**Happy New Year and welcome back everyone! I trust everyone had a restful and fun break. Many students traveled over the break and shared their travel journal writings and illustrations. The forecast of snow next week has gotten everyone excited. We will see!!
**The students participated in a school wide lock down drill on Friday afternoon. Our class had a great discussion about all kinds of safety. The importance of being prepared-- whether it is for bad weather, a fire or a stranger entering our building was discussed.
**Parent/ Teacher Conference info is in your child's homework folder. Please confirm your time and send it back to me. Parent/Teacher Conferences for mid year will be held on Monday, January 28th, Tuesday, January 29th, Wednesday, January 30th and Thursday, January 31st. Please note that Thursday and Friday, January 30th and 31st school is in session in the MORNING ONLY. Dismissal is at 11:00 am. Hephzibah and River Forest Community Center pick up is at 11:00 am.
**Vision Screening for Kindergarten students will be held on Friday, January 18th beginning at 9:00 am.
** Mid year DIBELS testing will take place next week. I will be sharing the results with you at conference time. Letter recognition, letter sound recognition and blending sounds to create words will be assessed.
**Route to Reading Rotation 4 will resume on Tuesday, January 29th.
**NO SCHOOL on Monday, January 21st in observance of M. L. King Day.
**Our 100th Day in School is fast approaching!!! Our 100th Day Celebration will take place on Friday, February 1, 2013 from 9-11 am. I have 8 volunteers who signed up during Open House. They are K. Jones, D. Bovio, M. Schwager, T. Larnell, A. Struckmeyer, L. Banghart, C. Cummings and M. Meagher. Some of you have already confirmed that you are still coming. Please confirm with me if you have not already. We could still use a few more. The more, the merrier!!! A special project will go home with each student with instructions this coming Friday, January 18th. The project is due on Tuesday, January 29th. Our celebration will focus on the number 100 and counting by 10's to 100.
**Check out the Irving website for information on the YOUNG SCIENTIST CONFERENCE being held on February 23rd at Mann School. Registration is being handled online this year. It is a really cool conference for all ages! I highly recommend you check it out.
**I am beginning mid year assessments next week in math, reading and writing. These assessments will also be shared with you at conference time. The students are really working hard!
**Reading Grandma Mary began her 6th year listening to young readers this past Friday. She will be with us every Friday morning from 9-11 am. She is thrilled to be back and we are so happy to have her!
**In Friendship Club this week, Ms. Bell Bey worked with the students on the concept of working together toward a common goal.
**Mr. Packer continued his lesson on being a detective and looking for clues to solve story problems.
**As the weather gets chillier and maybe snowier--don't forget to dress for the weather each day. Snow pants, gloves, boots, scarves and hats or hoods are a must! Don't forget to send gym shoes on gym days.
**Keep saving those GIANT BOXES (the kind you can climb in) and other COOL stuff for our space station construction in APRIL, during our Space theme. I cannot store anything now. I will have you start sending things in after spring break.
**What--nothing to do this Sunday afternoon (January 13th)--come join me at Ridgeland Ice Rink from 2-4 pm for ice skating!! Some of my first grade friends will also be there. I hear there are special walkers to help assist beginning skaters. Check the ice rink website for details.
This week:
It was all about wishing for snow and observing water. The students turned our Friendship Tree into a Mitten Tree after reading and discussing the inspirational story, "The Mitten Tree," by Candace Christiansen. Ask your child to retell the story. The students began an inquiry about the properties and behaviors of WATER. Who knew a water droplet could be so much fun!! Station Day activities included, creating a windsock snowman, conversational snowmen, written reflections about winter and counting on with snowmen to solve addition problems. We had a teachable moment this week when Sierra announced that her pet fish had passed away. The students talked about their pets being like part of their family and how sad it was to lose your pet. Sierra wanted to bring in her fish so we could see what it looked like. Sierra brought it in and talked about how she cared for it and why it might have died. All the students took turns observing the fish under the magnifier. Students commented how pretty the eyes were and about the fins and tail. The students shared kind words with Sierra that carried through her day!
