**Welcome back everyone! Happy 2012! Snow, Snow, Snow! I trust you all had a fun and restful break. It was great to hear about all the student's activities and travels. We had lots of travel journal sharing!
**There is NO SCHOOL on Monday, January 16th in observance of Martin Luther King's birthday. We shared stories and speeches from Martin Luther King's life. The students engaged in a very thought provoking discussion about Martin Luther King's childhood. The students questioned why your skin color should matter if you want someone to be your friend. Some students wondered what it would be like for them in Martin Luther King's time because one of their parents is black and other white. Powerful insights from five and six year olds. Our final discussion was on a quote from Martin Luther King's "Experiments in Love " speech from 1958 that reads, "The important thing about a man is not the color of his skin or the texture of his hair, but the texture and quality of his soul." Each student talked about what those words meant to them.
**Mid Year DIBELS testing was completed this week. I will be sharing the scores with you at conference time.
**I am beginning Mid Year Assessments next week in math, reading and writing. These assessments will also be shared with you at conference time.
**Speaking of conferences---Mid Year Conferences for my class will take place on Tuesday, January 31st, Wednesday, February 1st and Thursday, February 2nd. All students have a letter regarding conferences in their folder for you. Please respond by January 30th. Thanks!
**Vision Screening will take place Friday, January 20th. Hearing Screening will take place on Tuesday, January 24th.
**Reading Grandma Mary will be begin her 5th year listening to young readers on Monday, January 23rd from 1-2:55 pm. She will be here every Monday.
**I am pleased to announce that Ms. Amanda will also begin assisting us every Wednesday from 9-11 am, beginning January 25th. Ms. Amanda assisted me this summer during summer school. She currently attends OPRF. We are so grateful for all of our helpers!
**The 100th DAY/VALENTINE'S DAY CELEBRATION will soon be here! Our celebration is set for Friday, February 10th from 1-2:55 pm. I have S. Walker, M. Chlebek, M. Meagher, C. Bravo, T. Naber, G. Quinones-Garcia and J. Andersson signed up to help. We could use a few more volunteers. Email me if interested.
**In Friendship Club this week, Ms. Kwiatt talked to the students about self control and ways we manage our bodies and mouths. She did an activity involving how well we control our actions.
**Mr. Packer began an activity with the students what will involve graphing results.
**Don't forget to send your child dressed for the weather each day. Unless it is super cold, we will go outside each day. Snow pants, gloves, hats, scarves and boots are a must! Don't forget to send gym shoes on gym days. (Tuesdays and Fridays) Thanks!
**Keep saving those GIANT BOXES (the kind you can climb in) and other COOL stuff for our space station construction in APRIL, during our SPACE theme. I cannot store anything now. I will have you start sending things in after spring break.
This week:
It was all about Weather and Water! Our first snow fall was very exciting! The students enjoyed tracking the storm using the Weatherunderground site. They were able to "animate" the images to see where the storm was heading. We put on all our gear and went outside to catch snowflakes on black paper. The students took their magnifiers out to take a closer look. Before venturing out, we read about how snow is formed and why it snows. It all starts with a speck! (Ask your child about it!) The students have begun experimenting with the properties of water. Who knew a water droplet could be so much fun! Check out our experiments and results under the science heading. Station Day activities included "sewing" a mitten and retelling the story with the paper characters, conversational snowmen, written reflections on snow, sound blending wheels using the op word family.
