**Our 50th Day of School is WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 5th! We will be half way to 100! The students will be comparing and contrasting the dress, technology and food of the 1950's to the present. This Wednesday, we will mark the day by dressing up like the 50's, having a sock hop and working on math learning stations surrounding the number 50. The students can dress up like up the 50's on Wednesday. It can be as simple as a white tee shirt and jeans, letter sweaters/jackets, slicked back hair, ponytails and poodle skirts if you should have one.
**PICTURE RETAKE Day is MONDAY, NOVEMBER 3rd. in the morning.
**Halloween was cold and blustery but did not prevent us from having lots of fun! The students were transformed into super heros, knights, princesses, owls, mermaids and more. Was that a skeleton or a teacher?? We feasted on fruits and veggie snacks. Our day was also deemed "Walker Day" in honor of our fellow classmate Walker who is moving to Michigan. We will really miss him. Thanks to all of you who came to join us or provided goodies for us. A special shout out to our room moms!
**Slightly Spooky Story Night was a huge success and lots of fun. Mr. Sak, Ms. Noonan, Ms. Durham and myself had a great time reading silly, slightly spooky and out of this world stories. Thanks to all who came out to hear us. A SPECIAL THANK YOU for those who bought books for our classroom! THANK YOU!!!!!
**Author Eileen Christelow read from her most recent book and shared with the students how she gets her ideas for her stories and how she drew the monkey for her "Five Little Monkeys" story. It was a great experience for the students.
**Our own Nurse Jamie did an hand washing demonstration and experiment with the students. She discussed the importance of washing your hands super well to get off all the germs. She suggested singing or humming the Happy Birthday Song 2 times making sure to scrub top, bottom and between fingers. Students experimented with using a "special" liquid on their hands and shaking hands with a friend. The friends put their hands under a black light and.......ooooooh germs showed up like a powder. The students washed their hands...singing their song and put their hands back under the light. How well did they wash their hands?? Did the powder show?? Pretty cool and surprising!
**Student Council reps, Ethan and Lily have worked on the Stand Up for Cancer project. The photos are posted and the students will vote via money in the jar of their favorite pose next week. All funds raised will go toward the Stand Up for Cancer project.
**Green Team reps Evan and Atessa worked on a video at their Green Team meeting on recycling used water color markers and saving the earth.
**On Monday, we will begin our next cross curricular theme-BEARS. We will become bear experts. Our field trip will have special classroom experience. We will turn our nature table into a bear artifacts table courtesy of the Field Museum. We will be linking our study of bears to the common core standards.
**Each student received an Irving School Student Directory. It is in your child's homework folder.
**In Friendship Club this week, Ms. Bell Bey began a unit on Friendship. What does it take to be a good friend?
**In Mr. Packer Problem Solving this week, Mr. Packer read the story "Ten Black Dots" by Donald Crews and then had the students use one black dot and design a picture around it. Way cool!!!
**NO SCHOOL--Monday, November 10th in observance of Veteran's Day.
**NO SCHOOL-Wednesday, November 26th, Thursday, November 27th and Friday, November 28th in observance of Thanksgiving.
**Permission slips for our field trip to BROOKFIELD ZOO will be sent out this week. Come join us on Tuesday, November 25th from 9:00-1:30 pm.
**CALLING ALL COOKS!!! We will need several volunteers for our annual Gingerbread Cookie Baking on Thursday, December 11th all afternoon. No experience necessary. Roll out, create, decorate, bake and share. Email me if interested. I will provide the dough, sprinkles and aprons.....you provide the baking sheets, rolling pins and man power.
**SAVE THE DATE! Our WINTER CONCERT featuring Kindergarten and First Grade is Wednesday, December 17th. Due to the size of our auditorium, our concert will be held twice--first performance is at 8:15 am--the second repeat performance is at 9:45 am. The students are already practicing!!
This week:
It was all about bats! We took the fright out of these amazing creatures. The students listened to informational texts as well as fiction texts on bats. BrainPop Jr. had a great bat fact video and quiz. They viewed bat skeletons in diagram form and learned about bat habitats, bat physiology and bat diets. Ask your child what a mammal is. The students learned that humans and bats have something in common--we are both mammals. Students sought information about bat types, bat characteristics (super long fingers and a thumb) and baby bats (they are pink and called pups.) The students also read about and viewed a human skeleton. Who has more bones--a baby or a 5-6 year old? Students delighted in feeling for their bones and checking out different texts about bone structure.
Reading/Language Arts: The students continue to work to complete Unit 2 Friends in our Treasures Reading series. This weeks lessons centered around friends who solve problems together.
The students listened to the trade book story, "Simon and Molly Plus Hester." They asked and answered questions about the text and responded to the literature by making connections in their own lives. The students discussed the story elements of problem and solution. They continued to work on reviewing their sight vocabulary. They practiced writing them and using selected words in oral and written sentences. The students reviewed the target sounds Pp and Ss and used their sound boxes to mark where they heard the target sound---at the beginning or at the end of a selected word. The students took turns retelling the trade book story using the retelling cards. In phonemic awareness activities, the students categorized and blended 3 phoneme (individual sounds) to create words. The students read their pre decodable story, "I Like, We Like." They made predictions about story content and practiced reading to a partner. Our Robust Vocabulary this week included PROBLEM, SOLVE, GRATEFUL, THOUGHTFUL, INCLUDE. The students thought about what the author's message could be in the Haitian read aloud tale, "The Turtle and the Sheep." What was the lesson in the story? Workstations this week were a continuation of last weeks work with a couple of new items. Students drew a picture of themselves happy and sad and then write about when they felt that way, leveled reader fluency practice and discussion about story element/comprehension, rainbow word family writing and activities--Pumpkin Nonsense words, Bat Race-reading at family words, making CVC words with leaves and Rock, Paper, Scissors--sound match.
Math: The students worked on rote counting to 50 in preparation for our celebration next Wednesday. How many ten frames do you need to make 50. How many sets of tally marks? Our group leaf collection helped the students develop categorizing skills. Each student took the leaves out of their bags and added them to the growing collection. They agreed to group and label the leaves by color. Check out our photo! The students continue to work on recognizing pattern block shapes and using the shapes to create a design depending upon the number of blocks. (ie-Can you create a design with 7 shapes.?..9 shapes?) it was a game week in their math workstations--Spin and Color the pumpkins (matching numbers 1-12,) Roll, Color and Count apples (counting and comparing numbers-greater than/less than,) Skeleton Game (counting/following directions,) Plus One game--adding one to a number. Whole group enjoyed the subitize challenge using the app Subitize Tree and working on problem solving using the app Number Rack.
Writing: Students have completed work on their Frog Jump Capitals. They applied what they learned about formation in their orange practice book. In Writer's Workshop, the students continue to work on writing a naming and telling sentence, using more word details, labeling pictures, using spaces between words and beginning with a capital letter and ending with a period. Next week, we will be working on a writing summative writing piece for common core.
Technology: New apps for whole group instruction included Subitize Tree and Number Rack for math. The students delighted in setting their sight words on "fire" using the app Fire Finger to reinforce sight word recognition and writing. The app iTalk was used to record readers and played back so they could hear their reading.
Literature: "Bones," "Bats-Strange and Wonderful," "Skeleton for Dinner," "Fantastic Bats," "Popcorn," "Skeletons," "Amazing Bats," "Little Red Bat," "Bats Big Game," "Your Skeleton," "Skeleton Cat," "Wacky Animal Facts," "Black Out," "Skeleton Meets Mummy," "If Kids Ruled the World."
No comments:
Post a Comment