**The week was filled with compliment cards, friendship chains and song. Our Winter Concert was fabulous! Thanks to Ms. Hiolski and Ms. Freisen for their guidance. Our after the concerts get togethers were chock full of great treats and crafts. A huge thanks to our room parents--L. Wojcik, J. Flannery, E. Rodriguez-Collier and B. Barnett for all their organization and set up. The students were very delighted to see parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles and brothers and sisters at the concert.
**Our BOOK BUDDY get together was awesome! I read 2 stories about Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer and used it as a spring board to discussion about taking pride in your accomplishments, believing in yourself and taking pride in others. Sometimes, it just takes one person or one event to help us see our own worth. After our stories and discussion, our book buddies help us make a Rudolph out of construction paper. We had treats and raised our juice cups to salute our achievements of 2013 and welcome in 2014! A big thanks to Ms. Balicki's room parent, Ms. Koch for her help.
**Senorita Zaragoza talked to the students about the festival of Las Posadas. She shared a story and music about the procession in the streets re-enacting Mary and Joseph's search for an inn and the stable that became their room. I presented the origin of Kwanzaa which began in 1966. Students pointed out the use of the special candle holder called a kinara. Lots of discussion centered around stars and babies. I shared some traditional stories--"The Night Before Christmas," "The Nutcracker," and "The Twelve Days of Christmas."
**Please take a look a the information about BRAIN POP that is in your child's folder.t I am in the process of learning about it myself. The funding for it was provided by PTO. Feel free to experiment with it. I will have more info on its use in kindergarten after break.
**A special shout out to Ms. D. our Tuesday helper!
**Reading Grandma Mary will return for her 7th year of hearing budding readers. She will begin coming in January. We can't wait to see her!
**Mid Year DIBELS testing will take place the first 2 weeks of January and Route to Reading Rotation 4 will resume January 7th.
**Vision Screening for students will take place on Tuesday, January 14th.
**Parent/Teacher Conferences will be held Monday, January 27th, Tuesday, January 28th and Wednesday, January 29th. You will receive notification of your specific day and time when we return from break.
**Classes resume on Monday, January 6th.
**Start saving those GIANT BOXES (the kind you can climb in) and other cool stuff for our space station construction in APRIL during our SPACE THEME. I cannot store anything now. I will have you start bringing things in after spring break.
LOOKING AHEAD in 2014---We will begin our next cross curricular theme--WINTER and finish up Unit 4 FOOD in our Treasures Reading series. We will also begin out first Science Unit--Investigating the Properties of Water. In reading, the students will continue to focus on sound foundation, sound blending and segmenting/adding/deleting phonemes in 4-5- and even 6 phoneme words. We will also work on oral and written comprehension, asking and answering questions about a text, comparing texts, reading fluency, vocabulary building, identifying story elements and identifying the authors message. Our Busy Reader Club will begin. In the area of writing, the students will finish uppercase letter formation and will begin lowercase formation. They will continue sentence structure, inventive spelling, grammar and punctuation and expanding sentence length to include adjectives. In the area of math, the students will continue to work on rote counting to 100 and beyond by 1's and 10's, write their numbers, demonstrate knowledge of numbers that are greater than and less than, name pattern block and geometric solid shapes, represent addition with objects, fingers and mental images and drawing, solve addition story problems using drawings and work on teen numbers and ways to say a number from 1-5 using 2 numbers added together. Socially, the students will work on becoming more responsible and independent learners and thinkers and continue to develop positive relationships with their peers and teachers. Technologically, The students will continue to use the iPad and internet resources to enhance all areas of their curriculum. WOW! We will be really busy!
Reading/Social Studies: The students continue to work on Unit 4 Food in our Treasures Reading series. The discussion this week this week centered around types of food you would have for dinner and if you have ever helped make dinner. The students accessed prior knowledge about meals they have helped prepare and special meals coming up for the holidays that they will be a part of. The students listened to the story, "The Special Sweet Potato Pie." They separated fact from fiction--sweet potatoes are real but--they do not get bigger as they roll down the hill and you CAN make a sweet potato pie. They used the retelling cards to retell the story in their own words. They orally asked and answered questions about the story. They reviewed the sight word--have and "walked their words" with a partner. We also reviewed all sight words learned thus far by playing "Hands Up, Hands Down." The students reviewed target sounds Cc and Nn. they continue to work on using verbs in their daily speech and in their journals. Our Robust Vocabulary this week included APPETITE, FEAST, PREFER, FLAVOR, SPECIAL. The students used the story sequence cards to summarize events and make inferences about what would happen in the Sweet Potato story. They continue to use their elkonin boxes to segment 3-4 phoneme words. We are adding more blends and digraphs to our sound blending. The students read the decodable story, "We Can." They shared their story with a partner during read aloud time.
Math: The students reviewed number formation rhymes for numbers 0-5 and practice writing them in their Number Books. The students continue to work on rote counting to 100 and beyond, counting quantities, oral number stories and ways to say a number. We also continue to work on the concepts of greater than and less than, sequencing numbers that come before or after a random number and number bonding or ways to say a number---ways to say 5--2 and 3......4 and 1.....5 and 0 etc. The students used their following direction skills as well as sequencing order in cutting out and putting together Rudolph. They also continued to work on their Gingerbread Pattern project using the Starfall Gingerbread app.
Writing: In Ms. Chinn's Writer's Workshop this week, the students took a look at WORD CHOICE when creating their stories. Students looked at expanding their sentences and adding more detail to their work. The students worked on a Gingerbread Writing project. They created their gingerbread person and used the word bank to write 2-3 descriptive sentences about their person. Sentence structure and spacing were stressed. They also worked on their placement of letters of a given line.
Technology: In reading the apps Montessori Crossword and Magic Reading 3 were used in students small groups to strengthen segmenting and blending skills. They also used the apps Spelling Bug, Rocket Speller and Dolch Words with a partner. In math, the apps Starfall Gingerbread, Monster Squeeze, Number Find, Domino Match and Sam Phibian were used with individuals and small groups. Students are also working with the app iTalk to record their reading and work on developing fluency.
Literature: "Rudolph," "Rudolph Shines Again," "A Kwanzaa Counting Book," "Kwanzaa," "Las Posadas," "Too Many Tamales," "The Gingerbread Bear," "K is for Kwanzaa," "This is the Star," "A Child is Born," "The Night Before Christmas," "The Nutcracker," "The Twelve Days of Christmas."
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