**Congratulations to our Spelling Bee reps--Emily and Ally!!!! Reid will serve as our alternate. These students will participate in the Irving School Annual Spelling Bee for K-2 to be held Wednesday, April 9th at lunchtime. Twelve of our classmates took part in the classroom bee. It was a great show of interest, effort and courage! All students are to be commended for their great sportsmanship and support of others!
**Spring Break begins 3/22-3/30. Classes resumes on Monday, March 31st. All students traveling near and far have their travel journals. Other students have requested a journal for home use. I can't wait to read about their adventures!
**Report Cards are in your child's homework folder along with a Lexia Core5 update and information for on line registration for the Academic Fair and Egg Drop Contest. I would love to see our class represented by some projects and egg vehicles. Ms. Creehan will come in after break to show the students some past projects and answer any questions they have. The on line registration also gives detailed info on project set up. The Academic Fair is Wednesday, April 23rd in the gym. Students will have speak about their projects to Irving students during the day and again at night for the public and families from 6:30-7:30 pm. The Egg Drop Contest will also be held on Wednesday, April 23rd beginning at 12:30 out on the playground.
**Keep sending in field trip permission slips and money for our Adler Planetarium Trip.
**Route to Reading Rotation 6 has concluded. You should have received notification of your child's skill mastery. Route to Reading Rotation 7 will begin on Tuesday, April 1st.
**Everyone smiled brightly for their individual Spring Picture. A test pic will be sent home sometime in April with instruction for purchase.
**No Friendship Club this week. Ms. Bell Bey had a meeting.
**In Mr. Packer Math Enrichment, Mr. Packer continued his activities on superlatives.
**YES!! It's finally time!!! You can now begin bringing in your GIANT BOXES, medium and small boxes, paper towel and toilet paper tubes/wrapping paper tubes, cup tops, empty containers and any other COOL things you have been saving for our Space Station Projects. Our space station prep, design, construction and detailing will take place the week of April 21st-25th. We may need some hot glue volunteers during the detailing process. Stay tuned!
**Please have a safe and restful spring break. It is somewhat of a homework holiday-----but-----you can read your Busy Reader, work on your project idea/vehicle idea for Academic Fair/Egg Drop, write and illustrate in your travel journal, log onto Lexia, XtraMath, Spelling City or BrainPop, play some of your games and do Word Play, get outside and exercise, do some yoga poses, observe nature and spend some time with family and friends.
This week:
It was all about Art Start Part 3--Welcoming Spring, Super Tuber and School Spirit Week Activities.
In Art Start, Ms. Kris read the story, "The Reasons for Seasons." She talked about how we have seasons and in particular the upcoming season of Spring. She also brought a book on mythology and talked to the students about myths--stories that were told to explain a happening.....no science involved. She read a story based on Greek mythology on how spring came to be. For our cooking session, the students created "flower" cupcakes and flower sugar cookies. They used brightly colored sprinkles for decorations. Pretty cool! On to Super Tuber----Students brought in their potatoes. We went over a little history of the potato using maps and pictures. The students learned that the potato is a tuber and the tuber grows into more potatoes. We talked about why Ireland is known for potatoes. The students used their magnifiers to look for the "eyes." They measured the length with cubes and weighed their potatoes using a scale and teddy bear counters. The students also graphed how they liked to eat potatoes. French Fried won out followed by mashed. I showed the students how to grow a potato plant using a potato and suspending it in water with toothpicks and placing it in a sunny window. Stay tuned! Emily's mom spoke to us about Ireland and brought some great Irish music and a special drum that was played using a small stick moved back and forth. All the students got to try it. School Spirit Week was great! Lots of smiles---wearing of green----lots of mini Mr. Wyza's, a mini nurse Jamie and mini Ms. Gullo and even a Ms. Weigel! Story book and movie characters were everywhere. Lots of princesses, super heroes, dragons, monsters, an Ariel and t.v. characters. It was a great week! Station day activities included writing about the sun, building animals with cubes (tricky!) and creating number sentence and illustrating the process.
Reading/Social Studies: We took a break from our Treasures Reading Series. We will begin Unit 8 Plants after spring break. The students reviewed all their sight words. The students worked on some Common Core standards--writing an opinion about a book, asking and answering questions about a fiction story and after reading a particular story, illustrating the front and back cover and title page. The students used previous stories and worked with partners to discuss and record the title, setting, characters and the plot. They used their story elements butterfly for this. The students listened to the story, "My five Senses." They listened for key details and orally sequenced events in the story. We continue to use the Haggerty Blue Book exercises for isolating vowels, blending and segmenting, adding and deleting and substituting phonemes. The students continue to review blends and digraphs. They are using their elkonin boxes to segment 4, 5, and 6 letter words. The students worked on a variety of games and movement activities with the focus on spelling their sight vocabulary.
Math: The students worked this week on illustrating and writing number sentences for story problems. Figuring out what process to use is becoming clearer. Students are sharper at recognizing even and odd numbers. They continue to work on counting on from a random number, counting quantities to 30, telling time by the hour and comparing 2 written numbers between 1 and 20. The students are also working on place value by putting together and taking apart teen numbers from 11-19 by naming how many tens and how many ones.
Writing: The students have been doing more writing this week. They wrote an opinion piece about a favorite story and wrote an information piece about the sun. They took some time to write in their journals about their lucky day. Students continue to work on sentence structure including capital letter at the beginning and punctuation at the end. They are beginning to be more consistent about reading or proofing their writing piece before they come to journal conference. Inventive spelling remains very acceptable. Students are working at composing and writing 1-4 sentences on a given topic independently.
