**Our week was filled with compliment cards, friendship chains, book buddy projects and song. Our Winter Concert was fabulous! Thanks to Ms. Hiolski and Ms. Freisen for their guidance. Our after the concerts get togethers were full of great treats and crafts. Thanks to our helpers, Ms. Meier and Ms. Pacelli for their organization. The students were delighted to see parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles and brothers and sisters at the concert.
**Our End of the Year Book Buddy get together was awesome! The students shared treats and worked on a getting to know you movie trailer using iMovie. As the students finish the project, they are emailing the trailers to me and I will hopefully email them to you in the new year. Senorita Zaragoza spoke to the students about the festival of Las Posadas. She shared a story and music about the procession in the streets re-enacting Mary and Joseph's search for an inn and the stable that became their room. Evan and his mom presented on the feast of Hanukkah. Evan shared his special menorah and Ms. Frank read a special story. Each student received a Dreidel game. Jeremy and his mom also shared Jeremy's special Noah's Ark menorah. A special thanks to Ms. Frank and Ms. Meier for their time! I presented the origin of Kwanzaa which began in 1966. Students viewed their special candle holder called a kinara. I shared some traditional stories--"The Night Before Christmas", "The Nutcracker" and "The Twelve Days of Christmas."
**Mid Year DIBELS screening will take place the first 2 weeks of January. Route to Reading Rotation 4 will begin on Tuesday, January 6th.
**Vision Screening for Kindergarten students will be held Friday, January 9th in the morning.
**No School--Friday, January 16th-Teacher's Institute Day.
**Mid Year Parent/Teacher Conferences will be held on Monday, February 9th, Tuesday, February 10th and Wednesday, February 11th. You will receive notification of your specific day and time when we return from break.
**Reading Grandma Mary will be returning for her 8th year of hearing budding readers. She will begin coming every Friday morning beginning on Friday, January 9th.
**Classes resume on Monday, January 5th.
**Start saving those GIANT BOXES (the kind you can climb in) and other cool stuff for our space station design and construction in APRIL during our SPACE THEME. I cannot store anything now. I will have you start bringing in things after spring break.
LOOKING AHEAD IN 2015-----We will begin our next cross curricular theme WINTER. We will continue to introduce Next Generation Science strands within our district science model. We will begin our first formal Science Unit--Investigating Water. In the area of reading, the students will continue to focus on sound foundation, sound blending and segmenting/adding/deleting phonemes in 4, 5 and even 6 phoneme words. We will also work on oral and written comprehension, asking and answering questions about a text, comparing texts, reading fluency, vocabulary building, identifying story elements and identifying the authors message. Our Busy Reader Club will begin. I will be sending out more information about this in the new year. In the area of writing, the students will finish uppercase letter formation and will begin formal training in forming lowercase letters. Students will continue to work on sentence structure, inventive spelling, grammar and punctuation and expanding sentence length to include adjectives. In the area of math, the students will continue to work on rote counting to 100 by ones and tens and beyond, writing numbers, demonstrating knowledge of numbers that are greater then and less than, naming pattern block and geometric solid shapes, representing addition and subtraction with objects and mental images, solving story problems using drawings and number work, number bonding to 10 and more work on teen numbers. In the area of science, the students will weave district science and next generation science in the exploration of water and weather patterns. Socially, the students will continue to work on becoming more responsible and independent learners and thinkers and continue to develop positive relationships with their peers and teachers. In the area of technology, the students will continue to use the iPad and internet resources to enhance all areas of their curriculum. WOW! We will be very busy!!
Reading/Language Arts: The students continue to work on Unit 4 Food in our Treasures Reading series. The discussion this week centered around types of food you would have for dinner and if you ever helped make dinner. The students accessed prior knowledge about meals they have helped prepare and special meals coming up for the holidays that they will be a part of. The students listened to the Big Book story, "The Special Sweet Potato Pie." They separated fact from fiction--sweet potatoes are real--but they do not get bigger as they roll down the hill and you CAN make a sweet potato pie. They used the retelling cards to retell the story in their own words. They orally asked and answered questions about the story. Students reviewed their sight word, have and walked their words with a partner. They also reviewed target sounds Cc and Nn. They continue to work on using verbs in their daily speech and in their writing. Robust Vocabulary this week included APPETITE, FEAST, FLAVOR, SPECIAL. The students decided what small group activities they would do for their workstations this week. They formed small groups and worked on a story elements project using the pre decodable story, "I Have," worked on a word building Gingerbread Game, Used Montessori Crossword projected on the screen to take turns segmenting and sound blending 3 and 4 phoneme words and worked on a small group story about their gingerbread scenes they created with foam stickers.
