**The weeks are really flying by! We have completed all our in class reading and vocabulary assessments. DIBELS final screening will be begin next week along with our final math assessments. Route to Reading Rotation 8 has concluded. You should have received notification of your child's skill level. This is the last Route to Reading rotation of the school year. The students have worked extremely hard on their phonemic awareness and phonic skills. The students took their Treasures Unit 9 assessment last Monday. I will teach the skills and vocabulary for Unit 10 and students will read the literature, but we will also do a poetry unit to pair with this week's Poetry Slam.
**It was a cool and overcast, but the students enjoyed their Eagle Wing lunch at Barrie Park on Wednesday. Thanks to M. Meagher, C. Bravo, G. Garcia and R. Leveridge for helping to make their lunch special!
**Our Library trip went well. The walk there was very pleasant. At the library, Maze librarian, Ms. Pulliam, gave a tour and showed students where to find age appropriate books and dvds. She shared some stories, songs and movement activities with the students. All students who filled out an application received their library card. All cards were placed in your child's backpack.
**It was super rainy and cool but District 97's Annual FUN RUN went on. A big shout out to Ava and Lottie for their participation in the event. There were lots of puddles and mud, but we made it to the finish line!
**Reminder--Our Field Trip to the Oak Park Conservatory is Thursday, May 17th. I still need a few permission slips. We will eat our lunch early so we can begin our walk at 11:35 am. I have G. Garcia, K. Mikos, I. Henry, M. Chlebek and Yaya's Grandma volunteering to help. Also this week--The Traveling Seeds Experience Box from the Oak Park Conservatory will arrive in our classroom. There will be lots of cool hands on activiites for the students to explore. We get to keep the box for the week.
**It's almost here!!! The Irving Art Fest is Thursday, May 17th from 6:00-8:00 pm. There will be art work from every child in the school displayed along with a Chorus performance, dance lessons, Shakespeare performed and of course THE POETRY SLAM!!! Currently, we have 6 of our own signed up to recite their poems. WOW--2 students have written their own poems!! Don't miss it! I will send some last minute information on Tuesday.
**Taste of Irving is Friday, May 18th from 6-8 pm. See the information sheet on the digital backpack for further info.
**Irving Family Math Night--"Messy Math" will be held on Thursday, May 24th from 6:30-8:00 pm.
**We are continuing our ABC Countdown to the last day of Kindergarten. The boys totally loved being Kings for a day! They decreed an extra recess and playing in our space stations. Look out--Letter Q will be here soon! (for all those girls waiting to be a queen.) Thanks to all our riddle and jokesters on Letter J day. We had many laughs as Alex and Izzy read from their joke books.
**Our last Friendship Club will be next Friday. The students voted on how best to end Friendship Club. The largest vote getter was to go outside and do an activity. Much thanks to Ms. Kwiatt for her explanation of the voting process.
**Future Field Trip--Pizza and Play End of the Year Family Picnic at Rehm Park is Wednesday, May 30th from 10:30-12:30 pm. Please send back blue permission slip ASAP. Thanks!
**Spelling City has been updated.
This week:
It continues to be about seeds and plants. Much has happened this week in the sprouting department! At day 5--Morning Glory, Sunflower and Marigold seeds all sprouted. Students continued their watering and nurturing of their particular plant. Nasturtium planters did not give up hope. At Day 9, they too had sprouting seeds! Students discussed why some seeds sprouted quicker and others took longer. They accessed their prior knowledge from their unit on investigating water. Water has to "climb in" the spaces to soften the seed in order for it to sprout. The nasturtium seed had a very hard outer surface. Some of the other seeds perhaps had surfaces that let the water climb in quicker. The students reflected in their science journals their seeds stages of growth. They were fascinated by each plants root system which they viewed under the magnifiers. They noted leaf shape, shoot or stem type and if any secondary leaves were appearing. They made sketches of their baby plant. They also learned about the care of plant when they took it home. These baby plants, along with a cool card went home on Friday as a present for Mom and as a home study activity. Station Day activities this week included origami tulips, seed sequence and addition story problem writing and illustration.
Reading/Social Studies: The students began Unit 10 I Know a Lot! in the Treasures Reading series. This is our final unit. The students talked about all the things they learned this year. Many students talked about not knowing anything about reading or only knowing a few words or not being able to count to 100 at the beginning of the year or not knowing how to write anything. Most students were very proud of what they now know. Some students still want to know more! I shared the Big Book, "What Do You Know!" The students made predictions about story content. The students were able to respond to the literature by making connections to certain parts of the story in their own lives. The students worked on the sight words with, my, me, where. All the kindergarten sight words have been introduced. The students spent time in pairs creating sentences using their word cards, picture cards and punctuation cards. Each pair of students shared the sentences they made. Target letters Jj, Yy, and Zz were reviewed. Students continued to work on recognizing and using nouns, verbs, adjectives and pronouns. The Big Book story was reread. Students used the illustrations and words to tell what was fantasy and reality. Students took turns using the retelling cards to retell the story in their own words. Our puppet friend, Mr. Happy, assisted using using our elkonin boxes to blend phonemes to make words. The students are blending 3-4-5 and even 6 phonemes! The phoneme qu was reviewed. Students read their decodable and leveled readers and paper stories on their own this week and discussed the stories in small groups. We are working on a special end of the year project. (It's amazing!) Stay tuned. Our workstation time was dedicated to this project!!
Math: The students continue their mass review of everything math! Counting beyond 100, telling time by the hour, recognizing coins and their values and creating their own story problems, illustrating the process and writing the number sentence were just some of the highlights for this week.
Writing: The students continue to reflect in their journals. This week, each student viewed their beginning and midyear journals to see how much their writing has changed. They were amazed and pleased with their progress. The students reviewed steps in creating a paragraph. They have begun in class research on worms which is the topic for their final paragraph.
Science: The students continued their study of seeds. In this weeks experiment, the students took a closer look at the inside of a seed. A pinto bean and pea seed were soaked overnight in water. Each student was given an soaked set of the two seeds and seeds that were not soaked. They used their magnifiers and recorded in their science journal similarities and differences in both groups. All students observed that the soaked seed were bigger then the other seeds. Yes--the water did climb into the seed spaces. The students then split the seed in half to observe the inside. They noticed the outside covering of the seed (coat) came off and on the inside in the corner was the tiny baby plant (embryo). The rest of the inside is call the seed food, where the seed gets its nourishment. Students worked in their science journal to create a diagram of their seed parts. Pretty cool! Next week--sprouting sponges and seed bags--the world of hydroponics! We will also begin to discuss our plantings for our outside garden plot. I will send information to you this week on our outdoor planting schedule.
Technology: The students continue to use a variety of apps for enhancement and enrichment during their reading, math and choice time. Oh---end of the year project!!!!!!!!
Literature: "Eating the Alphabet" in English and in Spanish, "Garden," "How Do Seeds Grow?" "Have You Seen Bugs?" "What Mom's Can't Do," "Curious George Plants a Tree," "Growing Vegetable Soup," "Seeds," "Fancy Nancy's Marvelous Mother's Day Brunch," "Muncha, Muncha, Muncha," "Bennet Cerf's Book of Riddles, "Joke Book."
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