Science: The students continue their study of shadows and the sun and space. The students reviewed what makes a shadow. They created their shadows as well as observed the shadows of their classmates during our sunny weather at lunch. They observed that a bigger shadow will "hide" the smaller one. They reflected in their science journal their ideas on which way a shadow will fall in relation to its light source. I took picture of each students action shadow. They will be using these for their beginning paragraph project. The students listened to informational stories about the sun. Many knew that the sun is a star and is made up of burning hot gases. It is the star that is closest to us on Earth. Some student were surprised to hear that the sun is just medium star. They wrote a fact piece to go along with their sun collages. We began learning a song about the order of the planets and looked up general facts via the internet and books on the first four land planets. The students are also learning that space is always changing and that scientists are discovering new planets and learning things about planets near to our Earth like Mars all the time. Our shadow silhouettes and photos are up in the hall. Can you guess the shadow that goes with the silhouette?
Technology: The students continue to use the iPad for small group and individual use. Vocabulary development apps have been the focus this week in reading. The apps Spelling Bug, Tic, Tac, Toe, Rocket Speller, Dolch Words, Write Words and Sight Words 100 were used this week. The students set their written words on fire with the free app Fire Finger! (thanks, Ms. Parkinson!) We are having great fun with it. In math, the students continue their work on addition and subtraction processes with the apps Mathland, Butterfly Math, Find the Sums, Top-It Addition and Kids Math. The app Math Rack was used with the whole group for counting and grouping. In science, the apps NASA, weatherunderground, Solar System are assisting students in the questions they have.
Literature: "My Five Senses," "There is No Place Like Space," "The Sun is My Favorite Star," "Sun," "The Sun," "Day and Night," "The Reasons for Seasons," "Amazing Sun," "I Can See My Shadow."
Friday, March 21, 2014
Sunday, March 16, 2014
UPDATES for 3/10-3/14 2014
**Please send a potato tomorrow (Monday, March 17th) for our Super Tuber Activity! It can be any kind. Don't cook it. We have G. Shelton, J. Smyth, H. Lim and Reid's grandma helping us out. Thanks so much! Please come at 10:00 am. Stop by the office to get a visitor's badge.
**REPORT CARDS for Trimester 2 will go home this Friday, March 21st.'
**Route to Reading Rotation 6 will conclude on Wednesday, March 19th. At that time you will receive information on you child's skill mastery. Route to Reading Rotation 7 will begin on Tuesday, April 1st.
**Spring Picture Day is Monday, March 17th! If you are having a sibling picture taken--those will be taken at 8:05 am. Please let me know if you are. Our class will have their pictures taken at 8:50 am. This is an individual posed picture with a background.
**Next week Student Council has decreed---It is SPIRIT WEEK! Monday --"Smile at Everyone Day!" A flyer is in your child's homework folder about the other days this week. Thanks to reps, Ally and Colin for their contributions to the week. Those kids are sure busy!
**This week is also PACK Week. Pack the color of the day in your lunch! Think fruits and vegetables. We are encouraging students to "Eat the Rainbow." Monday-pack GREEN, Tuesday-pack WHITE, Wednesday, pack PURPLE, Thursday-pack YELLOW/ORANGE and Friday-pack RED. The school lunch program will also be participating.
**In preparation for Irving School's Annual Spelling Bee---We will have our "Classroom Bee" this Wednesday to see who will represent our class in the K-2 Spelling Bee. The "bee" will be cold-meaning that there is no study---anyone who wants to be a part of it can. Some students have expressed an interest. Others are thinking about participating. No worries! Remember--students can only spell what they have knowledge of in terms of consonants and all the different vowel combos. Words will be given at random starting with a Kdg-1 list. I will make it fun. We will end up with the 2 top spellers and 1 alternate. Their names will be submitted to Mr. Packer.
**Field trip permission and info for our trip to the Adler Planetarium are in your child's homework folder. The trip is April 10th. I would like to have all the permission slips and money in by this coming Friday before break if possible. Thanks. I will be able to take 4 chaperones. The chaperones will carpool.
**Information on the ACADEMIC FAIR/EGG DROP CONTEST (Wednesday, April 23rd) should also be out sometime this week. I believe it is an online sign up. I have spoken to my students about it. It is a great opportunity for them to research something they are really interested in!
**Spring Break begins March 22nd thru March 30th. Let me know if your child needs a TRAVEL JOURNAL for that week. Classes resume on Monday, March 31st.
**In Friendship Club this week, Ms. Bell Bey presented a lesson on feelings.
**In Mr. Packer Math Enrichment this week, Mr. Packer began a unit on superlatives by reading a special story. The students will be doing a project on this topic.
This week:
It was all about Art Start and Bagpipes! First Art Start--Chef Ashley was out of town, but her mom, Ms. Kris spoke to the students about the continuing cold, snowy weather. Something warm is need when you come in from the cold.......Ms. Kris read the story, "Growing Vegetable Soup" by Lois Elhert. In the story the kids grow vegetables which will eventually become their "vegetable soup." The students talked about the types of vegetable they like and some students commented about growing them in their home gardens. Ms. Kris demonstrated how to make a layered soup mix using dried vegetables and spices. All the liquid and/or meat can be done at home. The students worked at measuring
**REPORT CARDS for Trimester 2 will go home this Friday, March 21st.'
**Route to Reading Rotation 6 will conclude on Wednesday, March 19th. At that time you will receive information on you child's skill mastery. Route to Reading Rotation 7 will begin on Tuesday, April 1st.
**Spring Picture Day is Monday, March 17th! If you are having a sibling picture taken--those will be taken at 8:05 am. Please let me know if you are. Our class will have their pictures taken at 8:50 am. This is an individual posed picture with a background.
**Next week Student Council has decreed---It is SPIRIT WEEK! Monday --"Smile at Everyone Day!" A flyer is in your child's homework folder about the other days this week. Thanks to reps, Ally and Colin for their contributions to the week. Those kids are sure busy!
