**It has been an exciting week at Irving School! Our leaf collection is complete. The students categorized leaves by their color, shape, edges (pointy.) Students were chosen to label each leaf group. Smile for the group photo!! On Halloween, the students made their bat origami and had a chance to fly their bats inside the classroom. Our Halloween Parade and Party were fun. There was a chill in the air but Super Heroes, Jedi Knights, Princesses, Bumble Bees, Furry Animals, Mummies and Prairie Girls were among the highlights of our classroom costumes. There was even a giant spider and Human M and M. The students enjoyed refreshments and leaf and spider rubbings when they returned to the classroom. A BIG THANKS to our Room Parents and Volunteers for assistance on a very busy day. Our 50th Day of School was full of the number 50. In the afternoon, the students worked in math stations playing "Race to 50," creating 50's inspired patterns and completing our number grid to 50.
**MILLION MINUTES UPDATE : Sophie's mom reports that 19 students have read 300 minutes!!
That qualifies them for a red ribbon!! Our class has read a total of 15,000 minutes!!! WOW! Let's keep reading everyone. We can do it! The next benchmark will be 600 minutes.
**Students participated in an informative presentation by Ms. Allen of the Multicultural Center on Dia De Los Muertos, a Mexican celebration of the dead. Ms. Allen used a variety of pictures and artifacts in her presentation. At the end, the students were able to go up close and personal and look as well as try some of the instruments and artifacts. Great presentation!
**Thanks to all of you who sent food for ROCK the PANTRY. It was a total success and Room 110 were all rock stars. I am told that Student Council has an amazing amount of food to give to the Food Pantry. Our reps, Angus and Isabella will help pack it up for shipping at their Tuesday meeting.
**Information and permission slip for our field trip to BROOKFIELD ZOO is in your child's folder. The cost of the trip is $7.00. It will take place on Monday, November 19th. Please send in your slip and money ASAP. Thanks!
**NO SCHOOL on Tuesday, November 6th--Election Day. This is a Teacher's Institute Day.
**Students at Irving School will cast their own ballots on Monday, November 5th. Who will be our next president??!! Mr. Packer will have our school results by the end of the day.
**The Wellness Committee is having another Taste Test on Wednesday, November 7th at 2:00 pm. The clue is--something you can eat with a spoon!
**Picture Retake Day is Tuesday, November 13th in the morning.
**Irving School's Annual Turkey Trot is Thursday, November 15th at 2:15 pm. Come on out and cheer students from Grades 3-5. Who will win the turkey this year????
**Author Fran Manushkin of the Katie Woo stories fame will be visiting Irving School on Tuesday, November 20th at 9:00 am.
**SAVE the DATE! Our WINTER CONCERT featuring Kindergarten and First Grade is Thursday, December 20th. Because of our large class sizes, the concert will be held twice--first performance is at 8:15 am.--the second performance is at 9:45 am. in the Irving Auditorium. It is going to be great!
**Mr. Packer continues to work with student small groups on a Probability and Chance project.
**Ms. Bell Bey continued with her unit on Personal Safety.
This week:
It was all about skeletons, the number 50 and leaves! Skeletons are not so scary. Everyone has one! The students viewed a human leg bone (courtesy of my brother, Dr. Gullo,) animals bones, a lizard bone, a backbone of a mouse and of course examined our own resident skeleton, Mr. Skelly. The students read informational texts about the human body. They learned that we would just be blobs without our skeletons. We have 206 bones in our bodies but babies have more! That is because their bones are not fully fused together. Our own Lucy, shared a great book called, "Dem Bones." The story took a look at how all the bones connect! We will see the story and music version on Monday. The number 50 will be cover in the Math section. The students did have fun dressing up in 50's garb--white shirts, slicked back hair, pony tail ans even a pink poodle skirt! The students discussed, labeled and photographed their leaf collection. We began our second author study on author and illustrator Lois Elhert and read the story, "Leaf Man." We also began pour prep inquiry on our next cross-curricular theme--Bears. Station Day activities this week included creating our own leaf man or animal--we will write about it on Monday, sponge painted bears, patterns block bears, unifix cube build, count and record and writing 50 words.
Reading/Social Studies: The students are working to complete Unit 2 Friends in our Treasures Reading series. This week centered around friends who solve problems together. The students listened to the story, "Simon and Molly Plus Hester." They asked and answered questions and responded to the literature by making connections in their own lives. The students reviewed the sight words a and like and used them in their written sentences. They reviewed letter sounds Pp and Ss and what a noun is. Students took turns in small group retelling our story using the retelling cards. In phonemic awareness, the students categorized and blended phonemes (individual sounds) to create 3 letter words. The students read their pre decodable story, " I Like, We Like." They made predictions about story content and practiced reading to a partner. We used our oral vocabulary cards to develop our Robust Vocabulary in the tale from Haiti called, "The Turtle and the Sheep." Robust Vocabulary this week included PROBLEM, SOLVE, GRATEFUL, THOUGHTFUL and INCLUDE. Our reading puppet, Mr. Happy assisted in our blending of 3 letter words. The students used their dry erase boards to record the sound they heard at the beginning or at the end of a given word. In our read aloud folktale, "The Little Red Hen," the students listened to fluent reading, recurring phrases and discussed what the lesson of the story was. The students sequenced events in the story. The students read their predecodable stories, "Pam" and "We Like" and practiced reading for fluency. We continue to review asking questions, nouns, colors and initial sounds Pp, Ss, Aa and Mm. Workstations this week included, creating a sentence 2 friends might say to each other and putting it in a speech bubble, expressing your feelings by drawing yourself happy and sad and writing a sentence about both, reading and discussing a story and creating a new page, using iTalk to record students reading and playing it back for their own critique and working with blends or short a word construction using Word Wizard.
Math: The students practiced counting to 50 by 1's and by 10's. They practiced writing their numbers to 50. The students continued work on creating 2 and then 3 dimensional structures using straws and pipe cleaners, Magneetos, Mini Magneetos and Konnects. Some students worked together with others for a combined project. We are in the process of setting up a Structure Museum! Students are working on telling a number story--tell a 2 plus 1 story --tell a 5 minus 2 story. The students are beginning to understand the combining and decomposing of sets. We continue to work on counting by 10's and place value.
Writing: We have begun looking at the formation of our Starting Corner Capitals--H, K, L. The students are using wooden pieces to assist in formation understanding, They continue to use their mini boards, chalk, sponges. The students are beginning to use more lowercase in their journals and are beginning to locate where to write an uppercase letter and lowercase letter on lined paper. Students continue to use inventive spelling and their sight vocabulary to create sentences. I am stressing starting with a capital letter and making sure there is a space between every word. All sentences have some sort of ending mark.
Technology: In reading, student small groups used the app Montessori Crossword to sound out words with 3 sounds--Look at the picture-- touch the box--listen to the sound--find the letter and move it to the box to spell the word, the same app was used with student small groups working with beginning blends. Partners worked on the app iCardSort to move words into categories--colors--not colors. Students are practicing their listening to a recording of themselves reading using the app iTalk. In math, students continue to work with the apps Monster Squeeze, Dot to Dot Lite, Intro to Math and Sam Phibian. This week we introduced the app Number Find.
Literature: "Leaf Man," "Creak, Thump, Crack," "Dem Bones," "Your Bones," "The Thirteen Nights of Halloween," "Skeleton Cat," "Skeletons," "Mi Cuerpo," "The Human Body," "Going on a Bear Hunt," "Amazing Bears," "Bears."
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