**Academic Fair /Egg Drop Contest is this Tuesday, April 16th. Please drop off your Academic Fair projects in the GYM in the morning. Our class will visit the Fair from 10:00-10:30 am. The projects will be on display throughout the day. Students with projects will return in the evening from 6:30-8:00 pm. Students should bring their Egg Drop Vehicles in the morning. The contest will begin at 12:30 out on the black top. Students will drop their vehicle from the 3rd floor window of the school. Please join us if you can. It should be very exciting!!
**The K-2 Spelling Bee is Wednesday, April 17th beginning at 11:00 am. Go Angus, Will and alternate, Sierra!!!! We can spell what we know! We will have a great time and eat our lunch in the auditorium. There will be ribbons for all the participants.
**Our SPACE STATION projects begin Monday!! The students are now in their work groups. They had a chance to exchange ideas and sketch a prototype drawing of their space station. Thanks for all the boxes and cool stuff! I have asked the students not to wear fancy clothes next week. They will wear paint shirts but it could get a little messy! Here's to collaboration, teamwork, compromise and creativity! Stay tuned!
**Student Council sponsored Career Day was very informative. Zaria's mom, Dr. Larnell talked about her job as a professor teaching government. Ellie's mom, Ms. Struckmeyer spoke to the students about her job as a pattern designer. The students really enjoyed it!
**Our field trip to the ADLER PLANETARIUM was awesome! Even though the weather was cold and foggy, we were cozy and warm exploring the different areas of the of the planetarium including the moon wall, the solar system area, the Apollo Mission room and most of all--The Planet Explorers Interactive Room. Many students tried on space gear, helped blast off into space, drove a lunar rover, saw a space toilet and space food and slept in a space bed! Many thanks to our volunteers--C. Nunes, A. Struckmeyer, L. Pointer, D. Chien and N. Johne for their help.
**Our Irving Green Team will have a group art piece at Oak Park's First Annual RE-CREATE ECO ART EXHIBIT going on now thru April 20th. You can view and vote for your favorite project at Visit Oak Park--1010 Lake St. Go Amare and Ivy!!!!!
**Please sign and return the Eagle Wing Field Trip slip in your child's homework folder. Our class earned a field trip to Barrie Park for lunch because they worked as a team to show they knew and understood our Eagle Essentials. Great Behavior!!!!! Our trip will be Thursday, April 25th from 10:45-12:05 pm. I will need 1-2 volunteers to walk with the class. Email if you can.
**Route to Reading Rotation 7 has concluded. You should have received notification indicating your child's skill mastery. Our final Route to Reading Rotation 8 will begin on Tuesday, April 16th. At that time, you will receive notification new skill and teacher.
**In Friendship Club this week, Ms. Bell Bey continued working with the students on being a "social detective." How do we react in different social situations??
**In Mr. Packer Math Enrichment, Mr. Packer completed a project with the students on their version of the EST word story.
This week:
It was all about a few things this week. The students are getting excited about the Academic Fair and Egg Drop Contest. There was lots of discussion about their projects and vehicles. I am loving it!! Everything about space continues to be HUGE. Our field trip has fueled more passion about our upcoming space station projects. The students will be using social, analytical, scientific and behavioral skills that they have embraced throughout the year. It is Teamwork with a capital T my friends! They are ready for the challenge. Our station day activities included topographical moonscapes--part 1, pattern block rockets, addition names rockets-vowel + consonants, 3 dimensional structures with marshmallows and toothpicks.
Reading/Social Studies: The students continue to work on Unit 8 Plants in our Treasurers Reading series. They talked about and read about seeds and plants. They accessed prior knowledge from the earlier fall unit we did on apples. The students revisited our apple seed tray. They made connections in their own lives of blowing dandelion seeds everywhere or helping their parents in backyard gardens planting different types of seeds. The students listened to the Big Book story, "Seed Secrets." The story contained ways that seeds travel. The students observed the pictures and tracked the print as I read the story. Our target words for the week are here and was. The students used these and all their other words along with pictures to create sentences with a partner. Our target sound continues to be Short u. We continues to revisit adjectives and how to use them to enhance the way we speak and write. The students took turns recalling events in the story and made a list of how seeds travel. In our additional vocabulary development, the students worked on position words.
The students worked on their white boards with substituting sounds to create new words. They read the decodable story, "A Bud Is Up." They made predictions about story content. The students made a note of the sequential order in planting a seed. They reread the story to a partner to practice their fluency. Our robust Vocabulary this week included NECESSARY, GRADUALLY, SEEDS, OBSERVE. The students are also working on a special story called, "The Paper Crane." They will use this story next week to recall story elements and work on question words. Our workstations included using leveled readers with fluency and comprehension checks, answering and asking who, what, where, when why and how questions about the text, choosing a job with plants picture and using Magnetic Letters app to write 3 sentences about the job and using the Writer's Checklist for feedback and CVC spell down/write down activity.
Math: The students continue to work in their math process journals. Addition and subtraction processes to 10 are becoming more apparent to them. We reviewed time by the hour on an analog clock. The students practiced reading and writing 2-3 digit numbers. They began work on an activity called, "What's My Rule?" using pairs of numbers that are related to each other according to a specific rule. They infer what the rule is by examining pairs of numbers that are related according to the rule and then demonstrate their reasoning by generating additional pairs of numbers that follow the same rule. The students also experimented with creating 3 dimensional structures using marshmallows and toothpicks. We will set up a Structure Museum!
Writing: The students continue to work on refining their writing. They reflected in their journals about their field trip experience. Many students are writing 4 sentences! The students continue to work on beginning paragraphs skills using their shadow pictures. They are currently working on a 5 sentence draft.
Science: The students pondered the question--What is the moon? They compared elements of the daytime and nighttime sky. They discovered that unlike the sun, the moon can be seen in both in the day and at night. The students discussed the terms sunrise and sunset. They examined the moon's surface looking at pictures. In a experiment, the students recreated the surface of the moon using flour, cocoa powder as the surface and dropped marbles to create craters, "seas" (flat dark places) and mountains. Very cool! The students took a look at the different shapes the moon appears to make in the sky at night in the course of a month. It appears that the "phases" repeat themselves like a pattern every month. The students continue to study about space vehicles, space travel and travel to the moon. Next week--let's try some space food and make some star gazers!
Technology: The students continue to use all the apps introduced thus far.
Literature: "The Moon Book," "Eyewitness--The Moon," "What is the Moon Like?" "Finding the Moon," "Riddles About the Universe," "Meggie Moon," "Billy Bean's Dream," "I Want to be an Astronaut," "Moon Buggy," "Space Vehicles," "First to the Moon."
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