**Let me update you on the past 2 weeks of learning fun for my students as well as myself. I was fortunate to attend the International Learning Disabilities Conference last week. I was able to meet and listen to many professionals speak on the subjects of math, reading, science, technology and behavior. It was very enlightening and motivating. I returned with some great ideas.
**Our Valentine Sharing Party was wonderful! Many samples of "heart felt" feelings of love and friendship were shared among the students. They passed out and read their Valentines, played "Heart to Heart," and ate some treats. Thanks to the great show of parents, siblings and grandparents at our celebration. We were so glad you came!
**Route to Reading Rotation 5 began February 19th. You should have received a letter of notification concerning your child's skill level. Route to Reading Rotation 5 will conclude on March 6th.
**The FUN FAIR is almost here!!!! Come on out and play a game with me on Saturday, February 23rd from 11-3 pm. There will be games, prizes, food, dancing for desserts and a silent auction (a bed time story read by me---lunch with your bf's at the Junction Diner-bid-bid!!! Tickets will be sold after school and on the day of the fair. Special Attraction--What TEAM will get the PIE in the FACE??????!!! Toward the end of the Fun Fair, join Mr. Packer as he serves as MC for Irving's version of "America Has Talent." You may see some familiar faces!! Bring your money to put in the containers of your favorite team. The team with the most money gets the pie the face! It's the battle of the Cutie Pies, Pie Terminators, Who Me's and the 2 Sak P's!!!
**Asher's mom has put the finishing touches on our classroom FUN DAY BASKET. Thanks to all who have donated money or items.
** Kindergarten students participated in a Hearing Screening this past Friday at 9:00 am.
**Congratulations to our new Student Council Reps--Ellie and Keyshaun! Their first meeting is Tuesday, February 26th during the lunch hour.
**Dr. Seuss Family Reading Night is Thursday, February 28th from 6:30-7:30 pm. There is still time to sign up! Let's celebrate the love of reading!
**February is National Dental Month! Amare's mom is coming to give a little program about good dental care of Tuesday, February 26th at 10:00 am.
**It's our first meeting of the new year with our Book Buddies from Ms. Balicki's room. They will join us on Friday, March 1st at 1:30 pm.
**In Friendship Club, Ms. Bell Bey shared with the students ways to be caring and considerate to others. The students discussed the people, animals and things they most care about. We turned our Christmas Tree into the "I Care" Tree.
**Mr. Packer continues to work with small groups of students on his organizing details lesson.
** The new UPDATED list of Station Day Volunteers for the rest of the school is posted. I will also send a hard copy.
**I would like your feedback about our Busy Reader Program. Please take a few minutes to fill out the feedback sheet and return it to me. Thanks!
**The students have completed their Science Unit on Investigating Water. They really enjoyed it! Our next Science Unit is "Sunshine, Shadows and the Moon." Our next cross curricular theme is SPACE!
**Keep saving those giant boxes and other cool things for our Space Station Projects. You can send them in after spring break.
**Future Field Trip--ADLER PLANETARIUM--Thursday, April 11th from 9-1:l30 pm. The permission slip and info is in your child's homework folder. We would like all the money and permission slips in before spring break to secure our spot at the planetarium.
These past two weeks:
It has been all about sharing and caring, kindness,Valentine's Day and Abraham, George and teeth. The students paid special attention these past two weeks to their attitudes and actions toward their classmates and teachers. Saying a kind word to someone not having a good day, offering words of encouragement to a friend, praising someone for a job well done and thanking an adult for a particular lesson were just some of the ways students celebrated. The students also read about the accomplishments of Abraham Lincoln and George Washington. They studied about what makes a good leader of a country. The students learned that presidents come from all walks of life. The students also studied the accomplishments of Ruby Bridges. They were proud to know that even a child of their age can affect change in our country. The students also read about Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad. The students were fascinated by the fact that it was not really a railroad but a series of safe homes, places and areas that were used to help slaves escape to the north to freedom. Hooray for teeth! The students learned that many living things have teeth and the care that goes into keeping them healthy. Station Day activities included making a tri-corner hat, working with a word wheel and writing the sentences, graphing and analyzing data on the Valentine board, ending sound fun and pattern block design building. Other Station Day activities included Penguin "Dial-a-Sum," more word wheel and writing sentences and more pattern block design building side by side. (great visual motor and visual integration/figure ground brain work!)
