**Next week is SCHOOL SPIRIT WEEK. Please refer to the orange sheet located in your child's homework folder. Monday is SWIM DAY--NO swimsuits but sunglasses, goggles, beach toys, beach towels, floaties and sun hats are totally acceptable.
**The Hephzibah Talent Show was super cute!!! Let's give a shout out to Mei-Li, Lottie, Tyler, Yaya and Isabel for a job well done! My nieces, Mary and Lauren especially liked that you all were wearing your pajamas on stage and had big pillows!!!
**Report cards are in your child's homework folder. Any questions--please email me.
**Super Tuber Day was pretty super! More about that in the This week's section!
**We have completed Unit 7 Weather in our Treasures Reading Series and will be taking our unit assessment on Monday.
**We will have our Classroom "Bee" to determine who our homeroom participants will be for the Irving Spelling Bee on Wednesday, March 21st in the afternoon.
**Swap, Shop and Read was really fun! Thanks to all those who came out to swap and choose great books. The cookies and milk were great too! A shout out to the person who left me a surprise in my mail tray (Bob Books!) My class and I thank you. We love our Bob Books!
**A super shout out to Alex and Lindsay for their performance in "Everybody Rocks." They did a spectacular job in the show. The students enjoyed watching them. There are still available spots to participate in this Eagle Essential program. See me if interested.
**The students are practicing their singing parts for this years OPERA for the YOUNG. The story of "Hansel and Gretel" will be on Tuesday, April 3rd at 9:30 am in the gym. How cool--Senora Zaragoza is reading us the story in Spanish!!
**Our school wide PBIS celebration is Friday, March 23rd at 1:30 pm. Our regular station day helpers will assist us in school wide learning stations.
**Spring Pictures will be taken on Tuesday, march 20th. This is an individual picture with a back drop. Let me know if you want a sibling picture. Thanks!
**Spring Break is 3/24-4/1. School will resume on Monday, April 2nd.
**Future Field Trip to the Adler Planetarium on Thursday, April 19th from 9:00-2:00 pm. I will need 6 volunteers for the trip. Stay tuned for more information.
**Our own Salome, reported that the Green Team was reviewing what things to compost or recycle and what is trash. The Team participated in an activity about it.
**Our Student Council rep, Jordan, shared with us the ideas for School Spirit Week. It all sounds like fun!
**Mr. Packer did a small group math activity about shapes with students.
**In Friendship Club this week, the topic was managing our anger. The students shared and were quite candid about situations that get them mad. They shares how their bodies feel, (shaking, crying, stomping etc.) Ms Kwiatt guided the students into a discussion about how they sooth their anger. Students mentioned finding a quiet place, punching a pillow, counting, deep breathing, doing a physical activity, laying down on their bed, listening to music and watching T. V. were among the favorites.
This week:
It was all about potatoes and shadows! First--the potato! Each student brought in a potato of their choice. They learned that a TUBER is the short thick part of the underground stem of the potato plant. You can grow a potato from a potato! The students learned about the history of the potato. The plant was first found in South America in the Andes Mountains. We used our reading and map skills to find South America and then locate the Andes Mountains. We used both a topographical map and regular map. Students then traced the route of the potato to England and then to Ireland where the Irish soil made it a perfect plant to grow. During the 1800's, the potato became the main food of the Irish people. The students found the "eyes" of the potato and they used the internet to locate pictures of potato plants. The students learned that potatoes contained calcium and vitamin C as well as starch and lots of water. I had a variety of potatoes for the students to examine. With our magnifiers, we took a look at the skin and flesh of a purple, russset, yukon gold, red, fingerling and the classic idaho potato. The students returned to their seats and used their potato for the Super Tuber Activity. They drew a picture of it, counted the "eyes," measured its length using unifix cubes and recorded how many "bears" it weighed. The longest potato- 8 cubes--the heaviest potato-51 bears. We then completed a group graph about how we liked to eat our potatoes. Mashed and french fried were neck in neck! The students enjoyed stories about Irish folklore--four leaf clovers or shamrocks, pots of gold, rainbows and tiny leprechauns and learned about the musical instruments-bagpipes and penny whistle. We chose 3 types of potatoes for our class growing project. A purple potato, Ben's potato with a tuber already exposed and Salome's potato with many tubers and roots already growing. I showed the students how to set up the potato in order for it to grow. They can share that with you. It's hydroponics 101! Stay tuned to see what happens! I will save shadows for the science section!