Math: Students worked on a variety of of counting and problem solving activities--creating snowflakes-counting the folds to make and where to cut, playing the Dreidel Game adding and subtracting game pieces depending upon the the spin of the dreidel and making Rudolph using problem solving to figure out where each piece goes.
Writing: The students began work on Magic "C" uppercase letters C, O, Q, and G. They worked on creating a gingerbread person and wrote 1-4 sentences about them using words that describe. They continue to work on reading their writing and are beginning to make their own corrections. The students worked on Growth Mindset and Fixed Mindset thinking while listening to the story of "Rudolph Shines Again." They worked on writing compliment cards choosing one of their classmates that has demonstrated a Growth Mindset--I Can Learn From My Mistakes--I Keep Trying Until I Can--When Other Kids Do Well, I Am Inspired. All students were written about. They are up on our Compliment Tree board. I was very inspired!
Technology: Both small group and whole group used the apps Montessori Crossword and Rocketspeller and Number Find. Book Buddies helped them explore iMovie.
Literature: "Rudolph," "Rudolph Shines Again," "Las Posadas," "The Night Before Christmas," "The Nutcracker," "The Twelve Days of Christmas," "A Kwanzaa Counting Book," "K is for Kwanzaa."
Tuesday, December 30, 2014
Sunday, December 14, 2014
UPDATES for 12/8-12/12 2014
**The flu, fever and coughs visited out classroom this week. By Friday, we had 7 students out! We kept to our schedule as much as we could. The students were busy practicing songs for the Winter Concert and sharing their winter traditions and learning about the traditions and celebrations of others around the world. Our 19th Annual Gingerbread Cookie Baking was a small affair, but quite spectacular!! The smell of gingerbread filled the school! The students created cookies that were works of art. Lots of details and lots of sprinkles!!! The students worked together to create and share some of the cookies with each other. Tis the season!! A HUGE THANKS to our great volunteers--Lily's Grandma, Ms. Peterson and Trinity and Mr. Hellman and Ms. Dennis. With plenty of dough and sprinkles let over, I have made some dough/sprinkles and baking directions bags for those students who were absent. Let me know if you need to borrow cookie cutters--I have plenty of those too!
**The Trimester 1 Report Card is in your child's home work folder. If you have any questions or would like to meet to discuss the standards grading system---please email me1
**Come One, Come All to the Kindergarten/Grade1 Winter Concert on Wednesday, December 17th in the Irving Auditorium. The concert will be held 2 times--First performance is at 8:15 am----the second performance is at 9:45 am. The concerts will begin promptly! Go early and get a good seat, especially if you are attending the 8:15 concert. Please come back to the room after each performance for a refreshment reception and crafts. It will be a great time to get together with other families to share conversation and community.
**The students were treated to a performance by the World's Smallest Circus (2 people!) on Tuesday. There was plate juggling, acrobatics, silly skits and spinning tops. Very fun! Check out our own Jaylen spinning plates----who knew!!!
**Please let me know if your child is traveling over the winter break. I will prepare a travel journal for them to take on their travels.
**Our class has a SECRET SNOWFLAKE!!!! We are making some surprises for them. Shhhhh!
**The Irving Craft Fair and Cookie Crumble grows more spectacular every year!!! There were so many things to look at and lots of great buys. What fun!!
**School is closed December 20th-January 4th. Classes resume on Monday, January 5, 2015!!
**Route to Reading Rotation 4 will begin later in January. This will give us time at the beginning of January to do midyear DIBELS Assessments.
**This week in Friendship Club, Ms. Bell Bey conducted voting session where the students got to "vote " for what they wanted to do next Friday. It was MOVIE by a small margin. Ms.Bell Bey and I will be looking over appropriate choices.
**In Mr. Packer Problem Solving this week, Mr. Packer continued to work with the students on subitizing activities using dots in standard and scattered arrays.
