**The students returned well rested and eager to begin the week. We were lucky to have abundant sunshine to continue with our shadows experiments. The weather is slowly warming up! The students are using their daily stretching and yoga poses to get into shape for Friday PACERS which will resume soon.
**Our Spelling Bee Representatives Angus, Will and alternate Sierra have received their spelling list from Mr. Packer. Relax....No worries! "Think about what you know" and "have fun" has been the mantra. We will be cheering them on, on Wednesday, April 17th in the auditorium during the lunch hour. Come join us if you can. It will be exciting !
**Please read the BLUE paper in your child's folder concerning information for our field trip to ADLER PLANETARIUM. It is this THURSDAY, APRIL 11th from 9-1:30 pm. All students are to be in school by 8:00 am. Students and teachers will ride the bus. All parent volunteers will carpool. Thanks to all who volunteered to help. I could only choose 5 parent volunteers. Don't worry...we still have a few more trips to go on. The volunteers for this trip are: A. Struckmeyer, M. Gurgas, L. Pointer, C. Nunes, K. Good. along with Ms. Dennis and myself. Parent Volunteers will get a separate email from me. All students--BAG LUNCH, DRESS for the WEATHER, GYM SHOES and SOCKS! We will be seeing an IMAX movie at 10:00 am. called, "One World, One Sky." From there the groups will see the exhibits, Our Solar System, Shoot for the Moon and Planet Explorers. Planet Explorers is an interactive exhibit that allows only 2 classrooms at a time for 30 minutes. Our selected time is 10:30 am. We are going to have a great time!
**Parent Career Day is Wednesday, April 10th sponsored by Student Council. Go Keyshaun and Ellie!!
**Sign up for the Academic Fair and Egg Drop continues!! I am so excited to hear of the cool projects being worked on by students as we speak! Just a reminder--you need to sign up for the projects on line. Just click on the "click here for assignments" underneath my name and you will see it on the homework page. The Academic Fair and Egg Drop contest in Tuesday, April 16th.
**Please keep sending in GIANT BOXES and other cool things for our Space Station Projects. We are sill in need of boxes the kids can climb in. Be on the look out for them. We have one more week of collection. The week of April 15th-19th, the students will design, create, construct, detail and present! We may need some hot glue volunteers during the detailing process. Stay tuned!
**Green Team reps, Amare and Ivy are working with the rest of the Green Team on a special activity week to recognize Earth Day which is April 22nd. Stay tuned for more info.
**In Friendship Club this week, Ms. Bell Bey read a story about being a "social detective." The students are working on how to conduct themselves in all kinds of social situations.
**In Mr. Packer Math Enrichment this week, Mr. Packer read a story containing EST words and the students then created their own page with writing and illustrations.
This week:
It was all about the planets, stars, asteroids, meteors and constellations. The students learned a song about the order of the planets and some interesting facts about each one. We accessed information on our iPads about weather, NASA's space station daily report and information on constellations and space vocabulary. The students are very interested in how constellations were formed and named. We read several books on Greek and Roman mythology and found out some of the stories and names behind the constellations. The students were fascinated by the interesting stories. The students created and named their own constellations. They will be displayed in the hall. Our station day activities included creating constellations, build and count 3 dimensional animals with unifix cubes, solar system book, rainy day story sequencing project.
Reading/ Social Studies: The students began Unit 8 Plants this week in our Treasures Reading series. They began by building background knowledge around how a tree grows. The students talked about Oak Park and how many trees they see daily. Our class took a walk outside with our Tree Finder Book to see if there were any oak trees in the area and what other types of trees were in our school neighborhood. They located maple, oak, ginko, and ash trees. The students understood that a tree is a plant that takes many years to grow. They also understood that a tree comes from a seed. The students listened to the big book story, "Oak Trees." They noted that the book was non fiction, informational or expository. The students responded to the literature expressing that they had seen acorns (the seed) and some students even collected them. Once again they understood that it takes many years for a tree to grow and that some oak trees are 100 years old. Our sight words for the week are little and said. The students reviewed these words along with all of our other sight vocabulary. Students noted that the word said does not sound how it looks. Our target sounds for this week are short u and ck. We reread the big book and students took turns using the retelling cards to retell the story in their own words. The students used their elkonin boxes to blend and segment 4-5-6 phoneme words. The students read the decodable book, "Sad Hen." They made predictions about story content and orally answered comprehension questions about the story. The students took turns reading to a partner and filling out the Reader's Checklist. They used the story elements guide to ask Who, What, Where, When and Why questions about the story. Our Robust Vocabulary for this week included PLANT, GROW, CONCEITED, EQUAL, CHARMING. Our oral vocabulary story, "The Conceited Apple Branch," gave us all a healthy new respect for the dandelion. Ask your child to tell you about the story! The students listened to the poem, "Acorns." They discussed what the author's message was and noted the rhyming pattern. Student small groups used their word and picture cards to create sentences using their new sight words said and little. Like speech bubbles, said tells us who is talking. The students practiced their fluency by reading the paper story, "A Little Acorn." They also observed the use of "quotation marks," which also tells that someone is speaking. Students practiced working with the sound of ck. Workstations this week included leveled reader discussion and completion of the story elements chart, using the app Magic Reading 3 focusing on blending sounds to form short u and ck words, writing 3 sentences about the topic--trees and using the Writer's Checklist, creating a poster about trees and reading/recording fluency checks.
