**Please check your child's homework folder for permission slip and library card application for our Field Trip to Maze Branch Library. I need to turn all card applications to the library for processing on Thursday, October 2nd. I will need 2 volunteers to walk with us.
**National Education Association President, Lily Garcia and Illinois Education Association President, Cinda Klickna visited Irving as part of their visits to selected schools across the country. They were treated to breakfast and got to tour the school and visit some classrooms and our playground. We were so proud that Irving and Julian Middle Schools represented Oak Park!!
**School Pictures will be taken on Tuesday, September 30th. Please check your child's homework folder for the order form. You can also fill out the form and pay on line. Our picture taking time is 10:20 am. Kate Meier has signed up to make sure we look our best!
**Route to Reading Skills groups will begin on Tuesday, September 30th. Students were screened and placed at a particular skill level. That skill will be taught for 3 weeks and then assessed. 90% mastery is needed for the student to go on to the next skill. Students can remain in a skill, move to the next skill or skip skills depending upon mastery. Skills are also taught as part of their regular class. All Kindergarten teachers as well as Ms. Chinn, Language Arts Specialist and Reading Tutors Ms. Simon, Ms. Diehl, Ms. Cruz and Ms. Cairns will each have a small grouping of students. Route to Reading will meet 3 times a week for 30 minutes. You will receive notification of the skill your child is working on and the teacher working with your child.
**The math baseline assessment, EASY CBM was given on Thursday. This assessment gives me a better idea of skills that students have come in with to assist in planning. I will share these with you at conference time.
**The sign up form for TRIVIA NIGHT--sponsored by PTO is in your child's homework folder. It's great fun for grown ups! Check it out!
**Don't forget to sign up your child for the FUN RUN FUNDRAISER--PTO'S BIGGEST FUNDRAISER of the YEAR!! Sign up on line. The event is WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 22nd. Kindergarten will "run" from 8:15-8:30 am around the turf. Help raise money for our school!!
**Family Math Night!!! " Let's Rock Around the Clock!! " It's Thursday, October 16th from 6:30-8:00 pm. Look for the green sign up/info sheet in your child's homework folder. You and your child solve the math problems......I will serve the root beer floats in the lunchroom soda shop!
**Congratulations to our GREEN TEAM REPS--Evan and Atessa!! They attended their first meeting under the direction of Ms. Parkinson and Mr. Packer on Tuesday. They will be creating projects that involve the whole school and reporting back to our class. They are working to make our school a "greener" place to be!! This is a whole year commitment!
**STUDENT COUNCIL REPS for this trimester have been chosen! Congratulations to Ethan and Lily!! They will attend their first meeting on Tuesday, October 7th during their lunch recess time.
**Look for a letter in next Friday's homework folder that will remind you about your conference day and time. Please Note---School is in session MORNING ONLY on Thursday, October 23rd and Friday, October 24th. Dismissal will be at 11:00 am. District School Bus, Hephzibah and Magical Minds will also pick up at this time.
**Author visit by Eileen Christelow in Tuesday, October 28th at 1:00 pm.
**In Friendship Club this week, Ms. Bell Bey continued discussion and role play on the Zones of Regulation. She brought out her puppets, Puppy and Snail to help reinforce making good and safe choices in the classroom and with our friends.
**In Mr. Packer Problem Solving this week, the students finished their project on positional concepts and sang their concept song.
This week:
We are now in the season of fall or autumn. The students are beginning to notice subtle changes that signal the season. Some students are observing leaves on the ground. In the mornings, they are needing sweat shirts or light jackets. A few trees have leaves that are changing color. They are noticing less bugs around. Our Station Day activities for this week included sort and glue signs of Fall, cover and count with unifix cubes, stamp your words, decorate your PACER necklace envelope and read one the Treasures leveled readers to a friend.