**Reading/Social Studies: The students began Unit 5 Animals in our Treasures Reading series. The students accessed background knowledge by discussing animals they know as pets and animals they might know from seeing them in a zoo. We had an amazing teachable moment when Mei-Li talked about seeing manatees on her vacation. Many of the students did not know what a manatee was so we accessed some internet information on manatees. Using the site, "Defenders of Wildlife.com, " the students saw a video about manatees and learned about their life, behavior, what they eat and that they are a distant relative of the elephant. Most importantly, the student learned that manatees are an endangered species. Pretty cool! The students listened to the Big Book story, "Mama Cat has Three Kittens." They made predictions about story content and talked about the actions a cat or kitten might perform. Those students with cats as pets made connections between their pet and the kittens in the story. Our sight word for this week is the word is. We reviewed it along with all our other words that have been introduced. The target sound and letter this week in Oo. The students worked on associating the sound with picture cards. The students listened to the rhyme. "The Ostrich is Talking." They were able to pick out the rhyming words as well as the words that began with short o. The students went back into the rhyme and marked all the words containing the letter Oo. The students continued to review and work with verbs by making a list of what kittens can do by naming a verb. Our robust vocabulary for this week contained the words ACTION, COMPARE, CONTENT, GENTLE, POUNCES. The students made comparisons in the the Big Book story about what the two kittens do compared to Boris (the third kitten.) The students worked with their elkonin sounds boxes to blend sounds using short o to make new words. They read their decodable book, "Sit," making predictions and commenting at the end of the story about the fish. The students listened to the vocabulary card tale, "Mam Mouse and El Gato." They discussed similarities and differences between cats and mice. In the expository text, "Let's Go to the Vet," the students learned about what a diagram was and focused on the content of the story. The students worked with partners to create sentences using target words and pictures and read them back to one another. They read aloud the paper story,"The Cat," and filled out the Reader's Checklist to critique themselves. The students also listened to their friends comments on their reading. (Could they be heard? Did they finger point each word and picture? Did they read smooth or choppy?) The students did an exercise where they had to listen to the word and place their marker in the box where they heard the Oo sound. The students listened to the rhyme, "The Three Little Kittens." They picked out the rhyming words, talked about the lesson in the story and reflected that many of them had heard this rhyme in preschool. The students worked in their activity books. Our workstations this week included making a pet chart by discussing pets with a partner, drawing a picture of your pet and writing your name, adding it to the pet chart. At the end of the week, the students recorded the pets and how many children liked each one. They recorded this on a separate chart. They also completed a sentence starter--It is on the______. They drew their pet on something. There was Buddy Reading. the students shared a story, talked about it and then wrote about what happened in their story. The students played WORD MAKER, where they picked a card, chose the letters and built the word on their word maker board and then recorded it on a separate paper. Some students made 15 words. WOW! The last workstation was SIGHT WORD practice using the Magnetic ABC app. The students has to spell their word, record it on a separate sheet and then compose a sentence on the app using appropriate grammar and punctuation.
**Math: The students continue to work on rote counting to 70, counting by 2's, 5's and 10's. They continue to work on place value and grouping by 10's. This week we revisited our number rhymes and practiced writing 1, 2 and 3 digit numbers. They students are beginning to record information in a story story problem. We are using the plus and equal signs to create number sentences. The students revisited creating and continuing patterns and naming patterns. The students explored the world of clocks and other concepts of time. We took a look at an analog and digital time pieces and their characteristics. We learned about time by the hour.
Writing: The students revisited forming upper case letters, using the cues from our Handwriting Without Tears series. They continue to use the writing prompts from our Treasures series in their journals. They continue to concentrate on sentence structure--naming and telling, beginning with a capital letter, using an ending mark, placement of letters on a given line and spacing between words in a sentence.
Science: The students began with an inquiry discussion/dictation on what they know about WATER. The students were introduced to the word property and what it means. A property is a type of behavior. Each student has an experiment book along with a science reflection journal to record their experiment results as well as their own thoughts and sketches. In Experiment 1, the students explored water using a variety of materials--straws, cups, tongue depressors etc. Using these tools, they described how water feels, smells, sounds and looks. In Experiment 2, students learned that water drops have their own shape and can "stick" to one another. The students delighted in pushing one water droplet into another to form a bigger droplet! We talked about the scientific word--cohesion, to describe this process. The students found it was difficult to separate the droplets in two. In Experiment 3, the students discussed how water can be absorbed or sucked into certain materials. They experimented with paper, paper towels, sponges. In the experiment, the students saw the red water "climb" up their paper towel. They learned that there are tiny spaces that the water can get into. We took a piece of the regular paper towel and red water paper towel and put it under the microscope. WOW! Millions of little holes!!! In part two of this experiment, the students put celery in red water. They will check it out on Monday. Stay tuned! Our water table is now open for student exploration. The students are having great fun with our water wheel!
Technology: In reading, students used the app Magnetic Alphabet in their workstation. The app Reading Sightwords was used individually and with partners. The students said the target word, recorded themselves, played it back and used the stylus to practice writing the word. In math the students used the app Top It for one and two digit addition practice. The app Find the Sums was used to create addition problems using number families. The app Ace Mathland was used in small group and individually find the sums that create and solve a puzzle. The students continue to use all apps introduced thus far for their choice time activities.
Literature: "A Picture Book of Martin Luther King," "There was a Cold Lady Who Swallowed Some Snow," "Stella, Queen of the Snow," "The Mitten" by Jan Brett, "The Mitten" by Jim Alyesworth, "Martin's Dream," "Water," "Turn on the Faucet," "Counting Time from Seconds to Minutes," "The Story of Snow," "Why Does it Snow," "It's Winter."