Reading/Social Studies: The students began Unit 5 Animals in our Treasures Reading series. The students accessed background knowledge by discussing animals they know as pets and animals they might know from seeing them in the zoo. The students listened to the big book story, "Mama Cat has Three Kittens." They made predictions about story content and talked about the actions the cat or kitten might perform. Those students who had cats as pets made connections between their pet and the cats in the story. Our sight word this week is the word is. We reviewed it along with all the words taught thus far. The students played "Hands Up, Hands Down." Many students commented on how many words we now have in the game. Our target sound this week is Oo. The students worked on associating the sound with picture cards. The students listened to the rhyme, "The Ostrich is Talking." They were able to pick out the rhyming words as well as the word that had a short Oo in them. The students continued to review and work with verbs by making a list of what kittens can do. Our robust vocabulary for this week included ACTION, COMPARE, CONTENT, GENTLE, POUNCES. The students made comparisons in the Big Book story about what the two kittens do compared to the third kitten named Boris. The students worked with their elkonin boxes to blend sounds using short o to make words. They read their decodable story, "Sit," making predictions and commenting at the end of the story about the fish. The students listened to the vocabulary card tale, "Mama Mouse and El Gato." They discussed the similarities and differences between cats and mice. In the expository text, "Let's Go To The Vet," the students reviewed what a diagram was and focused on the content of the story. They worked together with a partner to create sentences using target words and pictures and read them back to one another. They did an exercise where they placed a marker in the place where they heard the short o sound. (beginning, middle or end) Our workstations this week included word maker, where the students chose a picture and found the letters to spell it (3-4 phonemes), sight word spell and sentence practice using the app Magnetic Letters, I Can-They Can-people and animal sentences and illustrations, reading, recording and critiquing a leveled reader story using Story Kit, creating a Favorite Pet Graph and Buddy Reading where a pair of students shared a story, discussed it and told about their favorite part.
Math: The students continue to work on rote counting to 70 and beyond and writing single and double digit numbers. The students did some special work with counting on addition and writing teen numbers. The students began working in their Math Process Journals. They are learning to listened for information in a story problem, illustrating its particular problem and writing the solution in the form of a number sentence and writing about how they solved the problem. They are also working on pertinent math vocabulary--plus, minus, equals, all together, in all, are left, problem, solution, equation. The students are also learning about joining two sets (addition) and decomposing sets (subtraction).
Writing: The students revisited forming uppercase letters using the cues from our Handwriting Without Tears series. The students continue to work on sentence formation--beginning with a capital letter, spacing between words in a sentence, having some kind of ending mark, placement of words on a given line, rereading their sentences to see if they name and tell and refining their letter formation. Next week, we will begin formal teaching of lowercase letters.
Science: The students began with an inquiry discussion/dictation on what they knew about WATER. The students were introduced to the word property and what it means. A property is a type of behavior. Each student was given an experiment book along with a science reflection journal to record their experiment results as well as their own thoughts and drawings or sketches. In Experiment 1, the students explored water using a variety of tools--straws, sticks, cups etc. Using these tools, they described how water feels, smells, sounds and looks. In Experiment 2, the students discovered water droplets have their own shape and can "stick" to one another. Using a pipet, the students practiced sucking up water into it and releasing the water back into the cup. It was really cool to observe them carefully trying to capture just one drop of water and putting it on their wax paper. The students delighted in pushing one water droplet into another to form a bigger droplet. We talked about the scientific word--cohesion, to describe this process. The students found it hard to separate the droplets. The students went over the rules for water table use. They found a variety of tools and toys to experiment with. Our class water tornadoes big and small are out for use. Ms. Dennis and Amare brought their battery operated water tornadoes for use also! Next week--"climbing water."
Technology: In reading, the students are using the apps Story Kit to record themselves reading and story and critique how they sound for building fluency. The app Magnetic Letters is was used to create sentences using sight words with appropriate capitalization and punctuation. The app Reading Sightwords was used with partners to read the word--record themselves reading the word and playing it back and using the stylus to practice writing the word. In math student small groups continue to use the apps Number Find, 100's Board and Top It Addition as an enrichment to their math curriculum. At Choice Time, the student began exploring manually the Marble Works blocks and inclines. They are having lots of discussion on how to build in order to get the marble down and through.
Literature: "Water," "I'm Bored," "A Drop of Water," "Water," "Ice," "Investigating Water," Chapter 1, "It's Winter," "Penguins to the Rescue," "When Will It Snow?" "Gingerbread Pirates," (thanks, Sophie!) "Winter is Here," "Thomas' Snowsuit," "Bear Feels Sick," "Snow Day for Mouse."
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