**This week is also PACK Week. Pack the color of the day in your lunch! Think fruits and vegetables. We are encouraging students to "Eat the Rainbow." Monday-pack GREEN, Tuesday-pack WHITE, Wednesday, pack PURPLE, Thursday-pack YELLOW/ORANGE and Friday-pack RED. The school lunch program will also be participating.
**In preparation for Irving School's Annual Spelling Bee---We will have our "Classroom Bee" this Wednesday to see who will represent our class in the K-2 Spelling Bee. The "bee" will be cold-meaning that there is no study---anyone who wants to be a part of it can. Some students have expressed an interest. Others are thinking about participating. No worries! Remember--students can only spell what they have knowledge of in terms of consonants and all the different vowel combos. Words will be given at random starting with a Kdg-1 list. I will make it fun. We will end up with the 2 top spellers and 1 alternate. Their names will be submitted to Mr. Packer.
**Field trip permission and info for our trip to the Adler Planetarium are in your child's homework folder. The trip is April 10th. I would like to have all the permission slips and money in by this coming Friday before break if possible. Thanks. I will be able to take 4 chaperones. The chaperones will carpool.
**Information on the ACADEMIC FAIR/EGG DROP CONTEST (Wednesday, April 23rd) should also be out sometime this week. I believe it is an online sign up. I have spoken to my students about it. It is a great opportunity for them to research something they are really interested in!
**Spring Break begins March 22nd thru March 30th. Let me know if your child needs a TRAVEL JOURNAL for that week. Classes resume on Monday, March 31st.
**In Friendship Club this week, Ms. Bell Bey presented a lesson on feelings.
**In Mr. Packer Math Enrichment this week, Mr. Packer began a unit on superlatives by reading a special story. The students will be doing a project on this topic.
This week:
It was all about Art Start and Bagpipes! First Art Start--Chef Ashley was out of town, but her mom, Ms. Kris spoke to the students about the continuing cold, snowy weather. Something warm is need when you come in from the cold.......Ms. Kris read the story, "Growing Vegetable Soup" by Lois Elhert. In the story the kids grow vegetables which will eventually become their "vegetable soup." The students talked about the types of vegetable they like and some students commented about growing them in their home gardens. Ms. Kris demonstrated how to make a layered soup mix using dried vegetables and spices. All the liquid and/or meat can be done at home. The students worked at measuring
Sunday, March 9, 2014
UPDATES for 3/3-3/7 2014
**Please send a potato of your choice to school on Monday, March 17th for our Super Tuber Activity. Do not cook it! We will learn its history, examine it closely, perform some graphing exercises, measure it and look for its "eyes," take a look at the different varieties and learn about its connections to Ireland. We will also choose one to grow. Thanks to G. Shelton, J. Smyth and H. Lim for helping us out! It's our class salute to St. Patrick's Day.
**Please join our Kindergarten classes on Friday, March 14th from 1:30-2:30 pm for Bagpiper Patrick Lynch. He will visit our class and speak about the history of the instrument, take it apart and show its pieces and play some spectacular music. Siblings welcome!
**Please keep sending snow pants and boots. Hopefully--this will be the last week. Could spring actually be in the air??!!
**Our Green Team rep, Gina did a fantastic job along with other Green Team members in presenting at the PTO Meeting on Thursday. Ms. Parkinson spoke about the mission of green Team and members read a poem and showed a video they made on recycle, re-use and renew. We saw Gina and Reid in the video. Well done!
**Our new Student Council reps--Ally and Colin attended their first meeting of the new trimester. They are working to plan the activities for Spirit Week which is the week before spring break.
**We are now in our final trimester of the school year! Report cards will go home on Friday, March 21st. This year has really flown by!
**Route to Reading Rotation 6 will resume next week. It was on hiatus due to staff assisting with the upper grade ISAT testing.
**Spring Pictures will be taken on Monday, March 17th probably first thing in the morning. This is an individual posed picture with a background.
**Look for information on our field trip to Adler Planetarium (Thursday, April 10th) at the end of the week.
**Also at the end of the week, look for information on Irving's Annual Spelling Bee which will be held on Wednesday, April 9th at lunch time. Each classroom is asked to give a "classroom bee" resulting in the top 2 spellers and an alternate attending the K-2 Spelling Bee to represent our class.
**Future event--All School Academic Fair and Egg Drop Contest--Wednesday, April 23rd. Do you have something ou are really interested in? Can you make a project out of it? Can you construct a vehicle that will keep an egg from breaking when dropped from a third floor window? Think about it!!!!
**School is closed for Spring Break from 3/22-3/30. School resumes on Monday, March 31st.
**In Friendship Club this week, Ms. Bell Bey continued her lessons on the zones of self regulation and strategies for moving from one zone to another.
**In Mr. Packer Math Enrichment this week, Mr. Packer completed his lesson on ways to show different number groupings thru illustration.
**We continue getting closer to collection of GIANT BOXES and other cool things for our upcoming space station projects. You can bring them in after spring break!
This week:
It was all about Art Start and the beginning of our new science unit, "Sunshine, Shadows, the Moon and Space." Let's start with Art Start. In our second lesson of combining literature and cooking, Chef Ashley brought her mom, Ms. Kris to read the Jan Brett story, "The Mitten." The students talked about winter and winter clothing. The students made connections about winter in their own lives. Ms. Kris talked with students about things they could do to be warm when they came in from the cold. Making hot chocolate was mentioned. Chef Ashley chimed in and spoke about the activity of making their own hot chocolate mix. Back at their tables, the student learned about measuring by the cup and half cup and their filled their container with milk crystals, cocoa powder, powdered sugar and marshmallows. Students used their senses to feel the milk crystals, smell the cocoa and see the layering of ingredients. Cool! Next the students made "snowflakes" using pretzels and melted chocolate and colorful sprinkles. Lots of fun!
