they are alike and different. The students learned how to diagram and created a diagram of an apple including its parts. They took a look under the microscope at skin from a Red Delicious and Golden Delicious. Way Cool!
The students participated in a taste test and graphed their results. You can check out their choices at conference time. The students counted apple seeds. We made apple sauce as our culminating treat! The students discussed the sequence of events in making apple sauce. They observed the apple peeling machine work its magic! We discussed the cooking process. The students sorted the apple stars, tops, bottoms with the left over flower or blossom and skin that came out like a ribbon. After cooking, the students watched the immersion blender spin and make very smooth apple sauce. Lots of language and conversation! Many students sampled the fresh apple sauce. The students read both fiction and nonfiction books about apples. Our station day activities included creating an Apple Book, making apple print trees, printing with the apple star, writing and illustrating about the change in the season (fall,) turning pumpkins into jack-o-lanterns, sorting by exclusion short a pictures and coloring by code. Next week we will begin mini units on bats, spiders and skeletons. Yes, we do have 2 bats in our room! Oh, and 4 spiders!!! They will be visiting until Halloween. Did I mention there is a leg bone in our room????!!
Reading/Social Studies: These past 2 weeks the students worked on completing Unit 1 Families in our Treasures Reading Series. Our first reading assessment is Monday. Our phonics portion keyed in on target sounds short a and letter Mm. The students completed their lists of people, places, animals and things and learned the formal word NOUN. The students worked on listening comprehension using the big book stories, "Picnic at Apple Park," "Night Animals" and "Family Fun." They identified where the stories took place (setting) and made predictions on what would happen next. The students responded and retold events in a story sequence. We discussed how the story structure can help provide evidence for our predictions. The students worked on concept words--same, different. We began the process of phoneme blending or putting sounds together to form a word. We used A and M and A and T. Our puppet friend, Mr. Happy helped us. He is way more fun than Ms. Gullo when he sounds things out!! Robust Vocabulary for the past 2 weeks included ACTIVITY, COOPERATE, EXCITING, EXHAUSTED, GATHER, CELEBRATE, CHANGE, EAGER, OCCASION and RELATIVE. Please ask your child about these words. Our thinking stories were "The Squeaky Bed" and "Jennifer Bing Why Won't You Sing?" The students thought and responded about the cultural perspective (taking place in Puerto Rico and music and dance in other cultures.) The students review all their sight vocabulary thus far. They practiced spelling their words on their dry erase boards. Students worked on reading aloud and shared their pre-decodable stories with a partner. The students had great fun during their workstation time. Their workstations for the past 2 weeks included creating sentences from sight words and pictures, reading a story and adding a new page to the end (what could happen next?) Writing a sentence about themselves and reading it to a partner, reading a story and filling out a Reader's Response sheet, drawing a picture of themselves as a baby and then as a 5 or 6 year old and writing a sentence about what did then and what they can do now, working with word families and using the iPad to create a sentence using 3 of their sight words and taking a picture of it.
Math: We are counting everything in sight!! How high can we go? 20? 30? 50? higher?? The students are working on the concept of place value using straws in groups of ten. We review the word DIGIT. The students learned how to play "Monster Squeeze" as a floor game and on their iPad using concepts of greater and less than to find a mystery number. It's a great partner game. We are "feeling" number by using our sand paper numbers. The students continue to work on number recognition 0-20. They began the introduction and exploration of symmetry. What is symmetry? What makes something symmetrical? We took a look at symmetry in nature (leaves, rocks, flowers,) symmetry in our body (what if we drew a line down the middle of our bodies?) The students experimented with cutting out a circle and creating a symmetrical design on each side. Cool!!! Students reviewed common and pattern block shape names and are beginning to recognize geometric solids.
Writing: The students continue to work on adding more details to their drawings and having their drawings reflect the words they use to describe them. They continue to use the prompts from our Treasures Reading series. They are working on forming a simple sentence (naming and telling) and to leave a space between each word. We always begin each sentence with a capital letter and use an end mark (period.) The students continue to work on their Frog Jump Letters. They have learned the formation for F, E, D, P, B, R and N.
