**It has been a busy week! The students are busy tracking the growth of their sprouted seeds. They are becoming plant nurturers! Our class garden is also sprouting. Next week we will plant our cucumber, carrot, nasturtium and sweet basil seeds in our outside planting bed. Students from RED BEAR Table will be responsible for bringing in "food" to "feed" our "wormy" compost. Once again, little bits of paper, banana/peel, veggies, egg shells, (nothing cooked or orange peels) are acceptable.
**Don't forget to send back the permission slip for our Walking Field Trip to the Oak Park Conservatory. It is this coming TUESDAY!! I cannot take anyone who doesn't have a slip in.
**In your child's homework folder--please look for 3....yes....3 permission slips for future Field Trips! Barrie Park Lunch-May 20th----Trip to visit and learn about raising chickens and eggs in the Gurgas/Chien backyard-May 21st and Pizza and Play-Annual End of the Year Family Picnic at Rehm Park-May 28th. All trips a being powered by FEET! There is a $2.00 cost for Pizza and Play. I will be mobilizing our wonderful room parents to help in organizing Pizza and Play. They will be contacting you. If you would be so kind as to send back all permission slips as soon as you can--that would be much appreciated. Please feel free to join us on any of our trips---especially Pizza and Play. Siblings are most welcome!
**I am beginning to send home student Science Journals and work portfolios. Your child's past Science Journals are enclosed. Work portfolios are next week and then Writing Journals. Marvel at the growth!!!!!
**Students are having a great time listening to the "Traveling Poets" coming to our room, as well as traveling to Ms. Williams, Mr. Hancock and Ms. Saliny's room to recite their poetry. Our students will travel again next Thursday. Keep practicing your poems!!!
**We have 5 SLAMMERS signed up to recite poetry at the Poetry Slam/Art Fest to be held next week on Thursday evening, May 17th. The Kindergarten-2nd Grade slammers will go on at 7:00 pm in the auditorium. I will send you specific info on our meeting place next week. Come on----there is room for more slammers!!!!! Join in the fun!!!! Remember, you can recite your favorite poem, write your own poem, recite your traveling poets poem, sing, rap etc. You can recite solo, in a group, partner up, with a sib or parent. See the schedule enclosed for all the other events going on. Let's celebrate the arts!!!
**RUN WITH ME!! Come on out this Saturday, May 11th at 8:00 am to Lindberg Park for District 97's Annual Fun Run around the park. We had a nice turn out from Irving!!!!
**The students will be planting in our class garden bed this coming Monday, May 13th at 8:30 am. Ellie's mom will help get our soil ready. We will be learning about garden tools and view a video on planting cucumbers prior to our planting.
**Family Math Night is Tuesday, May 21st from 6:30-8:00 pm. This years theme is MONEY MADNESS. Let me know if you need a sign up sheet.
**All School Olympic Day is Friday, May 24th around the school. We will perform our Olympic feats from 8:30-10:30 am. Stop by to see us!
**Our final assessments for this year are almost complete. A HUGE THANKS to our Route to Reading teacher, Mrs. Cruz and our beloved Ms. Dennis for their assistance in testing this week. Report cards will go home on Friday, May 31st, the last of school.
**NO SCHOOL--Monday 27th in observance of Memorial Day.
**Last day of school events---Please join us for Family Hour on Friday, May 31st from 12:55-2:55 pm. We will sign autographs, have refreshments, get our summer packets/report cards and read a closing story. All are welcome!
This week: It was all about our sprouting seeds and baby plants! The students came back to a great discovery on Monday. Most of their seeds had germinated. All morning glories, marigolds and sunflowers showed signs of growth at about 5 days. The nasturtium plants took longer at about 9 days. Students hypothesized that the very hard coat surrounding the seed was why it took longer for the seed to soften. Each day the students checked their plant. They checked to see if water was needed. They observed leaf structure and stems and drew a diagram in their science journal of their plants parts. Very cool! More in the science section.
The students had a great time chasing bubbles. Our new bubble machine from Asher and his family had us all running around on a great Monday afternoon. Thanks, Asher!!!
Students are feeling the changes that will soon take place--end of the year--no school--end of kindergarten--new teachers--new classroom--different expectations--new friendships. Turning into a First Grader is big!! We chat daily as a class about expectations, fears and the fact that it will be an adventure that they are ready for! They all have come so far!
The students are loving observing our "wormy" compost. They are very concerned about "feeding" the compost to produce the new soil. The magnifying window lets them view the worms at work! Cool!