Math: The students worked on writing numbers 0-110. They continue to work on place value. This week the game, "It Takes Two" was introduced focusing on reading and writing 2 digit numbers. Next week, we will add the third digit! The students practiced counting by 2's, 5', and 10's to 100. Students worked on playing the "Disappearing Train" game which helped in the subtraction process. The students worked on building 3 dimensional animal shapes looking at a model. They used unifix cubes. It was interesting to note how students perceived the shapes and the directionality of the unifix cubes to complete the form. Fascinating!!! We will work more on 3 dimensional structures next week. We continue to work in our math journals on illustrating story problems and writing the number sentence.
Writing: The students continue to work on refining their upper and lowercase letter formations. They are beginning to refer to their Writer's Checklist when working on sentences. We continued our discussion on what a paragraph is. This week, the students began a writing project where they will write a small paragraph about their shadow picture. The students spent time examining their photos and generating ideas about what they could write about. As a group, we wrote down the ideas and settled on a few basic questions that each student could answer. The students used that format to begin their writing. They are learning to how to organize their ideas. Their first writing will be in a draft form that they can proofread to make changes or corrections if needed. The students are currently working on their drafts.
Science: The students continue to study shadows. In Experiments 4 and 5, the students observed how a shadow changes places due to the movement of the sun. That is--the suns position in the sky changes due to the rotation of the earth. Vivian was our shadow maker throughout the day. At 9:00 am, we gathered outside to trace the shadow Vivian made as she stood. We marked the place and observed the shadow. The students went back into the room to rough sketch where the shadow was and how it looked. We did the same at 12:00 and 2:45 pm.with Vivian standing in the exact same place. The students sketched the position and shape of the noon and 2:45 pm shadows in their science journal. They reflected their thoughts on the drawing and questions they were thinking about. Many students noticed that Vivian's shadow was long and skinny and right in front of her in the morning, short and wide and more to the left at noon and medium long and way more to the side at 2:45 pm. The concept here is that the earth is moving, not the sun. In Experiment 6, each table of students constructed a sundial using paper, clay and a dowel rod. We located drawings and actual pictures of sundials from the internet. Students learned that sundials were ancient forms of clocks. It is one of the oldest measuring instruments measuring the time of day by casting a shadow on a surface. Each table took their sundial out at 9:00 am, noon and 2:45 pm. The students observed the sundial as if it were a clock and thought about the numbers. In the classroom, the students drew a sketch and made an arrow where the shadow was cast and noted what time that might be. They then sketched a picture of what they do at that time of day. The students wrote about what they observed in their science journal. On Friday, Kanohi brought a plastic cat with an arm that reacted to solar power. More direct light...more wave!!! The students observed the cat wave (medium) powered by lights. We took the cat outside and much faster waving due to the bright sunlight. Pretty cool! We continue in science next week with the study of the moon.
Technology: In reading and math this week, no new apps have been introduced. Student small groups continue to use all previously mentioned apps that enhance and reinforce blending, segmenting, vocabulary development, spelling, reading, phonics and reading fluency recordings, addition and subtraction, number sequence, problem solving, critical thinking, number writing, place value, number order, concepts of more or less and coin recognition. In science, the students explored the app NASA to view pictures of space and spacecraft and get daily news from the Space Station. The students are very interested in looking at weather around the world and are using the app AcuWeather for this. The app Google Earth is also being used by students to locate where they live.
Literature: "Mercury," "Venus," "Earth," "Asteroids, Meteors and Comets," "Jupiter," "Saturn," "Uranus," "Neptune," "Pluto, the Dwarf Planet," "Solar System," "My Big Busy Space Book," "Moon Dogs," "I Like Stars," "Zoo in the Sky," "Sun Dials," "1000 Facts About Space," "Stories of the Stars," "Starry, Starry, Night," "Children's Atlas of the World."
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