The students began their science inquiry on "What makes a shadow?" and the beginning of our Space cross curricular theme. We are slowly transforming our class into a space workshop. We began with an inquiry discussion about what they know about space. What is in it? How was the earth and other planets form? What is a universe? Wow! Lots of thinking going on! Station Day activities included Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss masks, counting number addition completion, Dr. Seuss word search, solving the pattern block puzzles and name the picture with word families en and ot.
Reading/Social Studies: The students continue working in Unit 7 Weather in our Treasures Reading series. This week the students built background knowledge around the idea of seasons or certain times of the year and different activities and ways people and animals relate to them. The students listened to the Big Book story, "In the Yard." They made predictions about story content by reading the title and looking at the book cover pictures. After reading the story, the students discussed what the main idea was. They made connections in the story about activities they do in their backyards at different times of the year. They noted certain details in the story. The sight words and and what were introduced. The students continued work with target sounds Bb and Ll. They did an activity where they listened for the targeted sound and told if it was at the beginning or ending of a word. Students reviewed the function of nouns, action words-verbs and what an adjective is and how to use it in a sentence and when speaking. As we have been doing all year, the students worked on the exercises in our Haggerty Blue Book. This oral exercise book contains activities for blending, segmenting, adding, deleting and substituting phonemes to create a new word or reveal a word family. The students continue to work on the Common Core Standards in language arts. Students express not only verbally, but also in writing their opinion, story elements and asking and answering questions about a story read. They have come so far! Workstations for this week included Leveled reader fluency and comprehension check/discussion, story elements butterfly on the story of their choice, partner read aloud with reader's checklist, contributing to a seasons action and picture chart, finding the sentence that goes with the picture, writing a question from a story read and answering that question, word play activities using addition and deletion skills for creating words and using partner and small group board games and iPad activities to enhance vocabulary development.
Math: The students revisited pattern block shapes and worked at constructing puzzles of various complexity---puzzles with shape outlines and puzzles without. It was interesting to observe the types of strategies the students used---starting with the biggest piece first, starting with edges first, starting with the middle first, using two blocks to create the shape (instead of a hexagon, using 2 trapezoids) Cool! Very fun visual perception and figure ground work! The students are enjoying their work using the rekenreck. They played, "What's my number?" "How far is it from ten," and "Show me." In their math journals, the students are working both on addition and now take away or subtraction using pictures and counters. Some students are forming mental images in their head and some are using the counting on strategy to solve adding problems. We are getting a lot more practice on number writing. Math workstations this week included writing 2 and 3 digit numbers, teen ten frame review, counting on to add activity, pattern block puzzles and rekenreck and iPad activities relating to number quantities, attributes, shapes, number bonds to 10 and adding and taking away.
Writing: The students continued to work on the lowercase letters introduced thus far. They applied what they learned in their orange practice book. All students continue to work on refining their sentence structure. They are using their writer's checklist, re reading their work before they come to journal conference. We continue to use the stars and wishes model where students critique their peers writing. With the addition of encouraging more adjective use to expand their sentences, the students sentences are beginning to become more descriptive. Students are also continue to work on sequencing events in their daily journal entries. Many students are using key words--first, next, then and last in their writing. Their Weather Project will give them more opportunities to show what they know about how to write a sentence or sentences!
Science: The students began their science unit, "Sunshine, Shadows, the Moon and Space." We used the projector to create various shadows of people and objects. I posted the question--How are these shadows made? Do we need certain elements before we have a shadow occur? I recorded the ideas that students had on the subject. All students agreed we needed some kind of light source. Some students commented that a body or some kind of object blocked the light source. Other students noticed that we needed a place to see the shadow. The "recipe" for the creating a shadow became light source, something to block the light source and a surface to see the shadow on. Wow! commented Reid--"a shadow is blocked light." Students observed other things about shadows--some are really dark (totally black,) while others are were gray or light colored or you could hardly see them. Why is that? Can light pass through an object? Stay tuned for more!
Technology: In reading small group and individual instruction, the apps Montessori Crossword, Magic Reading 2 and iTalk were used to enhance sound blending skills, review sue of consonant blends and digraphs and plurals and emphasize work with word families and particular letter sounds. Students listened to their own reading via iTalk and critique themselves using the Reader's Checklist. In math small group and individual instruction students worked on the apps Geoboard, Math Bug, Top-It Addition, Number Find and Monster Squeeze. Whole group instruction continues to center around the use of the apps The Rack and Number Line for counting, and cardinality as well as addition and subtraction work. BrainPop, weatherunderground and weather.com and PBS Kids were used this week in connection with our science unit.
Literature: "The Cat in the Hat" "The Cat in the Hat Comes Back," "Fox in Socks," "The Eyes Book," "The Universe," "What is a Shadow," "The Mitten," "Children's Atlas of the Universe," "Weather," "When Will It Be Spring," "A Story, A Story."
**Please join our Kindergarten classes on Friday, March 14th from 1:30-2:30 pm for Bagpiper Patrick Lynch. He will visit our class and speak about the history of the instrument, take it apart and show its pieces and play some spectacular music. Siblings welcome!
**Please keep sending snow pants and boots. Hopefully--this will be the last week. Could spring actually be in the air??!!
**Our Green Team rep, Gina did a fantastic job along with other Green Team members in presenting at the PTO Meeting on Thursday. Ms. Parkinson spoke about the mission of green Team and members read a poem and showed a video they made on recycle, re-use and renew. We saw Gina and Reid in the video. Well done!
**Our new Student Council reps--Ally and Colin attended their first meeting of the new trimester. They are working to plan the activities for Spirit Week which is the week before spring break.
**We are now in our final trimester of the school year! Report cards will go home on Friday, March 21st. This year has really flown by!
