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."

 



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