Reading/Social Studies: The students worked to continue and complete Unit 6 Neighborhoods in our Treasures series. They accessed prior knowledge about places in and around their neighborhood and who you can find there. The students talked about what the words community and workers meant. They listened to the Big Book story, "Bus Stops." The students made predictions about what the story could be about and were asked to listen for what happens at the beginning, middle and end of the story. They made connections about places in the story and how they relate to their own community. Who got off the bus? The students reviewed our target words, for, are, you and target sounds Dd, Hh and Rr. The students worked in small groups to create sentences using words and pictures. The students reread the story and worked on retelling as well as story elements. They worked on sound blending skills using their elkonin boxes. It is really cool to see them blending and segmenting 4-5 phoneme word! In the decodable story, "Rod Can See It," the students worked on main idea. Robust Vocabulary for the past two weeks included ADMIRE, DELIVER, SCHEDULE, COMMUNITY, WORKER, ALERT, JOB, CELEBRATION, PRECISE, REPAIR. The students listened to the vocabulary story, "Acrefoot, the Barefoot Man." They made predictions about story content. They responded to the poem, "The Park." The students retold parts of the poem. The students read their paper story, "For You." They each read aloud to practice their fluency. The students added to our neighborhood word web and created a Venn diagram about similarities and differences between hospitals and schools. The students reread the story, "Rod can See It" with a partner and quizzed each other on story elements. Workstations that week included map it out--drawing and labeling a neighborhood map with their group, Word Wizard app-cvc short u words create and record, tool sort--classifying tools and drawing a picture of someone who might use one of those tools, leveled readers read aloud, fluency check and story elements discussion and group sort --short a, long a words and word search. In the final week of Unit 6, the students discussed jobs that people in their neighborhood do. They accessed prior knowledge about workers they see in their neighborhood. The students listened to the trade book, "Alicia's Happy Day." As she walks down the street, what does Alicia hear and see? Why did Alicia feel happy? The students summarized and retold the story in their own words. The students worked in small groups to create words using the word families an, at, en, et, it, op, up. The students used consonant blends, single consonants and consonant digraphs. The students read their paper story, "Are You?" They each read a sentence aloud practicing their fluency. They also reread their story to a partner and each discussed how they sounded. The students listened to the expository text, "Is This Job For You?" and made future predictions on what job they would have and why. Workstations for the week included leveled readers with comprehension/discussion checks, creating a neighborhood worker puzzle, sentence building using the app Magnetic Letters and sight words, writing a friendly message to a friend and posting it on our friendship board and putting the finishing details on group neighborhood maps.
Math: The students worked on following a simple map for in school destinations. They worked in small groups from a given starting point to a certain destination. They discussed the sequence of events in their daily lives and created a timeline of drawings and words to reflect what they do in the morning, noon and at night. The students continue to explore building with pattern block templates that use internal lines, without internal lines and templates that have small pictures the students cannot build directly onto but next to. It's all about visual perception! We continue working on place value in the 100's place, writing numbers and telling how many hundreds, tens, ones each number has. The students worked on introduction of the quarter, dime and nickel. They learned some fun facts about the men on these coins and coin values. Much fun was had playing addition and subtraction games "Broken Heart Math," "Take Away," and "Dial a Sum." The students experimented with lots of new math apps and the problem solving, mind blowing app, "Labyrinth."
Writing: The students continue to work on lowercase forms l, k, y, and j. Most students are writing their first and last names. We continue to use the writing prompts in our Treasures series to create lists, write sentence using target vocabulary, write 3-4 sentence about one topic and work on sentence structure-- beginning with a capital letter, spacing between words in a sentence and putting a ending mark on the end.
Most students are using nouns and verbs, naming and telling and some have begun to expand their sentence length using adjectives and prepositions.
Science: The students revisited all their experiments as we concluded our Investigating Water unit. They viewed the DVD "Peeps Big Wide World Explores Water" as a culminating activity. Students made their final comments in their science journals about the experiment they enjoyed most, which one had surprising outcomes and which experiment they would like to do again. All the students commented that they would like to see bubbles come out of the bubble machine! We will wait for the weather to be a little warmer! Next week, we will begin prep for our new unit--"Sunshine, Shadows and the Moon."
Technology: It was truly all about the math apps these past two weeks! As their knowledge of addition and subtraction processes grows, the students were introduced to the apps Math Bug (addition/subtraction,) Find Sums base 10, Kids Math Fun (vertical sums,) Kids Math Free (addition/subtraction,) Ace Mathland (solving addition/subtraction problems and solve a puzzle,) and Butterfly Math Addition (making butterflies for correct sum.) The brainful problem solving app Labyrinth has got all students working on their own strategies to get the little ball thru the mazes!
Literature: "Splat the Cat-Funny Valentine," "There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Rose," "Howard Wigglebottom Has a Heart," "Will You Be My Valentine?" "Bears Loose Tooth," "The Story of Ruby Bridges," "Arthur's Valentine," "George Washington," "Abraham Lincoln," "A Picture of George Washington," "Love Splat!" "Magic School Bus Has a Heart," "Young Abraham Lincoln," "My Tooth is About to Fall Out," ""Hooray for Teeth," "Open Wide," "Tar Beach," "You Think it is Easy Being a Tooth Fairy?" "Harriet Tubman," "Zoomer," (thanks, Noah!) "Bunnies." (thanks, Amare!)
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