**The students have spent a busy week working together on their space stations. They reviewed the prototype drawings they made. They worked with their product manager to select appropriate boxes and began the process of construction. There was lots of conversations/discussions about the where, how and why to put a box one place or another. I observed lots of team collaboration, some compromise and lots of creativity! Some conversation starters I overheard---"Do we want to make it taller (less people inside) or longer?" (it will fit more people inside.) "Do we want a hatch or a door?" "How about a peephole?" "Do we want square windows or circle windows?" Ms. Dennis and I cut and taped where indicated. The students picked their paint colors. 24 students painting at the same time--oh my!!!! They handled it so well. Some paint on hands and arms, but very little paint on the floor or clothes. 98% of the paint went right where it should! The space stations are looking pretty cool!
**A HUGE SHOUT OUT to Angus, Will and alternate, Sierra for their participation in the K-2 Spelling Bee! Two 2nd graders and a 1st grader took top honors but we were so proud of our classmates determination and sportsmanship. Angus and Will received a special ribbon for their participation. Sierra helped set up the lunch area in the auditorium and would whisper, "Ms. Gullo, I know how to spell that one," more than a few times. She was so supportive!!
**The Academic Fair and Egg Drop Contest was awesome. Our class had 9 students with projects and 5 students (with a couple of sibling teams) for Egg Drop. I am so proud of their efforts. At the Academic Fair, we listened to our fellow classmates talk about why the Titanic sank, how birds build nests, how you sew, cats, cats and more cats, how a pyramid was built in ancient Egypt, what the life of a pioneer girl was like, what porcupine quills are made of and how you use your super senses. We saw lots of interesting vehicles for an egg---boxes, lots of cups, parachutes, paper towel rolls, a nerf football, a Yoda doll, tubes etc.
**Our Eagle Wing Lunch (weather permitting) is Thursday, April 25th at Barrie Park from 10:45-12:05 pm. Please don't forget to send in your child's permission slip. I cannot take anyone without it. We could use 1-2 parents to walk with us. Email me if interested.
**Speaking of Earth Day---Student Council has planned some activities to celebrate Earth Week. Monday--Reduce Energy Day: turn off lights and television. Tuesday--Zero Waste Lunch: encouraging students to bring lunches that can be composted or recycled. Wednesday--Walk to School Day: to reduce greenhouse emissions.
**The Irving Book Fair will be Monday, April 22-25 in t.he auditorium A flyer of some of the titles available is in your child's backpack. We will visit the Book Fair as a class on Tuesday afternoon.
**Upcoming Event---Traveling Poets under the direction on Ms. Noonan, will begin traveling on May 3rd and May 10th. Look for information on how this all works soon. It is really something!!!
** In Mr. Packer Math Enrichment this week, Mr. Packer read a story called, "Zoom." The story was a study of pictures within pictures---nothing is ever as it seems. The students looked at the pictures and used their "detective skills" to tell what they thought it was. Very cool book! Lots of amazed students!
** In Friendship Club, Ms. Bell Bey continued her presentation on being a social detective. The adults role played various situations and asked the students to respond. Friendship can sometimes be a tricky thing!
**NO SCHOOL on Thursday, April 26th--Teacher's Institute Day.
**RUN with ME! Join the FUN RUN on Saturday, May 11th at 8:00 am. at Lindberg Park celebrating National Fitness Week. Sign up sheet was in the Tuesday Packet. Let me know if you need sheet. We run rain or shine.
**The Irving Pacers is starting up again on Fridays at lunch beginning the first Friday in May.
This week:
It was truly all about our space stations! Thanks to all who contributed boxes and other cool things. The students really did use their prior and new knowledge of space and space station design. Our room was filled with boxes. Each group received one giant box or 3 medium boxes to begin with. They then decided as a group what other boxes they needed. Cutting out various places on the boxes was my job as well as putting "gorilla tape" to good use to secure all parts. The students went inside and tried them out and proceeded to discuss paint colors. The students began painting on Wednesday. Due to our unexpected rain day on Thursday, they will finish up the painting on Friday morning. Detailing will begin on Monday. If you have a glue gun and want to come and help after 1:30 pm--please do. Station day activities this week included creating star gazers (let's hope for some sun!) completing our moonscapes, rainy day story sequencing--cut/glue/write about it, and rocket conversations--what can you say in your speech bubble?
Reading/Social Studies: The students have nearly completed Unit 8 Plants in our Treasures Reading series. We will tie up any loose ends at the beginning of next week. This week the students read and talked about what grows in a garden. Students thought aloud and accessed prior knowledge about gardens in their backyard and other gardens they know about. The students listened to the trade book, "Sunflower House." The students paid special attention to the beginning, middle and ending. They responded to the literature by making connections in their own lives about the process of growing a sunflower and seeing how big it can get. All students reviewed the target words here, little, said and was. We played "Hands Up and Hands Down" for a fun review. The students continue to review our target sounds Uu and Kk and also the use of ck. The students also reviewed the use of adjectives and created a list of words that would describe a sunflower in their journals. We reread the story and students contemplated aloud clues that helped them to draw conclusions about the story. The students worked in small groups using the retelling cards to retell the story in their own words. Robust Vocabulary included ARRANGE, TEND, BASIC, SENSES, GARDEN. We continue to work in the Haggerty Blue Book on blending, segmenting, addition, deletion and substitution exercises. This week, we also worked on common core standards that pertain to the ability of the student to ask and be able to answer questions about key details in a text. I read aloud the story, The Paper Crane." The students listened and responded using oral story cards to retell and recall details in the story. We created a story board of story element questions--who? what? where? when? why? The students worked in small groups coming up with questions about the story. We revisited the story the next day and students reviewed all the information. On the third day, the students completed a writing prompt where they could write down a question and answer that question in writing. They did this for all five question words. It was awesome to see the progress made from the beginning of the year until now. Our workstations this week included--write about seeds and plants/illustrate, leveled readers/discussion/oral comprehension/fluency check and asking questions, story retelling--completing a story sequence frame with a leveled reader, create a garden map-label and write about it and building sentences using quotation marks.
Math: The students continue to work on story problems in their process journals. Their illustrations of the problem are becoming easier to figure out. They are also beginning to understand the relationship between numbers in a number family and ways to say a number which include addition and subtraction. They continue work on reading and writing 3 digit numbers and working with place value, counting from 0-120, counting on from random number and counting back from a random number.
Writing: The students continue to work on their Shadow paragraph drafts. Our final copies should be finished next week. The students continue to work on refining upper and lowercase letters and placement of words on a given line.
Science: All science time was given to space station creation this week. We have a few more experiments to complete on the moon and that will be done next week.
Technology: No new apps have been used this week. Students continue to made good use of reading, math, vocabulary and science apps to enhance their studies.
Literature: "The Paper Crane," "The Moon Book," "Zoom," "I Ain't Gonna Paint No More," "Hottest, Coldest, Highest, Deepest," "Mars Needs Moms," "Una lazo del la luna," "1000 Facts About Space," "If You Decide To Go To The Moon," "Magic School Bus--Walks on the Moon."
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