**The students spent a busy week practicing their songs for the Winter Concert and learning about the traditions and celebrations of others. It is really beginning to feel like winter. We were unable to go out to recess at lunchtime due to the cold conditions. For our last week at school before break, I am asking students to bring snow pants and wear boots everyday next week. There are suppose to be rising temperatures next week which will make for a very soggy and slushy playground. Our playground and field do not get plowed and so for the students to remain as dry as possible snow pants and boots are the best. I do have 3 extra pair of snow pants for students to borrow. Also, don't forget to send shoes each day.
**Come One, Come All to the Kindergarten/Grade One Winter Concert on Friday, December 20th in the Irving Auditorium. The concert will be held 2 times--First performance is at 8:15 am----the second performance is at 9:45 am. I would go early to get a good seat especially if you are attending the 8:15 concert. Please come back into the room after each performance for a refreshment reception and crafts to share . It will be great time to get together with other families to share conversation and community. Our wonderful room parents have been working on the arrangements for our reception. Our afternoon will be spent with station day activities with our 5th grade Book Buddies.
**Let me know is your child is traveling for the winter break. I will prepare a travel journal for them.
**School is closed--December 21st-January 5th. School reopens on Monday, January 6, 2014!
**Route to Reading Rotation 3 will conclude next week. You will receive notification on your child's skill development. Route to Reading Rotation 4 will begin in late January. This will give us time at the beginning of January to do midyear DIBELS assessments.
**In Friendship Club, Ms. Bell Bey continued her lesson on asking and answering questions in a cool guessing game.
**In Mr. Packer's Math Enrichment this week, Mr. Packer continued his lesson on dots and letters--visual imagery and perception.
This week:
It continues to be about gingerbread, celebrations and traditions. The students listened to a number of gingerbread stories. They examined characters, setting and main events in the stories. They compared and contrasted the characters and plot. How did it end? (eaten..not eaten) Who were the characters? (boy, baby, girl, man, cowboy, fox, wolf, coyote) What happened in the story? They had loads of fun. The students read about the Jewish celebration of Hanukkah with all its tradition and symbols. They learned to play the dreidel game. The students also read about Advent and the story of Christmas with all of its traditions and symbols. Students are beginning to understanding the unifying theme of the use of lights in celebrations--candles, strands of lights on trees, the light of the North Star. Station day activities included creating a candle with glitter and jewels, color by code a menorah, working in our number formation book with number forms 0-5 and making a "geome-tree" using rectangle and triangles to form a Christmas tree.
Reading/Social Studies: The students began Unit 4 Food in their Treasures Reading series. The unit began with a question about where our food comes from. The students accessed prior knowledge stores, farms, markets and orchards as places where food is found. Some students offered that they had gardens in their back yards in the summer. The students listened to the big book story, "Apple Farmer Annie." They listened and discussed where Annie lived and her daily activities as an apple farmer. Students made connections on their fall theme about apples and types of apples and what you can make with apples. Other students talked about the time they went to a farmer's market and bought apples and apple cider. Our target words are to and have. We have added these words to our growing list of sight words. Our target letter and sound is Nn. The students also reviewed the use of action words or verbs. They used the retelling cards to retell the Annie story in their own words. Our Robust Vocabulary this week included FARMER, MARKET, INGREDIENTS, COMBINE, NUTRITIOUS. The students used their elkonin boxes to segment and blend 3 and 4 letter words. The students continued their work on consonant blends and digraphs. The students read their pre decodable story, "Can Nan?" They made predictions about story content. Students answered questions about the story and then practiced reading the story to a partner for fluency development. The students listened to the selection, "Pizza Please." They had lots of fun activating their own prior knowledge about making their own homemade pizza, comparing and contrasting the ways and ingredients families use to make pizza and that some students had never made their own but ordered it from a pizza place. The students listened to the informational text, "From Strawberry Field to Strawberry Salad." They reviewed what a diagram was and how to follow a recipe. Workstations this week included creating a pretend meal in house corner, taking a photo of it and then writing about your favorite meal and where it came from, using the sentence starter, "I like.... and writing about a food you like, reader's response--reading and discussing the story with your group and writing about what you liked or did not like about the story, leveled reading working on story elements and comprehension and short vowel word sort and continued recording of reading aloud using iTalk for fluency checks.
Math: The students continue to work on rote counting to 75. This week they worked on number formation rhymes using numbers 0-5. The students are creating a number formation book for practice and counting using their ten frames. Students worked in math centers writing numbers to 50, counting quantities and recording their answer, discussing and recording the numbers that complete their number bond (ways to say a number--10 can be 5 plus 5, 2 plus 8 etc,) reinforcing recognition of pattern block shapes, playing "Make 5 Bingo. The students continue to work on the app Starfall Gingerbread--following and continuing a pattern.
Writing: The students are working on the Starting Center Capitals A, T, J, I. They applied what they had learned in their orange book. Ms. Chinn continues to work with the students in Writer's Workshop. This weeks lesson focused on the "organization" of writing. Ms. Chinn used the example of a train--it has an engine (beginning) box cars (middle) and a caboose (ending). She also used the words FIRST....NEXT......LAST as words to use when organizing sentences. Students worked on a piece of writing and then a few students volunteered to share their writing with the group again with the "stars" and "wishes" peer critiquing. The students are prepping for a writing project on a gingerbread person. Part one of this project was to create the gingerbread person of their choice given a template. Next week the students will write about their creation.
Technology: In the area of reading, small group and individual students used the apps, Montessori Crossword, Spelling Bug and Rocket Speller to listen to and record letter sounds to create words (3-4-5 phonemes.) Another group of students used the app iTalk to record their reading for fluency and clarity. The app Sound Sort continues to assist individual students with sound/symbol connections. In the area of math, small group and individual students used the apps Number Find, Math Bug and Domino Match to reinforce the concepts of counting quantities, adding quantities and finding a number using base ten strategies. Students partnered up to use the app Monster Squeeze using numbers from 1-30. All students continue to work on their patterning project using the app Starfall Gingerbread.
Literature: "The Gingerbread Doll," "The Gingerbread Girl," ""Gingerbread Jimmy," "The Gingerbread Man Loose in the School," "The Gingerbread Baby," "Gingerbread Fred," "Hanukkah," "Counting the Days to Hanukkah," "The Story of Hanukkah," "The Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bell," "Celebrate the Holiday," ""The Story of Christmas."
No comments:
Post a Comment