**Route to Reading Rotation 6 will resume next week. It was on hiatus due to staff assisting with the upper grade ISAT testing.
**Spring Pictures will be taken on Monday, March 17th probably first thing in the morning. This is an individual posed picture with a background.
**Look for information on our field trip to Adler Planetarium (Thursday, April 10th) at the end of the week.
**Also at the end of the week, look for information on Irving's Annual Spelling Bee which will be held on Wednesday, April 9th at lunch time. Each classroom is asked to give a "classroom bee" resulting in the top 2 spellers and an alternate attending the K-2 Spelling Bee to represent our class.
**Future event--All School Academic Fair and Egg Drop Contest--Wednesday, April 23rd. Do you have something ou are really interested in? Can you make a project out of it? Can you construct a vehicle that will keep an egg from breaking when dropped from a third floor window? Think about it!!!!
**School is closed for Spring Break from 3/22-3/30. School resumes on Monday, March 31st.
**In Friendship Club this week, Ms. Bell Bey continued her lessons on the zones of self regulation and strategies for moving from one zone to another.
**In Mr. Packer Math Enrichment this week, Mr. Packer completed his lesson on ways to show different number groupings thru illustration.
**We continue getting closer to collection of GIANT BOXES and other cool things for our upcoming space station projects. You can bring them in after spring break!
This week:
It was all about Art Start and the beginning of our new science unit, "Sunshine, Shadows, the Moon and Space." Let's start with Art Start. In our second lesson of combining literature and cooking, Chef Ashley brought her mom, Ms. Kris to read the Jan Brett story, "The Mitten." The students talked about winter and winter clothing. The students made connections about winter in their own lives. Ms. Kris talked with students about things they could do to be warm when they came in from the cold. Making hot chocolate was mentioned. Chef Ashley chimed in and spoke about the activity of making their own hot chocolate mix. Back at their tables, the student learned about measuring by the cup and half cup and their filled their container with milk crystals, cocoa powder, powdered sugar and marshmallows. Students used their senses to feel the milk crystals, smell the cocoa and see the layering of ingredients. Cool! Next the students made "snowflakes" using pretzels and melted chocolate and colorful sprinkles. Lots of fun!
The students began their science inquiry on "What makes a shadow?" and the beginning of our Space cross curricular theme. We are slowly transforming our class into a space workshop. We began with an inquiry discussion about what they know about space. What is in it? How was the earth and other planets form? What is a universe? Wow! Lots of thinking going on! Station Day activities included Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss masks, counting number addition completion, Dr. Seuss word search, solving the pattern block puzzles and name the picture with word families en and ot.
Reading/Social Studies: The students continue working in Unit 7 Weather in our Treasures Reading series. This week the students built background knowledge around the idea of seasons or certain times of the year and different activities and ways people and animals relate to them. The students listened to the Big Book story, "In the Yard." They made predictions about story content by reading the title and looking at the book cover pictures. After reading the story, the students discussed what the main idea was. They made connections in the story about activities they do in their backyards at different times of the year. They noted certain details in the story. The sight words and and what were introduced. The students continued work with target sounds Bb and Ll. They did an activity where they listened for the targeted sound and told if it was at the beginning or ending of a word. Students reviewed the function of nouns, action words-verbs and what an adjective is and how to use it in a sentence and when speaking. As we have been doing all year, the students worked on the exercises in our Haggerty Blue Book. This oral exercise book contains activities for blending, segmenting, adding, deleting and substituting phonemes to create a new word or reveal a word family. The students continue to work on the Common Core Standards in language arts. Students express not only verbally, but also in writing their opinion, story elements and asking and answering questions about a story read. They have come so far! Workstations for this week included Leveled reader fluency and comprehension check/discussion, story elements butterfly on the story of their choice, partner read aloud with reader's checklist, contributing to a seasons action and picture chart, finding the sentence that goes with the picture, writing a question from a story read and answering that question, word play activities using addition and deletion skills for creating words and using partner and small group board games and iPad activities to enhance vocabulary development.
Math: The students revisited pattern block shapes and worked at constructing puzzles of various complexity---puzzles with shape outlines and puzzles without. It was interesting to observe the types of strategies the students used---starting with the biggest piece first, starting with edges first, starting with the middle first, using two blocks to create the shape (instead of a hexagon, using 2 trapezoids) Cool! Very fun visual perception and figure ground work! The students are enjoying their work using the rekenreck. They played, "What's my number?" "How far is it from ten," and "Show me." In their math journals, the students are working both on addition and now take away or subtraction using pictures and counters. Some students are forming mental images in their head and some are using the counting on strategy to solve adding problems. We are getting a lot more practice on number writing. Math workstations this week included writing 2 and 3 digit numbers, teen ten frame review, counting on to add activity, pattern block puzzles and rekenreck and iPad activities relating to number quantities, attributes, shapes, number bonds to 10 and adding and taking away.
Writing: The students continued to work on the lowercase letters introduced thus far. They applied what they learned in their orange practice book. All students continue to work on refining their sentence structure. They are using their writer's checklist, re reading their work before they come to journal conference. We continue to use the stars and wishes model where students critique their peers writing. With the addition of encouraging more adjective use to expand their sentences, the students sentences are beginning to become more descriptive. Students are also continue to work on sequencing events in their daily journal entries. Many students are using key words--first, next, then and last in their writing. Their Weather Project will give them more opportunities to show what they know about how to write a sentence or sentences!
Science: The students began their science unit, "Sunshine, Shadows, the Moon and Space." We used the projector to create various shadows of people and objects. I posted the question--How are these shadows made? Do we need certain elements before we have a shadow occur? I recorded the ideas that students had on the subject. All students agreed we needed some kind of light source. Some students commented that a body or some kind of object blocked the light source. Other students noticed that we needed a place to see the shadow. The "recipe" for the creating a shadow became light source, something to block the light source and a surface to see the shadow on. Wow! commented Reid--"a shadow is blocked light." Students observed other things about shadows--some are really dark (totally black,) while others are were gray or light colored or you could hardly see them. Why is that? Can light pass through an object? Stay tuned for more!
