**These last 2 weeks have gone by so quickly. It is hard to believe we are in the middle of October! The students continue to learn to work together and also independently. They are learning valuable lessons about themselves and others. I have seen some nice growth in their skill acquisition. Hats off to their successes!
**WOW! Our class has raised over $900 in pledges for the RUN FUN!!! We have 11 students from our class participating. Come out and cheer on Tuesday, October 16th. We are running at 8:30 am. Kindergarten runners are wearing BLUE. Let's all wear BLUE to show our support!!!!
**WALKING FIELD TRIP to the MAZE BRANCH LIBRARY on Friday, October 26th from 8:30-10:30 am. All applications for new cards needed to be in today! Please send back permission slip ASAP. I will contact parents who are interested in walking with us.
**Ms. Howell has recorded 4,200 minutes for our class in the Million Minutes Reading Challenge so far. Keep reading and recording those minutes!
**Picture Day was successful. We had our group picture taken outside. Great smiles! A big thanks to C. Mims, M. Shwager and L. Pointer for their help!
**All students participated in Walk to School Day. Students who did not have a chance to walk to school, walked at lunch time with Mr. Hancock. All students received a hand stamp and colored their shoe. Mr. Hancock will decorate the gym with them.
**Don't forget to send back your Parent Conference response forms. I have finished up my fall assessments in preparation. I am looking forward to meeting with you to share your child's progress.
**Please Note that school is in session only in the morning on Thursday, October 18th and Friday, October 19th. Dismissal is at 11:00 am. Hephzibah and Magical Minds pick up at 11:00 am. as well the district school bus.
**Route to Reading Rotation 1 will conclude on Thursday, October 17th. At that time you will receive information on skill mastery. Route to Reading Rotation 2 will begin on Tuesday, October 23rd.
**Congratulations to our Student Council Reps--Isabella and Angus! That had their first meeting on Tuesday. In their report they indicated the they will sponsor a food drive.
**Green Team Reps Ivy and Amare reported that their team discussed ways to be "green" in the classroom. We talked about it as a class.
**Our Parent Helper Station Day began today. K. Jones was on hand to assist with a learning station. Look on the left side of my blog for the schedule. If you still would like to sign up....just email me!
**The October Book Order is due October 16th. You may order on line or through the magazine.
**In Friendship Club, Ms. Bell Bey has begun a unit on safety which includes lessons from Second Step and Talking about Touching (personal safety curriculum.)
**Mr. Packer is beginning a unit of study on Chance and Probability in math enrichment.
The past 2 weeks:
It continues to be about apples. We explored types of apples and apple names and how they are alike and different. The students learned how to diagram and created a diagram of an apple including its parts. They took a look under the microscope at skin from a Red Delicious and Golden Delicious. Way Cool!
The students participated in a taste test and graphed their results. You can check out their choices at conference time. The students counted apple seeds. We made apple sauce as our culminating treat! The students discussed the sequence of events in making apple sauce. They observed the apple peeling machine work its magic! We discussed the cooking process. The students sorted the apple stars, tops, bottoms with the left over flower or blossom and skin that came out like a ribbon. After cooking, the students watched the immersion blender spin and make very smooth apple sauce. Lots of language and conversation! Many students sampled the fresh apple sauce. The students read both fiction and nonfiction books about apples. Our station day activities included creating an Apple Book, making apple print trees, printing with the apple star, writing and illustrating about the change in the season (fall,) turning pumpkins into jack-o-lanterns, sorting by exclusion short a pictures and coloring by code. Next week we will begin mini units on bats, spiders and skeletons. Yes, we do have 2 bats in our room! Oh, and 4 spiders!!! They will be visiting until Halloween. Did I mention there is a leg bone in our room????!!
Reading/Social Studies: These past 2 weeks the students worked on completing Unit 1 Families in our Treasures Reading Series. Our first reading assessment is Monday. Our phonics portion keyed in on target sounds short a and letter Mm. The students completed their lists of people, places, animals and things and learned the formal word NOUN. The students worked on listening comprehension using the big book stories, "Picnic at Apple Park," "Night Animals" and "Family Fun." They identified where the stories took place (setting) and made predictions on what would happen next. The students responded and retold events in a story sequence. We discussed how the story structure can help provide evidence for our predictions. The students worked on concept words--same, different. We began the process of phoneme blending or putting sounds together to form a word. We used A and M and A and T. Our puppet friend, Mr. Happy helped us. He is way more fun than Ms. Gullo when he sounds things out!! Robust Vocabulary for the past 2 weeks included ACTIVITY, COOPERATE, EXCITING, EXHAUSTED, GATHER, CELEBRATE, CHANGE, EAGER, OCCASION and RELATIVE. Please ask your child about these words. Our thinking stories were "The Squeaky Bed" and "Jennifer Bing Why Won't You Sing?" The students thought and responded about the cultural perspective (taking place in Puerto Rico and music and dance in other cultures.) The students review all their sight vocabulary thus far. They practiced spelling their words on their dry erase boards. Students worked on reading aloud and shared their pre-decodable stories with a partner. The students had great fun during their workstation time. Their workstations for the past 2 weeks included creating sentences from sight words and pictures, reading a story and adding a new page to the end (what could happen next?) Writing a sentence about themselves and reading it to a partner, reading a story and filling out a Reader's Response sheet, drawing a picture of themselves as a baby and then as a 5 or 6 year old and writing a sentence about what did then and what they can do now, working with word families and using the iPad to create a sentence using 3 of their sight words and taking a picture of it.
Math: We are counting everything in sight!! How high can we go? 20? 30? 50? higher?? The students are working on the concept of place value using straws in groups of ten. We review the word DIGIT. The students learned how to play "Monster Squeeze" as a floor game and on their iPad using concepts of greater and less than to find a mystery number. It's a great partner game. We are "feeling" number by using our sand paper numbers. The students continue to work on number recognition 0-20. They began the introduction and exploration of symmetry. What is symmetry? What makes something symmetrical? We took a look at symmetry in nature (leaves, rocks, flowers,) symmetry in our body (what if we drew a line down the middle of our bodies?) The students experimented with cutting out a circle and creating a symmetrical design on each side. Cool!!! Students reviewed common and pattern block shape names and are beginning to recognize geometric solids.
Writing: The students continue to work on adding more details to their drawings and having their drawings reflect the words they use to describe them. They continue to use the prompts from our Treasures Reading series. They are working on forming a simple sentence (naming and telling) and to leave a space between each word. We always begin each sentence with a capital letter and use an end mark (period.) The students continue to work on their Frog Jump Letters. They have learned the formation for F, E, D, P, B, R and N.
Technology: The iPad continues to be a valuable tool to enhance our learning! In reading and writing the apps Intro to Letters, My ABC's, ABC Touch and Sound Sort are assisting with letter recognition and sound foundation. The students are using the apps Montessori Crossword to assist sound/symbol development and Alphabet Magic to assist with sentence formation and illustration. In Math, the students are using the apps Intro to Math, Number Find and Numbers to assist in number recognition and patterns. This week the app Monster Squeeze and Sam Phibian were introduced. The students work independently or with a partner on these apps.
Literature: "The Best Class Picture Ever," "The Pumpkin Patch," "The Bumpy Little Pumpkin," "Johnny Appleseed," "The Four Seasons," "A Book About Christopher Columbus," "Let's Read About Christopher Columbus," "If you Give a Cat a Cupcake," "Autumn Days," "Autumn," "Colorful Leaves," "The Big Apple Mystery," "Picking Apples," "Let's Go Apple Picking."
No comments:
Post a Comment