This week:
It continues to be about gingerbread, celebrations and traditions. The students did a little research on how the activity of gingerbread making began and why it is so popular this time of year. Ginger was a valuable spice a long time ago traced back to the Greeks and Romans. A cake like treat was made of ginger. As time went on, Europeans began using flour, ginger and other spices to create cookies, houses and cakes. The students listened to a number of gingerbread stories. They examined characters, setting and main events in the stories. They verbally compared and contrasted the characters and the plot. How did end? (eaten...not eaten.) Who were the characters? (boy, man, baby, girls/boys, fox, wolf, coyote.) What happened in the story? They had loads of fun elbow chatting with each other about their observations. The students read about the Jewish celebration of Hanukkah with all its traditions and symbols. They learned how to play the dreidel game. The students also read about Advent and the story of Christmas with all its traditions and symbols. Students are beginning to catch on to the unifying theme of the use of lights in these winter celebrations--candles, strands of lights on trees, the light of the North Star. Station Day activities for this week included creating a candle with glitter and jewels, color by code menorah, working on our number formation books with forms for 6-9 and creating a "geome-tree" using rectangle and triangles to form an evergreen tree.
Reading/Language Arts: The students began Unit 4 Food in our Treasures Reading series. The unit began with a question about where food comes from. The students accessed prior knowledge about stores, farms, markets and orchards as places where food is found. Some students offered that they had gardens in their back yards in the summer. The students listened to the Big Book story, "Apple Farmer Annie." They listened and discussed where Annie lived and her daily activities as an apple farmer. Students made connections on their fall theme about apples, types of apples and what you can make with apples. Other students talked about the time they went went a farmer's market and bought apples and apple cider. Our target words are to and have. We have added these to our growing number of sight words. Our target letter and sound is Nn. The students reviewed the use of nouns and action words or verbs. Our Robust Vocabulary this week included FARMER, MARKET, INGREDIENTS, COMBINE, NUTRITIOUS. The students used their elkonin boxes to segment and blend 3 and 4 sound words. The students continue their work on recognizing consonant blends and digraphs. The students read their pre decodable story, "Can Nan?" They made predictions about story content. Students answered questions about the events in the story and then practiced reading the story to a partner for fluency development. The students listened to the vocabulary story, "Pizza Please." They had lots of fun activating their own prior knowledge about making their own homemade pizza, comparing and contrasting the ways and ingredients families use to make pizza. Some students had never made pizza but said they ordered it from a pizza place. The students learned that the dough comes from wheat grown on a farm, the sauce from tomatoes grown many places and cheese made from cow's milk. Workstations this week included using leveled readers to chat about story elements, creating word pies using CVC patterns, elbow chatting about the main idea of their selected story and about how foods grow, writing a sentence about what you like to do (action word), draw and label a food you like and write a sentence about it, read it and add to it-write about what could happen next, playing Roll, Write and Read and Feeling Foods--reach your hand in the bag....pull out a food....chat about it.....write about it and walking your words.
Math: The students continue to rote count to 85. They also continue to work on number formation rhymes for 6-9. The students are creating a number formation book for practice. We did a group lesson on counting on from a random number between 0-50 and higher between 50-100! We also played a group game about finding the 3 numbers BEFORE and 3 numbers AFTER a given number. In student workshop this week, students counted gingerbread men and recorded the number, learned to play the "Roll a Gingerbread Man," reviewed teen numbers with ten frames, wrote numbers 0-50, discussed and recorded the numbers that completed their number bond 0-5, reinforced recognition of pattern block shapes and worked with partners on the app Starfall Gingerbread--following and continuing a pattern.
Writing: The students finished up formal instruction on Starting Corner Capitals and began work on Magic "C" Capitals. They applied what they learned in their orange practice books. The students began work on a writing project about a gingerbread person. They are creating their own gingerbread person and are going to describe in writing their creation. The students came up with a list of describing words to use. Stay tuned!!
Technology: In the area of reading, student small groups and individual students used the apps, Montessori Crossword, Spelling Bug and Rocket Speller to listen and record letter sounds to create words (3-4-5 phonemes/sounds) recorded reading with iTalk for fluency, The app Sound Sort continues to assist individual students with sound/symbol connections. In the area of math, whole group instruction continued with the apps Subitize Tree and Number Rack. Students small groups used the apps Number Find and Easy Match for counting and cardinality as well as finding number using base ten strategies. The students partnered up to play Monster Squeeze using numbers 1-30.
Literature: "Hanukkah Counting Book," Diane Goode's "American Christmas Poems," "Counting Lions," "A Picture Book of Hanukkah," "Zero is the Leaves on a Tree," "Bake, Mice, Bake," "The Gingerbread Man," "The Gingerbread Bear," "The Gingerbread Man," "The Gingerbread Baby," "The Gingerbread Cowboy," "The Gingerbread Kid," "The Gingerbread Boy," "The Gingerbread Pirates," "Gingerbread Friends," "Bad Kitty Christmas, " "This is the Star," "Room for a Little One," "Winter Celebration Around the World."