Technology: In reading small group and individual instruction, the apps Montessori Crossword, Magic Reading 2 and iTalk were used to enhance sound blending skills, review sue of consonant blends and digraphs and plurals and emphasize work with word families and particular letter sounds. Students listened to their own reading via iTalk and critique themselves using the Reader's Checklist. In math small group and individual instruction students worked on the apps Geoboard, Math Bug, Top-It Addition, Number Find and Monster Squeeze. Whole group instruction continues to center around the use of the apps The Rack and Number Line for counting, and cardinality as well as addition and subtraction work. BrainPop, weatherunderground and weather.com and PBS Kids were used this week in connection with our science unit.
Literature: "The Cat in the Hat" "The Cat in the Hat Comes Back," "Fox in Socks," "The Eyes Book," "The Universe," "What is a Shadow," "The Mitten," "Children's Atlas of the Universe," "Weather," "When Will It Be Spring," "A Story, A Story."
Sunday, March 2, 2014
UPDATES for 2/24-2/28 2014
**The wild weather continues! The students made the best of their indoor lunch time recess with storybook tales and sharing choice time with Ms. Weigel's class. How timely for us that we began Unit 7 Weather in our Treasures Reading series. Looking ahead this week----please keep sending snow pants and boots for lunchtime recess. Our entire class joined Mr. Hodge last Wednesday to say the pledge and the Eagle Essentials over the loud speaker. Our special volunteer readers, Philippe, Ally and Reid read information on Ruby Bridges celebrating African American History. Our whole class chimed in for the final sentence. They sounded great! Hope to get an online version of it for you soon.
**The FUN FAIR was spectacular!! I hope you all had as much fun as I did. There were great games and prizes. Many students danced for desserts. Our class BAKING basket was superb! The silent auction items were the best yet. Thanks to all of you who could attend. Towards the end of the fair came the STAFF talent portion. In the running this year was Hodgepodge, The New Beats and Boy's Rule, Girl's Drool. Very cute and original pieces. Boy's Rule dominated the scene (in more ways than one) and raised the most money to win the PIE in the FACE! If you were the winning bidder for my auction items, I will contact you in the next few weeks. This event truly represents our Irving community at its best! I am so proud to be a part of it!
**The students had their first ART START experience courtesy of Chef Ashley from Constructive Chaos. Chef Ashley spoke about her background as a chef and also talked about her business. She then shared with the students poetry about pizza and read Jack Prelutsky's poem, "The Pizza the Size of the Sun." Chef Ashley had the students use their senses to feel, smell, touch the ingredients in dough. All the ingredients were prepared ahead of time to form a dough. The students got to work with the dough--working the dough into a ball and then creating a bed for their pizza toppings. A personal pizza was created and packaged so the students could take it home to bake. The dough was sticky and the more the students worked with it the stronger it became. It was hilarious to see the students pulling the dough and dough sticking to their hands. The students compared this dough to the gluten free dough I made in the morning. The students had a great time. Can't wait to see what is next on our literature and cooking circuit. We will find out this Wednesday!
**Student Council is looking for 2 new reps. I have sent home the information for you to look over. Have your child signed their name and return it on Monday. All papers go into a giant bag and I stick my hand in and pick 2. The first meeting is Tuesday, March 4th at 11:25 am.
**On Thursday, March 6th, GREEN TEAM will give a short presentation about their groups focus this year. Our rep, Gina will be there. Come out and show your support. Their presentation is at 7:00 pm.
**Route to Reading Rotation 6 began this week. You should have received notification of your child's current skill level.
**For our salute to St.Patrick's Day----Join us on Friday, March 14th for a presentation by Bag Piper, Patrick Lynch from 1:30-2:30 in the Irving Auditorium. A bit of history, instrument parts and lively music. All kindergarten classes will be in attendance. The students will follow it up with SUPER TUBER DAY on Monday, March 17th from 10-11 am. All students need to bring a potato of their choice (not cooked.) We will learn its history, examine its surface, measure its length, look for the "eyes", take a look at the different varieties and learn of the potato and its connection to Ireland. I will need some volunteers for this. Email me if you are interested.
**Taste of Irving will be held Friday, March 14th at 6:00pm.
**The end of Trimester 2 is March 5th. Report cards will go home on Friday, March 21st.
**Spring Pictures will be taken on Monday, March 17th probably in the morning. This is posed individual picture with a backdrop.
**Future Field Trip----Adler Planetarium on Thursday, April 10th. More info will follow.
**Future Events----I have begun speaking to the students about some cool opportunities that they can participate in--more info will follow soon----Wednesday, April 9th K-2 SPELLING BEE and Wednesday, April 23rd ACADEMIC FAIR and EGG DROP CONTEST. Do you have something that you are really interested in? Can you make a project out of it? Can you construct a vehicle that will keep an egg from breaking when dropped out of a third flour window? Think about it!
**We are getting closer to collection of GIANT BOXES and other cool things for our upcoming space station projects. Keep saving them. Mr. DiPaolo has donated 2 great boxes for our project. You can bring them in after spring break.
**NO SCHOOL-SPRING BREAK-March 22-30. Classes resume on Monday, March 31st.
This week:
It was all about the weather. We began tracking the weather in the United States via the site Weatherunderground each day as it relates to our current unit in reading. We do have a fascination with the weather here in Room 110. It has been one for the records! Students are observing weather "fronts" moving in and direction that weather patterns move. The students love watching the color changes on the animated radar. They are becoming experts at locating areas of rain, snow, ice, wind speed. The students have also have become interested in the chance or percentage of a storm occurring. Perhaps we have some budding meteorologists!