Reading/Social Studies: The students completed Unit 7 Weather this week. They read about and discuss how weather affects people and animals. The students related their personal experiences in different types of weather. The discussion shifted to animals and how they also are affected by the weather. Each day, one student was responsible for checking the weather forecast on their IPAD using the app Accuweather. The students remarked how crazy it was that it was actually still winter and our temperatures were so warm. During our story time done outside, the students did observe a perfect V formation of Canada Geese flying back to us. Pretty cool! The students worked on their listening comprehension by listening to the story, "Bear Snores On." We had previously read this book when we studied author, Karma Wilson. The students revisited the word, "genre" and noted that this story was fantasy and could not really happen. After the story was read, students took turns using the retelling cards to tell the story in their own words. They made connections in this story to other Karma Wilson stories. They noted repetition of certain words, style and pictures. Ask your child to tell you the story. The student reviewed sight words, this, do, and, what. The students enjoyed using the words in a word scramble and playing "Hands Up, Hands Down." The students reviewed their target sounds Bb, Ll and Ee. They used their picture cards and sound toys in a guided practice. Our puppet, Mr. Happy, assisted the students in their word blending exercises. The students read the decodable reader, "Pat and Tip." They used the title and cover to make predictions about story content. Each child took a turn to read a sentence. Other students then would ask a question about something that happened in the story. The students then chose a partner to read the story to and used the Reader's Checklist to critique their fluency. Robust vocabulary for this week included CLEAR, COZY, EXPERIENCE, HIBERNATE, RETREAT. The students used the Oral Vocabulary cards to talk about Animals in Winter and read the information/expository text, "Let It Snow." Students partnered up to use the their word and picture cards to create sentences and then read them back to each other. The students read the paper story, "This Is What I Can Do!" They used their Story Elements Butterfly to independently record the title, characters, setting, time and plot of the story. The students listened to the read aloud folktale, "The Mitten." They made connections to the other mitten stories they had heard and compared and contrasted characters and plot development. The students used their elkonin boxes to put a block in the square there they heard the target sound. Workstations this week included, reading a selected story and recording their story element discussion using the app Story Kit, graphing their favorite season and writing about the results, sorting groups of words 3 ways and record how you did it, labeling parts of the drawing you made to illustrate their favorite season and reading a selected story and making your own retelling cards.
Math: The students continued their study of coins and coin values. We reviewed penny, nickel, dime and quarter. Salome brought in her state quarter collection and the students got a chance to use their magnifiers to see what was on the back of each state's quarter. She also brought in money from her native France and the students compared and contrasted the shape and pictures on the coins. The students continue to work in their math process journals. We will begin working with subtraction story problems next week. The students also continue to work on counting by 2's, 5's, and 10's. This was new math game week. The students played the "Plus or Minus game," "Pop for Numbers," "Monster Truck Addition and Subtraction," "Race Car Math," "It Takes Two," 2 digit number game and "Change to Less." Wednesday and Thursday were devoted to small group game stations.
Writing: The students continued to work on using their prompts from our Treasures Reading series in their sentence writing. We have also just begun prep work on beginning paragraph writing which includes pre-writing discussion/notes, draft writing, proofing your draft and writing the final copy. The students will be creating a story around their shadow pictures.
Science: The students reviewed the 3 things necessary to make a shadow--a source of light, an object to block the light, a surface to see the shadow. They worked on Experiment 2--creating a silhouette with their hand and comparing it to their actual hand and noting the similarities. The students were familiar with the process as they just had their face silhouettes done the previous week. The students reflected in their journals a recipe for a shadow and sketch the order of making a shadow. In Experiment 3, the students took turns creating shadows using a variety of different objects--book, small box, plastic wrap, waxed paper, water in a clear cup. They each created a graph answering yes or no to the questions--Does light pass the through it? Does it make a shadow? The students discovered that objects can produce light shadows, dark shadows or no shadow. They also found out it depends how much light they allow to pass through the object. I provided them with some very scientific words. Shadows can be opaque--they do not allow any light to pass through, so they produce a dark shadow or translucent-- some light does pass through and produces a light shadow. The students enjoyed trying out other objects in their choice time. They reflected their thoughts in their science journal. We went outside to observe shadows in our school neighborhood. On this bright sunny day, each student struck a pose with their shadow and I took a picture of it. The students will use this photograph as the source of their paragraph project. The students took a look at their face silhouettes from last week. They will be making a frame for them and we will be playing a little guessing game with them. Stay tuned!
Technology: In reading, small groups of students read a selected story and recorded their discussion using the app Story Kit and the assistance of Ms. Applebey. Totally marvelous!!! Small groups of students used the app Sight Words to say, record and play back sight vocabulary and practice the word in written form, the app Word Wizard was also used to work on sound blending skills. In the math this week, the students continue to use the app Number Find for work on number patterns, 2 digit numbers and sequencing. The app Whiteboard was used by individual students to practice number forms. The app Doodle Buddy was used by student small groups to illustrate addition and subtraction process after listening to a story problem. A selected group of students continue to use the app Coins to add and subtract coin values. The app Accuweather was used by students to track daily weather to share with the class. The students continue to use apps that have been introduced in reading, math and science during their choice time.
Literature: "Secret Agent Splat the Cat," (thanks, Lottie!) "Green Shamrocks," "Jamie O'Rourke and the Big Potato," "The Leprechaun Who Lost His Rainbow," "Planets-True or False," "1000 Facts about Space," "Moon Game," "Moon Dance," "The Solar System," "What Color is the Sky?" "Space Race," "Dogs in Space," "My Shadow," "What Makes Day and Night?" "What is a Shadow."