**The Trimester 1 Report Card is in your child's home work folder. If you have any questions or would like to meet to discuss the standards grading system---please email me1
**Come One, Come All to the Kindergarten/Grade1 Winter Concert on Wednesday, December 17th in the Irving Auditorium. The concert will be held 2 times--First performance is at 8:15 am----the second performance is at 9:45 am. The concerts will begin promptly! Go early and get a good seat, especially if you are attending the 8:15 concert. Please come back to the room after each performance for a refreshment reception and crafts. It will be a great time to get together with other families to share conversation and community.
**The students were treated to a performance by the World's Smallest Circus (2 people!) on Tuesday. There was plate juggling, acrobatics, silly skits and spinning tops. Very fun! Check out our own Jaylen spinning plates----who knew!!!
**Please let me know if your child is traveling over the winter break. I will prepare a travel journal for them to take on their travels.
**Our class has a SECRET SNOWFLAKE!!!! We are making some surprises for them. Shhhhh!
**The Irving Craft Fair and Cookie Crumble grows more spectacular every year!!! There were so many things to look at and lots of great buys. What fun!!
**School is closed December 20th-January 4th. Classes resume on Monday, January 5, 2015!!
**Route to Reading Rotation 4 will begin later in January. This will give us time at the beginning of January to do midyear DIBELS Assessments.
**This week in Friendship Club, Ms. Bell Bey conducted voting session where the students got to "vote " for what they wanted to do next Friday. It was MOVIE by a small margin. Ms.Bell Bey and I will be looking over appropriate choices.
**In Mr. Packer Problem Solving this week, Mr. Packer continued to work with the students on subitizing activities using dots in standard and scattered arrays.
This week:
It continues to be about gingerbread, celebrations and traditions. The students did a little research on how the activity of gingerbread making began and why it is so popular this time of year. Ginger was a valuable spice a long time ago traced back to the Greeks and Romans. A cake like treat was made of ginger. As time went on, Europeans began using flour, ginger and other spices to create cookies, houses and cakes. The students listened to a number of gingerbread stories. They examined characters, setting and main events in the stories. They verbally compared and contrasted the characters and the plot. How did end? (eaten...not eaten.) Who were the characters? (boy, man, baby, girls/boys, fox, wolf, coyote.) What happened in the story? They had loads of fun elbow chatting with each other about their observations. The students read about the Jewish celebration of Hanukkah with all its traditions and symbols. They learned how to play the dreidel game. The students also read about Advent and the story of Christmas with all its traditions and symbols. Students are beginning to catch on to the unifying theme of the use of lights in these winter celebrations--candles, strands of lights on trees, the light of the North Star. Station Day activities for this week included creating a candle with glitter and jewels, color by code menorah, working on our number formation books with forms for 6-9 and creating a "geome-tree" using rectangle and triangles to form an evergreen tree.
Reading/Language Arts: The students began Unit 4 Food in our Treasures Reading series. The unit began with a question about where food comes from. The students accessed prior knowledge about stores, farms, markets and orchards as places where food is found. Some students offered that they had gardens in their back yards in the summer. The students listened to the Big Book story, "Apple Farmer Annie." They listened and discussed where Annie lived and her daily activities as an apple farmer. Students made connections on their fall theme about apples, types of apples and what you can make with apples. Other students talked about the time they went went a farmer's market and bought apples and apple cider. Our target words are to and have. We have added these to our growing number of sight words. Our target letter and sound is Nn. The students reviewed the use of nouns and action words or verbs. Our Robust Vocabulary this week included FARMER, MARKET, INGREDIENTS, COMBINE, NUTRITIOUS. The students used their elkonin boxes to segment and blend 3 and 4 sound words. The students continue their work on recognizing consonant blends and digraphs. The students read their pre decodable story, "Can Nan?" They made predictions about story content. Students answered questions about the events in the story and then practiced reading the story to a partner for fluency development. The students listened to the vocabulary story, "Pizza Please." They had lots of fun activating their own prior knowledge about making their own homemade pizza, comparing and contrasting the ways and ingredients families use to make pizza. Some students had never made pizza but said they ordered it from a pizza place. The students learned that the dough comes from wheat grown on a farm, the sauce from tomatoes grown many places and cheese made from cow's milk. Workstations this week included using leveled readers to chat about story elements, creating word pies using CVC patterns, elbow chatting about the main idea of their selected story and about how foods grow, writing a sentence about what you like to do (action word), draw and label a food you like and write a sentence about it, read it and add to it-write about what could happen next, playing Roll, Write and Read and Feeling Foods--reach your hand in the bag....pull out a food....chat about it.....write about it and walking your words.