Station Day activities included--seed sequence part 2, flower making with bottles and paint, writing--If I Were a Seed.... and Story Problems with Flowers.
Reading/Social Studies: The students are continuing to work on skills and literature from Treasures Units 9 and 10. They are working on sight words with, me, my, where and reviewing target sounds and letters Jj, Yy and Zz. All kindergarten sight words have now been introduced. The students spent time in pairs using their word cards, picture cards and punctuation to create sentences. Each pair of students shared their sentences. Students continued work on recognizing and using nouns, verbs, adjectives and pronouns. Each day, the students work on group substitution activities to strengthen sound recognition and automatic recording of phonemes to form words. Students read their decodable and leveled readers and paper stories on their own this week and discussed the stories in small groups. Robust vocabulary included AMAZING, DEEP, INVITE, OCEAN, REASON. Workstations this week focused on leveled readers reading for meaning and fluency, responding in writing to what you read and retelling key events in a story. In our Common Core lessons, the students worked on asking and answering questions about unknown words in a text, being able to recognize common types of texts, finding details in informational reading and clarifying the meaning of multiple meaning words.
Math: The students continue to work on reading a story problem from the board and recording information in their math process journal. Most students are able to read the problem, illustrate the the process, write the number sentence and explain their work. They continue to work on the relationship between numbers in a number sentence. Numbers from 0-15 are currently part of their story problems. The use of concrete objects continues to be helpful to some students--fingers, blocks, pennies, tally marks, circles, the number line are a part of that process. The students continue to review counting by 10's, 2's and 5's, counting on from a random number, rote counting to 120, writing 2-3 digit numbers, exploring the concept of place value and recognizing and using pattern blocks and geometric solids.
Writing: The students have finished their primary paragraphs on the topic: "My Shadow." They are on display in our hallway. What a great job!!!! The students have begun journaling each day on a person at Irving School that they have contact with. So far---Ms. Gullo, Ms. Dennis, Ms. D. and Mr. Hodge have been the topics of their entries. They are writing 4 sentences and using their writer's checklist--capital letter at the beginning, naming and telling, checking their letter formation, having a ending mark, reading it back to see how it sounds---all this before they come to the writer's conference with me. At the writer's conference, they read their writing to me and we look at it together. I may point out--wow, great sentence...or next time don't forget this....and ask what they think of their work. We have begun to do some prep on our final primary paragraph on the topic of WORMS!!! Stay tuned!
Science: Our plants are growing everywhere! This week in our class garden, pumpkin, spinach, cosmos, beans, peas and nasturtiums, marigolds, morning glories and sunflowers have sprouted. Students have brought in cantalope, strawberry and plum seeds to plant too. In Experiment 4, the students observed what is growing under the ground. We removed baby nasturtiums, morning glories, sunflowers and marigolds from the soil to take a closer look at the root and shoot systems. The students looked at the similarities and differences in the each plant. Thicker shoots, skinny shoots, straight shoots, curvy shoots, lots of roots, one stringy root, tons of tiny roots were their observations. The students also took a look at the leaf structure of each plant. They sketched their leaves in their science journals--leaves that looked like butterfly wings (morning glory), wagon wheels (nasturtium), ovals (sunflowers), dragonfly wings (marigolds). In Experiment 5, the question was asked-- What if the seed has no soil? Can it still sprout? We had discussed that all plants need water, sun, soil to grow. The students sprinkled a variety of seeds on a sponge and watered it. Each table has a seeded sponge that they will water and check. What will happen? The students made some predictions. Stay tuned! Next week--We will plant in our outside garden plot.
Technology: The students continue to use all apps introduced throughout the year. The focus on reading is apps related to vocabulary recognition, blending, segmenting and substituting phonemes. In math, students are using apps on addition, subtraction, place value and problem solving. This week students created teams of 4 students and began work on the app Teach Me. The app contains math--addition/subtraction, spelling, and sight word recognition. Students play each other and move up the levels. It includes sticker rewards too. Fun! Fun! Then student have also been exploring the app Life Cycles and and National Geographic Explorer.
Literature: "Plants," "What Moms Can't Do," "Tools for the Garden," "Fancy Nancy's Marvelous Mother's Day," "Worms," "Seeds," "The Ant Bully," "Ants Day Off," "Ice Cream Everywhere," "How Does a Seed Grow?" "Yucky Worms," Poetry--"A Bad Case of the Giggles," Poetry--"A Pizza the Size of the Sun," "Poetry for the Young by Langston Hughes," "Poems for Teachers."
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