Reading/Language Arts: The students continued working on Units 1 Families in our Treasures Reading series. The phonics portion keyed in on target sounds short a and Mm. They worked on isolating the beginning sound by saying the picture name. The students completed their brainstormed lists of people, places and things and learned that they are called nouns. They continued work on listening comprehension and identifying story elements--characters, setting and events happening the story. In our Big Book story, "Picnic in Apple Park," the students also looked for language patterns as I read. (question--answer) The students responded and retold events in the story sequence. They had an "elbow chat" to discuss with a partner WHO was in the story, WHERE did the story happen and WHAT was happening. We discussed how the story structure can provide evidence for our predictions. In our FICTION Big Book story, one character was a skunk. In our NONFICTION story, "Night Animals," students worked on asking and answering questions from a given text. They made comparisons about each text--skunks in the park vs. facts about skunks as nocturnal animals. We charted our responses. Students worked on the concepts same and different. The students began the process of phoneme (sound) blending.....putting together sounds to create words. We used the AM and AT word families to create new words by adding a consonant to the beginning. Robust Vocabulary included ACTIVITY, COOPERATE, EXCITING, EXHAUSTED, GATHER. Students reviewed their sight vocabulary paying particular attention our target words we and the. The students read the story "I See the Apple." They also practiced their tracking skills in our group read aloud, "The Baseball." Workstations this week included ABC upper and lowercase match, counting syllable activity, read it--add to it/draw and write a new page to the story, leveled readers comprehension/discussion focusing on story elements, "Walk Your Words"--write your words, interview a friend--draw a picture of what their family likes to do, create sentences using your sight words and pictures and punctuation, Mm picture sort, sound/picture match up.
Math: Students continue to count by ones to various numbers. They are locating the number that comes before a random number and after by looking at our giant number board, thinking in their head or looking at our growing caterpillar. Students continue to work on counting activities using the reckenrek. This week we did the pattern block hokey pokey. Students worked with positional concepts as well as pattern blocks--hexagon, trapezoid, rhombus and skinny rhombus. We discussed how many sides each shape had and how many corners. Do you know the differences between the square, rectangle and trapezoid???? The students counted pennies by "hearing" them fall into the jar. Our "listening" jar was full of fun! "Slide and Say" and "Show Me" activities using a ten frame continue to reinforce number recognition and counting quantity. Math workstations this week included matching one to one, sequencing number cards, counting quantities, playing "Swat the Number," and reviewing positional concepts. and learning to record tally marks (counting by 5's.)
Writing: Students continue to work on written formation of uppercase letters. This week, Frog Jump letter D was introduced along with a sensory practice called---Wet, Dry, Try. Students use tiny wet sponges and chalk pieces that just fit their tri pod grasp. When working on letter formation on their mini chalk boards they first...Wet.....make the letter on their board with the wet sponge...then....Dry.....fan it quick with their kleenex ...it will leave a print....then Try......trace over the print let by the wet sponge. Students sang their song about starting letters at the top. This week, the students applied what they learned in their orange practice books. We learned correct posture for working on writing and coloring......sitting up straight so that our back touches the back of the chair, feet under the table....one hand has our pencil or marker....the other hand is holding down the paper or book page. Students worked on their journal entries selecting a piece they already worked on and adding more to it....whether it was more writing or more picture details. Students are beginning to grasp the concept of beginning with an uppercase letter if they are writing a sentence and using an ending mark.
Technology: I continue to slowly introduce appropriate apps that will support our reading, language, phonemic awareness and math. This week, the apps Sound Sort and Alpha Tots as well as I Write Letters were introduced to small groups. The number recognition app, Numbers was also introduced. Students are becoming more comfortable using the mouse in the lab when we are at Lexia Core 5. All students have been auto placed and are working on a variety of activities including naming pictures, rhyming, beginning sounds and recognizing upper and lowercase letters. Once or twice a week home practice can really help build the phonemic awareness foundation.
Literature: "Night Animals," "Coyote and the Rabbit,""The ABC's of Yoga," "The Day the Crayons Quit," "Pete the Cat-Rocking in My School Shoes," "Clifford's Family," "The Color of Us," "Patterns All Around," "The Bundle of Sticks,"(fable) "Why Do We Write."
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