Technology: The iPad continues to be a valuable tool to enhance our learning! In reading and writing the apps Intro to Letters, My ABC's, ABC Touch and Sound Sort are assisting with letter recognition and sound foundation. The students are using the apps Montessori Crossword to assist sound/symbol development and Alphabet Magic to assist with sentence formation and illustration. In Math, the students are using the apps Intro to Math, Number Find and Numbers to assist in number recognition and patterns. This week the app Monster Squeeze and Sam Phibian were introduced. The students work independently or with a partner on these apps.
Literature: "The Best Class Picture Ever," "The Pumpkin Patch," "The Bumpy Little Pumpkin," "Johnny Appleseed," "The Four Seasons," "A Book About Christopher Columbus," "Let's Read About Christopher Columbus," "If you Give a Cat a Cupcake," "Autumn Days," "Autumn," "Colorful Leaves," "The Big Apple Mystery," "Picking Apples," "Let's Go Apple Picking."
**WOW! Our class has raised over $900 in pledges for the RUN FUN!!! We have 11 students from our class participating. Come out and cheer on Tuesday, October 16th. We are running at 8:30 am. Kindergarten runners are wearing BLUE. Let's all wear BLUE to show our support!!!!
**WALKING FIELD TRIP to the MAZE BRANCH LIBRARY on Friday, October 26th from 8:30-10:30 am. All applications for new cards needed to be in today! Please send back permission slip ASAP. I will contact parents who are interested in walking with us.
**Ms. Howell has recorded 4,200 minutes for our class in the Million Minutes Reading Challenge so far. Keep reading and recording those minutes!
**Picture Day was successful. We had our group picture taken outside. Great smiles! A big thanks to C. Mims, M. Shwager and L. Pointer for their help!
**All students participated in Walk to School Day. Students who did not have a chance to walk to school, walked at lunch time with Mr. Hancock. All students received a hand stamp and colored their shoe. Mr. Hancock will decorate the gym with them.
**Don't forget to send back your Parent Conference response forms. I have finished up my fall assessments in preparation. I am looking forward to meeting with you to share your child's progress.
**Please Note that school is in session only in the morning on Thursday, October 18th and Friday, October 19th. Dismissal is at 11:00 am. Hephzibah and Magical Minds pick up at 11:00 am. as well the district school bus.
**Route to Reading Rotation 1 will conclude on Thursday, October 17th. At that time you will receive information on skill mastery. Route to Reading Rotation 2 will begin on Tuesday, October 23rd.
**Congratulations to our Student Council Reps--Isabella and Angus! That had their first meeting on Tuesday. In their report they indicated the they will sponsor a food drive.
**Green Team Reps Ivy and Amare reported that their team discussed ways to be "green" in the classroom. We talked about it as a class.
**Our Parent Helper Station Day began today. K. Jones was on hand to assist with a learning station. Look on the left side of my blog for the schedule. If you still would like to sign up....just email me!
**The October Book Order is due October 16th. You may order on line or through the magazine.
**In Friendship Club, Ms. Bell Bey has begun a unit on safety which includes lessons from Second Step and Talking about Touching (personal safety curriculum.)
**Mr. Packer is beginning a unit of study on Chance and Probability in math enrichment.
The past 2 weeks:
It continues to be about apples. We explored types of apples and apple names and how they are alike and different. The students learned how to diagram and created a diagram of an apple including its parts. They took a look under the microscope at skin from a Red Delicious and Golden Delicious. Way Cool!
The students participated in a taste test and graphed their results. You can check out their choices at conference time. The students counted apple seeds. We made apple sauce as our culminating treat! The students discussed the sequence of events in making apple sauce. They observed the apple peeling machine work its magic! We discussed the cooking process. The students sorted the apple stars, tops, bottoms with the left over flower or blossom and skin that came out like a ribbon. After cooking, the students watched the immersion blender spin and make very smooth apple sauce. Lots of language and conversation! Many students sampled the fresh apple sauce. The students read both fiction and nonfiction books about apples. Our station day activities included creating an Apple Book, making apple print trees, printing with the apple star, writing and illustrating about the change in the season (fall,) turning pumpkins into jack-o-lanterns, sorting by exclusion short a pictures and coloring by code. Next week we will begin mini units on bats, spiders and skeletons. Yes, we do have 2 bats in our room! Oh, and 4 spiders!!! They will be visiting until Halloween. Did I mention there is a leg bone in our room????!!
