**The Fun Fair was a smash! The games were great. Many fun fair goers enjoyed the popcorn, cotton candy and other treats. I saw some happy faces carrying out a dessert won in the Dancing for Desserts activity. The Silent Auction was the best yet. Super selection and organization. The main event--"American Piedol" competition was a sight to behold. Great moves and jamming by both "The New Beats" and " Frankie D. and the Cuyler Street Boys." And what about those Piedol judges???? Who was wearing that crazy hair??? In the end, it was "Fankie D. and the Cuyler Street Boys" that raised the most money, won the trophy and received major pies in their faces by some really excited raffle winners!!!
**The students were participants in a Dental Program on February 21st. Ms. Alma spoke to the students on what it takes to have and maintain healthy teeth and gums. Clue--less sugar, nutritious food, careful teeth brushing and flossing, seeing a dentist regularly. We can do it!!!
**Our choral reading of the events in Ruby Bridges life went spectacularly well! The students are to be commended for effort and great reading! They really enjoyed it.
**The students took the Unit 6 assessment in the Treasures Reading series on Thursday.
**Route to Reading Rotation 6 will conclude on Wednesday. At that time, you will be notified as to your child's level of skill development. The students continue to work very hard on their skills.
**In Friendship Club this week, Ms. Kwiatt did a cool activity using a piece of yarn encouraging students to share how we are all "connected" in some way. The web formed was really cool! Prior to the activity, the students worked in small groups to share and talk about one item, food etc. that they all enjoyed.
**Mr. Packer finished up a unit on sequencing events. Students are beginning to look for the big or main idea more consistently and to also look more carefully at the details in figuring out what will come next in the sequence.
**The BUSY READER PROGRAM and WORD PLAY ACTIVITY were both introduced this week. You will find specific information on each in your child's homework folder. If you have any questions--please feel free to contact me. These activities will be in place for the remainder of the school year.
**NO SCHOOL --Monday, March 5th in observance of Casmir Pulaski Day.
**SWAP, SHOP and READ will take place on Thursday, March 15th from 6:30-8:00pm. More info will follow soon.
** Report Cards go home on Friday, March 16th.
**Spring Pictures will be taken on Tuesday, March 20th.
**Spring Break is 3/24-4/1. School will resume on Monday, April 2nd. Please let me know if your child needs a travel journal.
**Reading Grandma Mary is very pleased to report that reading fluency as well as comprehension skills are really taking shape. The students are loving it!
This week:
It was all about a few things this week. Science was particularly interesting as the students created and observed steam. They talked about and discussed the idea of "evaporation" and that water can become a gas and disappear. They talked about the "smoke" they saw rising up from the container. This in fact was the water turning into a gas. After a while, we covered the container with plastic wrap and put a rubber band around the top. The students made predictions in their science journal about what they thought would happen and why. The students checked on the container later on in the day and discovered water droplets that appeared to be hanging from the inside of the plastic wrap. How did this happen? There was much discussion about what caused this. No one had predicted this! In talking it out, some students commented that the steam turned back into water. Wait--the steam could not go out into the air---an a ha moment--it could not evaporate! Next area of experimentation--condensation. I brought back 2 cool activities from my conference last week. The first one is called "Crazy Bubbles." There are lots of colored plastic sticks of various sizes and weird spherical shapes with many holes in them. The students work together to create a multi dimensional figure. The other activity was called the "Ultimate Puzl." Students worked to connect the silvery pieces beginning with 4 pieces and moving on to 8 and then 12 (the ultimate challenge!) super challenging--lots of brain work involved. It was great to hear the conversations, strategies, suggestions and observe their level of commitment to the task. We looked at a model of a tooth and discussed tooth structure, gums, roots and how to keep them all healthy. We took a look at the animal world and read some interesting info on whales, dogs and animal that have no teeth.
Reading/Social Studies: I opted to use this week as a giant review week rather than begin Unit 7 Weather in our Treasures Reading Series. Having been gone for 2 days last week, I wanted to make sure that students had all the skills necessary for their assessment which they took on Thursday. It was a week well spent. The students began by reviewing all their consonant and vowel sounds in isolation. We then moved on to review consonant blends, digraphs, silent e, took a look at some vowel teams (those crazy vowels!!) and did some work with our elkonin boxes and blending sounds to make words. The students mainly worked on 3-4 phoneme words, but I did sneek in 5-6 phoneme ones! Next the students worked on placing the block in the square there they heard the sound. Did you hear it in the beginning, middle or end of the word? The students also worked on activities in small groups where they added, deleted and substituted sounds. Word Play exercises were introduced. The students had to listen carefully to the directions in order to know where to move the letters to make the word.
Workstations this week included word building (beginning and ending sounds) with the app Magic Reading 2 and using the app Storykit for fluency building/recording reading, using the app Word Wizard for practice in addition and deletion of of phonemes and leveled reading and completion of the Story Elements Butterfly/question/answer activity. Our station day activities included weather water color painting, measure for measure activity and sound blending wheel--ing word family. The students played Hands Up, Hands Down with their sight words.
Math: The students worked on pattern block puzzles at three levels this week. The first with internal guidelines (easy!!!), the next without guidelines which had multiple solutions and the last ones where you look at a small version of the puzzle and build along side of it. It is fascinating to observe how each student perceives the puzzle and their selection of blocks that have to fit into the space and cannot go outside the black outside line. Many students tried multiple puzzles and compared their solutions with one another. Cool! The students continues work on counting by 2's using objects that come in pairs. We increased out Top-It Tally game to reflect numbers from 1-150 and each student played with a partner. The students continued their work looking for number patterns in solving a place value riddle. Ms. Applebey did a cool "Tricky Teens" activity using Doodle Buddy with small groups. Next week, we will begin working in our daily Math Journal on the process of addition and subtraction using story problems, working with coin recognition -nickel, dime, quarter and their values and more time by the hour.
Writing: The students continue to work in their writing journals using prompts and writing 2-4 sentences about the subject. This week we began an activity called "Sentence Lifting," where I "borrow" a sentence from someone's journal and write up on the board. The students check to see if anything needs to be added or changed. They ask the questions--Does it name and tell? Does it begin with a capital letter? Does it have an ending mark? Are there spaces between each word? Are the lowercase letters where they are supposed to be? What about tall lowercase or dive down lowercase letters? Students step up and make corrections if needed and we read the sentence together. Next week, more work with formation of lowercase letters.
Science: The students studied about water as a gas and did an experiment where they made steam. See above in the "This week" heading.
Technology: In reading, the students worked on the app Magic Reading 2--using beginning and ending sounds to create words and then recording them. They practice read and recorded their reading for fluency building using the app Storykit. The app Word Wizard was used in working with adding and deleting phonemes practice. In math, Ms. Applebey used the app Doodle Buddy with student small groups to work on tricky teen place value. The app Number Find challenged many students to find the 10 hidden numbers on the blank grid. Can you come with a pattern? What's your strategy? Brain power in action!!! Individualized instruction centered around the apps Math Bug and Find the Sums where students could work on their addition and subtraction processes.
Literature: "Picture Book of Jesse Owens," "Rosa Parks," "Little Rabbit's Loose Tooth," "My Tooth is About to Fall Out," "Hooray for Teeth," "Scooby Doo--The Missing Tooth Mystery," "Do You Think It's Easy Being a Tooth Fairy?" "Your Fantastic Elastic Brain," "The Brain."