Reading/Social Studies: The students began Unit 7 Weather in our Treasures Reading series. We began by pondering the question, "What is the weather like today?" They accessed prior knowledge about what they understood about weather, not only in their own area but in other parts of the United States. The students listened to the Big Book story, "The Rainy Day." They thought about what the main idea could be. They made connections about rain in their own daily lives. Sight words this and do were introduced. The target sound for this week is short e. The students used pictures as well as words to make a group Short e web. The students continued to work on recognizing nouns and verbs in their daily sentence work. They reread the story and created a picture in their minds (visualize) about what it would look like after the rain. The students reviewed the water cycle (go science!) and facts about rain. They examined 2 parts of a book--the glossary and the index and what they are used for. The students used their elkonin boxes to segment and blend 4-5 phoneme words. The students read their paper stories aloud to to a partner for fluency. Our Robust Vocabulary included BLUSTERY, DRIZZLE, CHILLY, CLOUD and WEATHER. The students listened to the Native American tale, "How Thunder and Lightening Came to Be." They also had the chance to listen and reflect on 4 poems related to weather. In the another folktale from the Pueblo Nation, the students listened to the "Frog and the Locust." We discussed the idea of a rain dance or song to bring rain to a dry area. We located on the map where the Pueblo people lived and looked at a surface map to see how the land looked. What did the frog do to get rain? (sang) Why didn't his plan work? (It wasn't loud enough) What happened at the end of the story? (The frog and locust worked together to sing a loud song) What do you think the story tellers message was? See if your child can recall. The students did some comparing of information across weather related texts. Workstations included leveled readers fluency read aloud using the readers checklist, word building on several levels--short a and e cvc focus, beginning and ending blends, digraphs, favorite story picture--writing a question and an answer, compare and contrast a drawing of your house in summer and in winter and word sort--short e word families.
Math: The students are working more in depth on activities using the rekenreck--an abacus like board with 5 red and 5 white beads in rows of ten---with ten groups of ten. Students played What's My Number? How far is it from 10? from 5? Show Me.......making a random number and ways to say a random number. I also showed the students a random number on the rekenreck and then covered it quickly. Could they remember what the number was? The students continue to work on number writing--2 and 3 digits, creating number bonds to 10 and listening for information in a story problem and showing their work in figuring out the answer.
Writing: The students continue to work on formation of lowercase letters and refining their writing. The students are encouraged to reread their sentences before coming to the journal conference with me--proofing, if you will. The students continue to write using the journal prompts from our reading series.
Science: The students made their final reflections on the subject of water. We traced the path of water and the stages it goes through before it comes into our homes via the faucet. We reviewed the path of the water cycle and saw a video via BrainPop on the water cycle.
Technology: In reading, students worked individually and with partners using the apps Magic Reading 2 to segment and blend, Montessori Crossword word building short a and e words, beginning and ending blends and digraphs. They also used Spelling Bug, Rocket Speller for reinforcement of skills. In the area of math, whole group instruction centered around the apps Number Rack and Number Line. Individual and partners worked on the apps Top it Addition, Number Find, Geo Board, Monster Squeeze and Addition Bug. In Science, whole group instruction centered around the apps Weatherunderground and BrainPop and Sonic Pics for story board and recording of our Ruby Bridges project.
Literature: "Ruby Bridges," "Bake, Mice, Bake," "Turn on the Faucet," "It takes a Village," "Suppose You Meet a Dinosaur," "Hooray for Teeth," "Red Light, Green Light, Momma and Me," "Water Cycle," "The Story of Rosa Parks," "A Walk in the Rain with a Brain," "Jared's Cool-Out Space," "There was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Sticker Book," "Pete the Cat--the Wheels on the Bus, " "The Story of Wilma Rudolph."
**The FUN FAIR was spectacular!! I hope you all had as much fun as I did. There were great games and prizes. Many students danced for desserts. Our class BAKING basket was superb! The silent auction items were the best yet. Thanks to all of you who could attend. Towards the end of the fair came the STAFF talent portion. In the running this year was Hodgepodge, The New Beats and Boy's Rule, Girl's Drool. Very cute and original pieces. Boy's Rule dominated the scene (in more ways than one) and raised the most money to win the PIE in the FACE! If you were the winning bidder for my auction items, I will contact you in the next few weeks. This event truly represents our Irving community at its best! I am so proud to be a part of it!
**The students had their first ART START experience courtesy of Chef Ashley from Constructive Chaos. Chef Ashley spoke about her background as a chef and also talked about her business. She then shared with the students poetry about pizza and read Jack Prelutsky's poem, "The Pizza the Size of the Sun." Chef Ashley had the students use their senses to feel, smell, touch the ingredients in dough. All the ingredients were prepared ahead of time to form a dough. The students got to work with the dough--working the dough into a ball and then creating a bed for their pizza toppings. A personal pizza was created and packaged so the students could take it home to bake. The dough was sticky and the more the students worked with it the stronger it became. It was hilarious to see the students pulling the dough and dough sticking to their hands. The students compared this dough to the gluten free dough I made in the morning. The students had a great time. Can't wait to see what is next on our literature and cooking circuit. We will find out this Wednesday!
**Student Council is looking for 2 new reps. I have sent home the information for you to look over. Have your child signed their name and return it on Monday. All papers go into a giant bag and I stick my hand in and pick 2. The first meeting is Tuesday, March 4th at 11:25 am.
**On Thursday, March 6th, GREEN TEAM will give a short presentation about their groups focus this year. Our rep, Gina will be there. Come out and show your support. Their presentation is at 7:00 pm.
**Route to Reading Rotation 6 began this week. You should have received notification of your child's current skill level.
