**The Irving K-2 Spelling Bee is this Wednesday, April 11th at 11:00 am in the Irving Auditorium. We will cheer on our homeroom participants Yaya and Lottie and alternate Ben. They have been studying hard! It will be exciting!
**WANTED: GIANT BOXES, other boxes and cool stuff for our space station construction. Send them in ASAP! Our space station prep, design, construction and detailing will be done the week of April 16th -20th in the afternoon. The students can't wait!!!
**Opera for the Young was fantastic! Students loved this production of "Hansel and Gretel." Check out the photos on the Irving School website. The students couldn't stop writing about it in their journals.
**Please see the permission slip and information for our Adler Planetarium Field Trip on Thursday, April 19th from 9-1 pm. The cost is $7.00. Please send in slip and money ASAP.
**Information and sign up form for the Academic Fair and Egg Drop Contest are also enclosed. What a cool way to be involved! The Academic Project can be on anything. Got some engineering or aerodynamic ideas about vehicles that can keep an egg from breaking when dropped from a third floor window???? Try them out. Ms. Creehen will come to our classroom to chat about the fair and show some past presentation boards next week. The Academic Fair and Egg Drop contest will be held on Wednesday, April 25th.
**Please send back the BUSY READER FEEDBACK sheet soon. Thanks!
**News from our Student council reps, Reuben and Jordan--Student Council is sponsoring the Second Annual Parent Career Day on the afternoon of April 30th. Are you interested in speaking about your job to small groups of Irving students? Please fill out the enclosed form and send it back to me.
**Future Date--Green Team/Schoolyard Project sponsored "Solarbration" Assembly will be Thursday, April 26th from 2-3pm. Stay tuned for more info.
**Mr. Packer's small group math lesson centered on visual perception and visual spatial patterning. It was cool observing the students using their vision and thinking skills to create the specific shapes.
This week:
It was all about the sun, stars and constellations! Also, our tubers are really starting to take root! Salome's tuber has a super long root system growing. What a great intro it will be for our upcoming science unit on Plants in May. Back to sun, stars and constellations---The students looked up information on the sun using the their IPADS. They also looked up information on the history of constellations. They became interested on how constellations were formed and named. We read several books on Roman and Greek Mythology and found out the stories behind the names of the constellations. The students were fascinated by the interesting stories. The students created and named their "own " constellation. They are displayed in the hall. Come check them out! Next week, we will begin our study of the moon. Our station day activities this week included students creating and naming their own constellations, creating multi dimensional structures using toothpicks and marshmallows and revisiting symmetry with partners creating symmetrical drawings of an "egg." We saluted all things created from an egg and read about rabbits. On a serious note---the students talked about the Christian observance of Easter and the Jewish observance of Passover. We are different, but yet the same!
Reading/Social Studies: The students continue to work on Unit 8 Plants in the Treasures Reading series. This week they talked and read about seeds and plants. They accessed prior knowledge from the earlier fall unit we did on apples. The students revisited our apple seed study tray and our current tubers. The students made connections in their own lives of blowing dandelion seeds everywhere or helping their parents in backyard gardens planting different types of seed. The students listened to the Big Book story, "Seed Secrets." The story contained ways that seeds can travel. The students observed the pictures and helped track the print as I read the story. We revisited the word genre. Many students guessed that this text was expository or informational. Our target words for this week were here and was. The students used these words and all the words that have been introduced along with pictures to create sentences and reading them aloud. Our target sound continues to be short Uu. The students used wikkie circles to mark each time they read a short Uu word on their Rhyme and Chime.
We continue to revisit adjectives and how to use them to enhance the way we speak and write. The students recalled events in the Big Book story and as a group, we took turns listing how seeds travel. Students took turns using the retelling cards seeing how many details they remembered. In our additional vocabulary development, the student worked on position words. Our puppet friend, Mr. Happy, assisted us in our phoneme blending activities. The students blended a variety of 3, 4, and 5 phoneme words using their elkonin boxes. The students read their decodable story, "A Bud Is Up." They made predictions about story content. The students noted the sequential order of steps involved in planting a seed. They reread the story to a partner. Our Robust Vocabulary for this week included NECESSARY, MOIST, GRADUALLY, SEEDS, OBSERVE. The students used the oral vocabulary story, "Let's Go to the National Parks," to learn about plants and animals in national parks. Some students were able to make a connection to a park that they had been to. The students read aloud the paper story, "Was Kip Here?" and used their story elements butterfly to discuss story elements in small groups. Our work stations this week included choosing 3 position words and drawing a picture that included items in that position and labeling them, choosing a plant job picture and using the app Magnetic Letters to create 2-3 sentences about the picture and using the Writer's Checklist for feedback. The students then emailed their word to me. They also read an assigned story and completed the Literacy Activity on the back cover using the app Doodle Buddy. The student groups wrote about tree facts for our class book and reading a story of their choosing and discussed and completed the Literacy Activity with a partner.
Math: The students continue to work in their math process journals. This week the focus was on listening and illustrating subtraction story problems. The students are continuing to listen for key words in the story to help them identify what operation to illustrate. The words are left are beginning to sink in! The students are working on time by the hour and we began to talk about time by the half hour. The students examined an analog clock and are beginning to understand the 5 minute increments on the clock and that 30 is the half way point. This was a great way to count by 5"s to 60. The students revisited symmetry. We were studying animals that come from eggs and students partnered up to make "egg" symmetry. In addition, the students are using craft sticks to create ways to say numbers. An example would be --ways to say the number 6---1 and 5, 2 and 4, 3 and 3 etc. The students had a super time building their multi dimensional structures with toothpicks and marshmallows. They will be on display in our "structural museum." I can't wait to see how their homework projects turn out!
Writing: The students continue to work on their beginning paragraphs about their shadows. Students have discussed details, wrote their draft, proofread their draft to see how is sounds and if it needs any corrections, and then began transferring their writing to their final copy in their best handwriting. They are looking really good! There is lots of thought and effort put into their writing. Stop by and see the finished product outside of our classroom. We will finish up our formal work with lowercase letter formation next week. Students are reflecting in their journals most days using the writing prompts from our Treasures series or writing about what interests them. Most students are using 2-4 sentences on a specific topic.
Science: The students have finished up the Shadows portion of their science unit. Next week, we will begin to study the Moon. In our cross curricular theme, space, I mentioned the students study of sun, stars and constellations. The students were so interested in the stories about how a constellation got its name. The students also learned about shooting stars, meteors and comets. The students also took a closer look at new, middle age and old stars and why some stars look bigger then others. They were completely fascinated by the fact that stars that are old explode and some of the material from that old star creates a new star. We are continuing to prepare for our trip to the Adler Planetarium.
Technology: In reading, student small group use the app Magnetic Letters to write about plant jobs and the app Doodle Buddy to complete their Literacy Activity. In math, small group and individuals used the apps Number Find, Addition Bug and Coins. This week, some students began to experiment with the app Time. In science, the students are using the apps NASA kids and Enchanted Learning to access information on the sun, stars, constellations and plants.
Literature: "Zoo in the Sky," "The Sun and Stars," "Stories of the Stars," "Seeing Stars," "Shooting Stars," "I like Stars," "Rabbit," "Bad, Bad Bunny Trouble," "Timothy Tunny Swallowed a Bunny," "The Great Big Especially Beautiful Easter Egg," "It's Passover," "Splat the Cat-When is it Easter."