Reading/Social Studies: These past 2 weeks the students worked on completing Unit 1 Families in our Treasures Reading Series. Our first reading assessment is Monday. Our phonics portion keyed in on target sounds short a and letter Mm. The students completed their lists of people, places, animals and things and learned the formal word NOUN. The students worked on listening comprehension using the big book stories, "Picnic at Apple Park," "Night Animals" and "Family Fun." They identified where the stories took place (setting) and made predictions on what would happen next. The students responded and retold events in a story sequence. We discussed how the story structure can help provide evidence for our predictions. The students worked on concept words--same, different. We began the process of phoneme blending or putting sounds together to form a word. We used A and M and A and T. Our puppet friend, Mr. Happy helped us. He is way more fun than Ms. Gullo when he sounds things out!! Robust Vocabulary for the past 2 weeks included ACTIVITY, COOPERATE, EXCITING, EXHAUSTED, GATHER, CELEBRATE, CHANGE, EAGER, OCCASION and RELATIVE. Please ask your child about these words. Our thinking stories were "The Squeaky Bed" and "Jennifer Bing Why Won't You Sing?" The students thought and responded about the cultural perspective (taking place in Puerto Rico and music and dance in other cultures.) The students review all their sight vocabulary thus far. They practiced spelling their words on their dry erase boards. Students worked on reading aloud and shared their pre-decodable stories with a partner. The students had great fun during their workstation time. Their workstations for the past 2 weeks included creating sentences from sight words and pictures, reading a story and adding a new page to the end (what could happen next?) Writing a sentence about themselves and reading it to a partner, reading a story and filling out a Reader's Response sheet, drawing a picture of themselves as a baby and then as a 5 or 6 year old and writing a sentence about what did then and what they can do now, working with word families and using the iPad to create a sentence using 3 of their sight words and taking a picture of it.
Math: We are counting everything in sight!! How high can we go? 20? 30? 50? higher?? The students are working on the concept of place value using straws in groups of ten. We review the word DIGIT. The students learned how to play "Monster Squeeze" as a floor game and on their iPad using concepts of greater and less than to find a mystery number. It's a great partner game. We are "feeling" number by using our sand paper numbers. The students continue to work on number recognition 0-20. They began the introduction and exploration of symmetry. What is symmetry? What makes something symmetrical? We took a look at symmetry in nature (leaves, rocks, flowers,) symmetry in our body (what if we drew a line down the middle of our bodies?) The students experimented with cutting out a circle and creating a symmetrical design on each side. Cool!!! Students reviewed common and pattern block shape names and are beginning to recognize geometric solids.
Writing: The students continue to work on adding more details to their drawings and having their drawings reflect the words they use to describe them. They continue to use the prompts from our Treasures Reading series. They are working on forming a simple sentence (naming and telling) and to leave a space between each word. We always begin each sentence with a capital letter and use an end mark (period.) The students continue to work on their Frog Jump Letters. They have learned the formation for F, E, D, P, B, R and N.
Technology: The iPad continues to be a valuable tool to enhance our learning! In reading and writing the apps Intro to Letters, My ABC's, ABC Touch and Sound Sort are assisting with letter recognition and sound foundation. The students are using the apps Montessori Crossword to assist sound/symbol development and Alphabet Magic to assist with sentence formation and illustration. In Math, the students are using the apps Intro to Math, Number Find and Numbers to assist in number recognition and patterns. This week the app Monster Squeeze and Sam Phibian were introduced. The students work independently or with a partner on these apps.
Literature: "The Best Class Picture Ever," "The Pumpkin Patch," "The Bumpy Little Pumpkin," "Johnny Appleseed," "The Four Seasons," "A Book About Christopher Columbus," "Let's Read About Christopher Columbus," "If you Give a Cat a Cupcake," "Autumn Days," "Autumn," "Colorful Leaves," "The Big Apple Mystery," "Picking Apples," "Let's Go Apple Picking."
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