Sunday, September 21, 2014

UPDATES for 9/15-9/19 2014

**Parent/Teacher Conferences for Ms. Gullo's Kindergarten class will be held on Monday, October 20th, Tuesday, October 21st and Wednesday, October 22nd.  Thanks to all of you who have already signed up.  If you have not signed up or need to change your day and time,  please email me.  PLEASE NOTE:  School will be in session MORNING ONLY on Thursday, October 23rd and Friday, October 24th.  Dismissal will be at 11:00 am. 
**DIBELS  testing and PHONEMIC AWARENESS SCREENERS have been completed.  Our math baseline assessment EASY CBM will be administered sometime in the next week or two.  All testing and assessments will be shared with you at conference time.  We are looking at beginning Route to Reading Skill specific groups on September 30th.  You will receive notification of your child's skill group placement at that time.
**School Pictures will be taken on Tuesday, September 30th.  I usually try to have the students  pictures taken first thing in the morning.  You will be receiving more info soon.
**Pledge information on PTO's BIGGEST FUNDRAISER of the YEAR--THE FUN RUN went home on Tuesday.   You can also sign up and pledge on line.  It will take place on WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 22nd.  Kindergarten will "run" around the turf from 8:15-8:30 am.   Help raise money for our school!!
**Irving PACERS Running/Walking club began last Friday.  Students used their lunch recess time to run/walk around the school grounds.  3 times around (1mile) and the student earns a special necklace with a foot on it.  Each week, the students will get another opportunity to add a foot.  The students are making special envelopes to hold their necklaces and we will keep them in the classroom for safekeeping.  PACERS will meet 9/26, 10/3, 10/17, 11/7, 11/14, 11/21 weather permitting and resume in the spring.  Let's say YES to exercise!!
**I will be choosing our STUDENT COUNCIL REPS on MONDAY.  Anyone else interested...let me know.  The first meeting will be October 7th at lunch recess time.
**We have a GREEN TEAM!!  Each class will send 2 reps to the meetings that meet every other Tuesday with our Green Team Leaders, Mr. Packer and Ms. Parkinson.   They will plan projects, discuss how to create a "greener" environment for our school and will relay information to our class. 
We need 2 reps for our class.  I will be having a discussion with the class on Monday to see if anyone is interested.  It is a commitment for the entire school year and we will talk about what that means.
**Author of "Five Little Monkeys" fame, Eileen Christelow will visit Irving School on Tuesday, October 28th at 1:00 pm.  She will speak about her work and how she gets her ideas.  Ms. Noonan will send an order form of Ms. Christelow's books prior to her visit.   There will be a book signing.
**Information on Irving School's TRIVIA NIGHT was in your child's homework folder.  SAVE THE DATE--Thursday, November 6th, 7:00 pm at The Wire in Berwyn.  Registration begins next week.
**No School--Friday, October 10th---Teacher's Institute Day.
**No School--Monday, October 13th---Columbus Day Observance.
**In Friendship Club this week, Ms. Bell Bey continued her discussion on the Zones of Regulation and what it means to be in the YELLOW ZONE and RED ZONE.  She also went into more detail about being a "Social Detective."  We have been having some well thought out and heart felt discussions and comments about our behavior and what we can do to shape it.
**In Mr. Packer Problem Solving,  we went to Mr. Packer's room to continue our project on positional concepts.  Concepts in, on, under, next to, behind, in front of, between were discussed and the students looked again at the video demonstrating the concepts. 
This week:    
It was all about letters and numbers.  The students have found letters around the classroom and school.  They also located numbers around the classroom and school.  What is the difference between letters and numbers?  The students began a conversation about consonants (letters that have 1-2 sounds) and vowels (letters that have many different sounds.)  The students found the consonants and vowels in their name.  They compared that number to the number of consonant and vowels in a friends name.  We are counting everything in sight---markers, crayons, chairs, books, feet, fingers, noses, shoes........What is a reckenrek??????  Station Day activities included creating patterns and counting teddy bears, continued exploration of pattern block shapes, playing "Show Me" using their ten frames, reading their paper stories to a partner, reading their word wheel sentences.
Reading/Language Arts:    We have begun Unit 1 FAMILIES in our Treasures Reading Series.  Students build background knowledge about types of families they knew about.   They discussed human families and animal families.  We all shared experiences about our families and the number of family members we have.   The students listened to the Big Book story,"Whose Baby is It?"  The students reviewed parts of a book--front cover, back cover, title page, spine.  They also located where to find the page number.  The students noted the question and answer pattern in the book.  They reviewed their previous sight words and added new target words we and the.   We played "Hands Up, Hands Down" adding our new words.  Our target sound in isolation this week is Mm.  The students worked with the sound toy box and sound cards and created a list of words that began with Mm.  They also listened for the sound of Mm at the end of words.  