**No snow yet but the students are hoping for just a little! The students read about the feast of St. Nicholas and some students even put their shoes out on the eve of December 5th. We also read about the Indian feast of Diwali which is considered a winter festival that took place in November. The festival of Hanukkah has begun. Asher's mom will come and share their family traditions on Monday afternoon. If you have a family tradition that you would like to come and speak about, just email me the day and time. Next week, we will also be learning more about St. Lucia Day, A Scandinavian festival and the Christmas Story. (the Bible version) We have read about the use of lights in all of these celebrations.
**Our gingerbread baking was a huge success! Everyone had a ball--students and parent volunteers alike! The smell of gingerbread filled the school. The cookies themselves were truly works of art! We made so many that our office staff and some of our teachers received a special treat. Hope you enjoyed them too! A big thanks to our volunteers, Mr. Segbawu, Mr. Meagher, Ms. Jones, Ms. Bovio, Ms. Nunes, Ms. Gurgas, Ms. Connelly, Ms. Pointer, Ms. Struckmeyer, Ms. Frank and our beloved Ms. Dennis!
**If you have questions regarding your child's report card, don't hesitate to contact me.
**Route to Reading Rotation 4 is concluding this week. Your child will be bringing home a paper concerning mastery of their particular skill. Route to Reading Rotation 5 will begin in January.
**The Irving Cookie Crumble and Craft Fair was loads of fun! Irving's own Green Team was selling cards, sun catches and cool crayons. Way to go Amare and Ivy!! Ellie was selling cool handmade ornaments and Zaria and her family were selling sweet smelling diffusers. Lots of really nice gifts. I was very impressed at the quality of the items. Hope you made it there.
**The students will begin their rehearsal in the auditorium this week. I think we are set for our performance party. We will have a treat and drink table set up for after the 8:15 am. performance with finger foods on it for participants and guests that will remain up and stocked again for after the 9:45 am performance. In between performances, the students will be working on a craft or two. I am asking all guests to send a finger food with your child the morning of December 20th. It can be veggies and dip, crackers, cookies, fruit, popcorn etc. Our room parents will provide the juice and water. Our Winter Concert featuring Kindergarten and First Grade is Thursday, December 20th --same concert done twice--the first at 8:15 am and the second at 9:45 am. in the Irving Auditorium. It is going to be great!! All are invited!
**In Mr. Packer math, the students worked on problem solving skills using stories and dots to create pictures. Cool use of the students imaginations!
**In Friendship Club, Ms. Bell Bey played Feelings Bingo with the class.
This week:
It was all about the gingerbread! The students gathered information from books and internet sources to find out how gingerbread began and why it is so popular at this time of year. Ginger was a valuable spice a long time ago traced back to the Greeks and Romans. A cake like treat was made using ginger. As time went on, Europeans began using flour, ginger and other spices to create cookies, cakes and houses. We read many stories about various gingerbread characters. The students worked on a compare/contrast project where they discussed each story we read and how it ended, (was he/she eaten?), who the characters were (boy, girl, baby, cowboy, fox, wolf, coyote), what the plot of the story was. They had loads of fun. The students wrote in their journals, counted gingerbread men, created their own gingerbread man/woman and graphed patterns following their gingerbread persons trail. They are now in the process of writing 4 sentences about their gingerbread figure using their word bank words. So excited to read them!
Reading/Social Studies: The students began Unit 4 Food in their Treasures Reading series. The unit started with the question about where our food comes from. The students accessed prior knowledge about stores, farms, markets and orchards as places where food is found. Some students offered that they had gardens in their back yard in the summer. The students listened to the big book story, "Apple Farmer Annie." The students listened and discussed where Annie lived and her daily activities as an apple orchard farmer. Students made connections about their recent theme on apples and the types of apples that Annie grew and what she made with them. Some students related that they had gone to a farmer's market and bought apples and apple cider. Our target word for this week is to. We added this to our other sight words and it has now become part of our daily Wacky Sentence. Our target letter and sound this week is Nn. The students also reviewed action words or verbs by taking a noun picture and adding their own verb to it. The students used their retelling cards to retell the story in their own words. Our Robust Vocabulary this week included FARMER, MARKET, INGREDIENTS, COMBINE, NUTRITIOUS. Our puppet friend, Mr. Happy helped the students with their phoneme blending and segmenting skills. We continue to use our elkonin boxes and blocks to move the block where we hear the sound or phoneme. The students read their pre decodable story, "Can Nan?" They made predictions about story content. Students took turns reading each page (the other students followed along with their finger.) We reviewed what a question mark was and why we use it at the end of a sentence. Student answered questions about the story and then practiced reading the story to a partner for fluency development. The students listened to the selection, "Pizza Please." They had lots of fun activating their own prior knowledge about making their own homemade pizza, comparing and contrasting the ways and ingredients families use to make pizza and that some students had never made their own pizza but ordered it from a pizza place. The students listened to the expository (informational) text, "From Strawberry Field to Strawberry Salad." They discussed what a diagram is and how to follow a recipe. The students read their paper story, "We Go." They worked in small groups, reading aloud and discussing story elements. Workstations this week included using the sight words can and to and illustrating their sentence, feeling foods--where the students feel into the bag , pull out a food, describe it to a partner and write 2 sentences about it, Word Pies, where the students have to create 4 words-one in each corner of their pie using the letters provided (3-4 phonemes). Some students are beginning to create words using beginning blends and digraphs. Small student groups worked on reading and discussing their leveled reader and completing and answering questions on the story using the iPad Magnetic Letters. Great work on sentence structure!
Math: The students worked on their number forming rhymes from 0-5. They used their dry erase boards and markers to practice. They started to work on creating their number rhyme sticker book. The students continue to work on rote counting to 75. The students created and continued gingerbread patterns on their Starfall iPad app. They played the "Tricky Teen Game" and used tally marks to count from 11-19. They continue to listen for information in their story problems to determine if you add or take away. We are revisiting penny value and counting by tens using pennies. The students got a lot of practice counting all the "Pennies for Sandy." So many groups of ten. We were over 3.000 and I am still not finished tallying the final count!
Writing: The students are working on a Gingerbread Writing project. They created their special gingerbread girl or boy and are now using their word bank to compose 4 sentences about him or her. They began work on the "Magic C" letters which are starting center capitals. They also continue to use their writing prompts from our Treasures series. The emphasis remains on letter formation, naming and telling, spacing between words in a sentence and placement of words on a given line.
Technology: This week in reading, the students worked with the iPad app Magic Letters to complete writing assignments related to their leveled reader. The app Rocket Speller has become a favorite! Can you put the letters in the correct place to spell the word? Student small groups used the app Magic Reading 3 to work on blending and segmenting 3-4 and even 5 phoneme words. The app Story Kit is being used for student fluency checks. In math, the app Starfall-Gingerbread was used for patterning and identifying and describing shapes. The app Monster Squeeze is very popular. We wish it went beyond 30! Student partners used the app Number Find to plot strategies to find the targeted number as fast as they can on the 100's grid.
Literature: "Gingerbread Man," "The Gingerbread Boy," "The Gingerbread Doll," "The Gingerbread Girl," "Gingerbread Jimmy," "The Gingerbread Man Loose in the School," "Gingerbread Fred," "The Gingerbread Baby," "Count the Days to Hanukkah," "Celebrations: St. Nicholas Day," "Celebrate Diwali," "The Story of Hanukkah," "The Gingerbread Cowboy."
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