UPDATES for 4/22-4/25 2013

 **Enjoy the VOKI ANIMAL ALIENS as they describe each space station project!  You will find them at the end of this post.  Just click on the triangle to hear the message!  Human like aliens ...or....animal aliens?????  It appears that the animal aliens won out in each group.  A huge thanks to our tech adviser, Ms. Ortega, for her assistance on this project.  The students had a ball creating the voki alien,  writing the script and working together to choose a reader for the voki voice.  It's out of this world!!!
**Check out our own ABC COUNTDOWN of activities beginning Monday until the end of the school
year, starting with the letter A all the way to Z!  We will have a different activity everyday.  It all starts Monday with "Act Like an Astronaut Day."  Now that our space stations are completed, we will spend some time with movement and dramatic play as we blast off into the universe!  Family and friends can come to view the student projects anytime before or after school until the end of the year.
**Please adjust your calendars:  Due to our "rain day," the last of school is now Friday, May 31, 2013.  This will be a full day of school.  In the afternoon, from 2-2:55 pm, we will have a family and friends gathering in our classroom to read a parting story, sign student autograph books and have some refreshments.  Stay tuned for more info!
**Our Eagle Wing lunch at Barrie Park was chilly but fun.  Thanks to the parents and sibs who joined us.  The students had a huge freeze tag game going on led by Isabella's dad.  What energy!
**Thanks to Student Council (yeah-Amare and Ivy) for a very informative Earth Week.  The students learned about the energy given off by Irving's solar panel, reviewed ways to reuse and recycle, learned about how valuable a tree is and ways to conserve energy at home and at school.  Sunny Notes were delivered, but unfortunately Ms. Gullo forgot to pass them out!  Students will receive them on Monday.
**On Monday, the students will pick their poems for participation in the Traveling Poets Project, under the direction of our own Ms. Noonan.  Have your child practice their poem at home.  We will also practice at school.  The students will "travel" on selected days to other classrooms to read their poems for a "poetry break."  Stay tuned for more info!
**An assembly to celebrate our school wide Million Minutes of Reading will be held on Friday, May 3rd at 2:00pm.  What a great job all the students have done!
**For interested parties:  There will be an informational meeting for parents on the new Common Core Standards on Monday, April 29th at 7:00 pm right here in the Irving Auditorium.
**Irving Pacers are back!  We will have our first spring walk/run on Friday, May 3rd at lunchtime.  Don't forget to have your child wear gym shoes and socks.
**Smoothie Fridays are also back!  Homemade smoothies will be sold May 3rd, 10th and 24th at dismissal.
**Run With Me!  Come on out on Saturday, May 11th at 8:00 am to Lindberg Park and participate in the District 97's  FUN RUN.   Students and families from all 10 Oak Park schools will be there.  Don't miss it.  See me or Mr. Hancock for an entry form. 
**Future Field Trip---Oak Park Conservatory on Tuesday, May 14th beginning at 9:00 am until 10:45 am.  I will need 2-3 volunteers to walk with us.  Permission slips will go out on Friday.
**Future Field Trip--Pizza and Play End of the Year Family Picnic--Tuesday, May 28th from 9:30-12:30 pm at Rehm Park.  We will need lots of volunteers for this one.  Stay tuned for more info!
**All School Olympic Day--Friday, May 24th from 8:30-10:30 am in and around the school.
**Our final Friendship Club with Ms. Bell Bey will be Friday, May 3rd.
**Our final get together with our Book Buddies is Friday, May 17th.  We will wish them well.  They will be moving on to the Middle School!
This week:
It was all about putting the finishing touches on space station projects and each group choosing and detailing their alien voki.  What fun they had!!!  Lots of work went into drawing, making, placing and staging of items and materials in, on and around their space stations.  Great use of conversation, negotiation, compromise and teamwork during this process.  They are truly sensational!   The students also used this week to finish Treasures Unit 8 Plants and Science Unit-"Sunshine, Shadows, the Moon and Space." 
Reading/Social Studies:   The students completed Unit 8 Plants.  This will serve as a nice introduction for our final science unit--"From Seed to Plant."  The students reviewed all their sight vocabulary taught thus far.  They completed their activity books and they have been sent home.  We continue to use the Haggerty Blue Book exercises to sharpen blending, segmenting, substituting adding and deleting of phonemes skills.  They also continue to work on decoding CVC, CCVC and CVCC words, recognizing consonant blends and digraphs and using pronouns and adjectives along with nouns and verbs in their sentence work.  The students also continue to work on responding in writing to questions about a story they have read or has been read to them. Workstations this week focused on leveled readers and working on story elements, using quotation marks and pronouns and using the iPad to strengthen and enhance vocabulary development.
Math:   The students continue to work on counting by 2's, 5's, and 10's to 100 and rote counting to 120.  In their math journals, students continue to work on listening for information to solve a story problem, analyzing and illustrating their work and writing a number sentence.  They continue to work on place value in the tens and hundreds places, reading and writing 2-3 digit numbers and reviewing pattern block and geometric solid shapes as well as analyzing, describing and comparing 2-3 dimensional shapes.
Writing:  The students are finishing up their orange handwriting books.   They have finished formal instruction on all upper and lowercase letters and have begun a number formation review.  The students are working on their shadow paragraphs.  They will put the finishing touches on them next week.  The students are working on writing 4 or more sentences on a topic using their sentence rules.  Wow!
Science:   The students got to use their star gazers in the sunlight! (finally!!!!)  It was cool to see the "stars" in their star gazer tubes.  We talked about the moon phases and the fact that we are really seeing different amounts of light being reflected on the moon.  How much light we see depends on the positions of Earth, moon and sun.  The students will continue to work on their moon observation this weekend as an assignment.  Next week, we begin prep for our last science unit on seeds.
Technology:   The students were introduce to a site called VOKI where you can create an avatar and give it a voice.  They absolutely loved experimenting with the figures and backgrounds.  It really was a group effort to create their alien and choose a reader.  I commend all the teams on their hard work.  In reading small groups, the students worked with  iPad apps relating to vocabulary development and recording their reading for fluency development.  In math workshop small group, students worked on iPad apps to strengthen addition and subtraction as well as problem solving.
Literature:   "Pinkalicious-Fairy House," (thanks, Isabella!) "Zoom," "And Then It's Spring," (thanks, Ellie!)
"Pirates Go To School," (thanks, Ellie!) "The Moon Book," "Saving Water and Energy," "What is Global Warming?" "I Always Turn Out the Lights," "Ugh! Don't Be a Litterbug," "Magic School Bus-Get's Cleaned Up," "Communication."