**For our salute to St.Patrick's Day----Join us on Friday, March 14th for a presentation by Bag Piper, Patrick Lynch from 1:30-2:30 in the Irving Auditorium. A bit of history, instrument parts and lively music. All kindergarten classes will be in attendance. The students will follow it up with SUPER TUBER DAY on Monday, March 17th from 10-11 am. All students need to bring a potato of their choice (not cooked.) We will learn its history, examine its surface, measure its length, look for the "eyes", take a look at the different varieties and learn of the potato and its connection to Ireland. I will need some volunteers for this. Email me if you are interested.
**Taste of Irving will be held Friday, March 14th at 6:00pm.
**The end of Trimester 2 is March 5th. Report cards will go home on Friday, March 21st.
**Spring Pictures will be taken on Monday, March 17th probably in the morning. This is posed individual picture with a backdrop.
**Future Field Trip----Adler Planetarium on Thursday, April 10th. More info will follow.
**Future Events----I have begun speaking to the students about some cool opportunities that they can participate in--more info will follow soon----Wednesday, April 9th K-2 SPELLING BEE and Wednesday, April 23rd ACADEMIC FAIR and EGG DROP CONTEST. Do you have something that you are really interested in? Can you make a project out of it? Can you construct a vehicle that will keep an egg from breaking when dropped out of a third flour window? Think about it!
**We are getting closer to collection of GIANT BOXES and other cool things for our upcoming space station projects. Keep saving them. Mr. DiPaolo has donated 2 great boxes for our project. You can bring them in after spring break.
**NO SCHOOL-SPRING BREAK-March 22-30. Classes resume on Monday, March 31st.
This week:
It was all about the weather. We began tracking the weather in the United States via the site Weatherunderground each day as it relates to our current unit in reading. We do have a fascination with the weather here in Room 110. It has been one for the records! Students are observing weather "fronts" moving in and direction that weather patterns move. The students love watching the color changes on the animated radar. They are becoming experts at locating areas of rain, snow, ice, wind speed. The students have also have become interested in the chance or percentage of a storm occurring. Perhaps we have some budding meteorologists!
Reading/Social Studies: The students began Unit 7 Weather in our Treasures Reading series. We began by pondering the question, "What is the weather like today?" They accessed prior knowledge about what they understood about weather, not only in their own area but in other parts of the United States. The students listened to the Big Book story, "The Rainy Day." They thought about what the main idea could be. They made connections about rain in their own daily lives. Sight words this and do were introduced. The target sound for this week is short e. The students used pictures as well as words to make a group Short e web. The students continued to work on recognizing nouns and verbs in their daily sentence work. They reread the story and created a picture in their minds (visualize) about what it would look like after the rain. The students reviewed the water cycle (go science!) and facts about rain. They examined 2 parts of a book--the glossary and the index and what they are used for. The students used their elkonin boxes to segment and blend 4-5 phoneme words. The students read their paper stories aloud to to a partner for fluency. Our Robust Vocabulary included BLUSTERY, DRIZZLE, CHILLY, CLOUD and WEATHER. The students listened to the Native American tale, "How Thunder and Lightening Came to Be." They also had the chance to listen and reflect on 4 poems related to weather. In the another folktale from the Pueblo Nation, the students listened to the "Frog and the Locust." We discussed the idea of a rain dance or song to bring rain to a dry area. We located on the map where the Pueblo people lived and looked at a surface map to see how the land looked. What did the frog do to get rain? (sang) Why didn't his plan work? (It wasn't loud enough) What happened at the end of the story? (The frog and locust worked together to sing a loud song) What do you think the story tellers message was? See if your child can recall. The students did some comparing of information across weather related texts. Workstations included leveled readers fluency read aloud using the readers checklist, word building on several levels--short a and e cvc focus, beginning and ending blends, digraphs, favorite story picture--writing a question and an answer, compare and contrast a drawing of your house in summer and in winter and word sort--short e word families.
Math: The students are working more in depth on activities using the rekenreck--an abacus like board with 5 red and 5 white beads in rows of ten---with ten groups of ten. Students played What's My Number? How far is it from 10? from 5? Show Me.......making a random number and ways to say a random number. I also showed the students a random number on the rekenreck and then covered it quickly. Could they remember what the number was? The students continue to work on number writing--2 and 3 digits, creating number bonds to 10 and listening for information in a story problem and showing their work in figuring out the answer.
Writing: The students continue to work on formation of lowercase letters and refining their writing. The students are encouraged to reread their sentences before coming to the journal conference with me--proofing, if you will. The students continue to write using the journal prompts from our reading series.
Science: The students made their final reflections on the subject of water. We traced the path of water and the stages it goes through before it comes into our homes via the faucet. We reviewed the path of the water cycle and saw a video via BrainPop on the water cycle.
Technology: In reading, students worked individually and with partners using the apps Magic Reading 2 to segment and blend, Montessori Crossword word building short a and e words, beginning and ending blends and digraphs. They also used Spelling Bug, Rocket Speller for reinforcement of skills. In the area of math, whole group instruction centered around the apps Number Rack and Number Line. Individual and partners worked on the apps Top it Addition, Number Find, Geo Board, Monster Squeeze and Addition Bug. In Science, whole group instruction centered around the apps Weatherunderground and BrainPop and Sonic Pics for story board and recording of our Ruby Bridges project.
Literature: "Ruby Bridges," "Bake, Mice, Bake," "Turn on the Faucet," "It takes a Village," "Suppose You Meet a Dinosaur," "Hooray for Teeth," "Red Light, Green Light, Momma and Me," "Water Cycle," "The Story of Rosa Parks," "A Walk in the Rain with a Brain," "Jared's Cool-Out Space," "There was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Sticker Book," "Pete the Cat--the Wheels on the Bus, " "The Story of Wilma Rudolph."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)