Our puppet friends, Mr. Happy and Mr. G. assisted in our Mm sound reinforcing activities.   The students worked on additional vocabulary when listening to the fable," The Lioness and the Ostrich."  This vocabulary is referred to as ROBUST VOCABULARY.  Ask your child about the words ANIMAL, PROTECT, TOGETHER and RESEMBLE.  We defined each word and gave a sample sentence.  We used them frequently in our discussions.  The students used retelling cards to retell the Big Book story to a partner.  The students worked on story words JOEY, PUP and CUB in the baby animal world.  We read aloud our pre decodable story,  "I Can, We Can."  The students continue to work on tracking each word and picture using their pointing finger while reading.  They also read the paper story, "I Can" to a partner.  The students continue to work on additional Common Core skills---recognizing FICTION and NON FICTION stories and examining the similarities and differences between a story and a poem.  The students continued to work on recognizing certain parts of speech.  They brainstormed lists of words that named people, animals and places (NOUNS) and words that name an action (VERBS.) 
Formal literacy workstations began this week.  While I worked with small group leveled readers each day, the students also worked in rotating small groups writing an I am.....sentence with picture, "walking"/writing their words, comparing family sizes project, play the beginning sound game,  playing upper and lowercase match, draw a picture of your family and write about something you do together and retelling their leveled reader story to a person in their group.  Each week each group is assigned a "table manager" for their group.  Their jobs are setting up their workstation, controlling the noise level, gentle reminders to keep working etc.  We spent time last week role playing various scenes in a workstations.   Our table managers did an excellent job!
Math:     The students reviewed simple shape recognition.  They did the "Shape Rap" a cool listening as well as shape recognizing song activity.  The students continued their exploration of pattern blocks.  We looked at hexagons, trapezoid, rhombus and ovals.  Students brought up how many sides each shape had.  The students worked on a variety of counting activities using their 10 frame.  We played "Show Me' where I write a number and the students have to create it on their 10 frame.  Students worked with a variety of objects--pennies, bears, blocks and cubes matching one to one.  Students worked with number cards and partners to match and sequence and sequence numbers 0-5, 0-10, 0-15 or 0-20.  Movement activities that included work on greater than, less than, over, under, between, beside, behind, above, below had the students up and moving and having fun!
What is a reckenrek??????  Check out the photo on the side of the blog.  Looks somewhat like an abacus but a little different..... 10 rows---5 white beads and 5 red beads in each row........mmmm.  The reckenrek is a calculating frame that acts a visual model for developing strategic reasoning in math.  Students are beginning to see or visualize patterns and strategies for solving math problems.   There may be more than one way to solve a problem.  Right now we are in the beginning stages of its use.  We started by looking at the 5 white and 5 red.....10 all together.    If you already know that there are 5 white....what if I add one more???  Do you have to count it????  The students worked on an activity called "slide and say."  I slid the the beads from one side to another they had to "figure out" what number was being illustrated.   Loads of fun........I have some serious math heads in the house!!!!!!
Writing:     The students began work on their FROG JUMP capitals.  They are using their mini chalk boards, chalk and sponges.  The small chalk and sponge pieces help to reinforce their tri pod grasp.  The students are also working with large wooden straight, curved and slant shapes to create the letter.  Letters F and E were introduced this week.  The students also learned a song  about where ALL LETTERS start.......Where do you start your letters....AT THE TOP!!!!  Appearing in the upper left corner is Mr. Smiley.  He is there to remind the students to always begin on the left side.  Next week the students will apply what they have learned in their orange practice books.  Students continue to work on journal entries in Writer's Workshop.   The student are using  journal prompts from our  Treasures Unit.  Lots of writing and drawing about  family members.  Students are now seeing that they can come back to a piece of writing they have done and add more to it or they can continue to work on a piece of writing that is not finished.  The students saw the video, "Arthur is a Writer."
It helped reinforce to the students that they can write about any topic that interests them. 
Technology:    I have begun to work with small groups of students on iPad etiquette.   The apps Sound Sort and Alpha Tots were introduced to one group.  Next week I will work the remainder of the groups and introduce 2 math apps.  Feel free to download these apps thru the App Store on  your devices.  Many of them are free or between $.99-2.99.
Literature:    "Arthur's Back to School Surprise," "The Cat in the Hat Comes Back," "Fox in Socks,"
"Oops, David," "Hands Are Not For Hitting," "If You Give a Pig a Pancake," "Whose Baby Am I?' "Maya Was Grumpy," "A Rainbow All Around Me," "The Alphabet Adventure,"  "Big and Small Animals," "Animal Babies," "How Do We Learn," "Where in the Wild."




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