Math: The students continue to rote count to 85. They also continue to work on number formation rhymes for 6-9. The students are creating a number formation book for practice. We did a group lesson on counting on from a random number between 0-50 and higher between 50-100! We also played a group game about finding the 3 numbers BEFORE and 3 numbers AFTER a given number. In student workshop this week, students counted gingerbread men and recorded the number, learned to play the "Roll a Gingerbread Man," reviewed teen numbers with ten frames, wrote numbers 0-50, discussed and recorded the numbers that completed their number bond 0-5, reinforced recognition of pattern block shapes and worked with partners on the app Starfall Gingerbread--following and continuing a pattern.
Writing: The students finished up formal instruction on Starting Corner Capitals and began work on Magic "C" Capitals. They applied what they learned in their orange practice books. The students began work on a writing project about a gingerbread person. They are creating their own gingerbread person and are going to describe in writing their creation. The students came up with a list of describing words to use. Stay tuned!!
Technology: In the area of reading, student small groups and individual students used the apps, Montessori Crossword, Spelling Bug and Rocket Speller to listen and record letter sounds to create words (3-4-5 phonemes/sounds) recorded reading with iTalk for fluency, The app Sound Sort continues to assist individual students with sound/symbol connections. In the area of math, whole group instruction continued with the apps Subitize Tree and Number Rack. Students small groups used the apps Number Find and Easy Match for counting and cardinality as well as finding number using base ten strategies. The students partnered up to play Monster Squeeze using numbers 1-30.
Literature: "Hanukkah Counting Book," Diane Goode's "American Christmas Poems," "Counting Lions," "A Picture Book of Hanukkah," "Zero is the Leaves on a Tree," "Bake, Mice, Bake," "The Gingerbread Man," "The Gingerbread Bear," "The Gingerbread Man," "The Gingerbread Baby," "The Gingerbread Cowboy," "The Gingerbread Kid," "The Gingerbread Boy," "The Gingerbread Pirates," "Gingerbread Friends," "Bad Kitty Christmas, " "This is the Star," "Room for a Little One," "Winter Celebration Around the World."
Sunday, December 7, 2014
UPDATES for 11/24-11/25 and 12/1-12/5 2014
**WOW!! Busy. Busy. I will back track a little to 11/24. The students heard last minute details about their trip to Brookfield Zoo. We read information on other types of Bears. The students chatted about their question for their research project. The students worked on their writing pieces for Polar and Black/Brown Bears. What do we know now? They chose the stories for read aloud and decided what other activities to do in their workstations. In the afternoon, the students had a great time investigating the animal track stamps courtesy of the Field Museum. Each child chose an specific animal track and stamped their paper. They then wrote about where their animal tracks were going. Totally cute!! They are up in our classroom. Come and check them out!
**11/25--FIELD TRIP to BROOKFIELD ZOO!! It was super chilly but we dressed warmly and had an absolutely fabulous time. A HUGE THANKS to Ms. Frank, Ms. Cummings, Ms. Matta and Ms. Connelly for braving the elements to help out. Hamill Play Zoo had face painting, dramatic play at the vet's office, craft, a cool chicken and bunny to pet and plants to water. Students saw bison, penguins, snakes to name a few. We had an indoor lunch and traveled to our Bear Class. Our docent, Jim was the best! The students got to examine black bear and polar bear fur and see how many students it took end to end to equal the size of a grizzly bear. They learned many more interesting facts about bears. We toured the Bear Grotto and saw a sleeping brown bear up close and personal as well as a polar bear fluffing up his bed of straw. It felt so good to get back on the warm bus. Back at school, the students reflected in their journal about their experience and then topped it off with Art Class with our beloved Ms. Tague.
**The Frosty Fun Friday Jam was a hoot!! Lots of students rocking out to the tunes spun by by our own DJ Mick. There were some very cool moves by our own Jaylen and the newest addition to our classroom---Ashton. Room 110 had some great representation. Hope everyone had a blast. I did!
**We are ready for Room 110's Annual GINGERBREAD BAKING!! It's an 18 year tradition! It's Thursday, December 11th form 12:30-2:55 pm. A BIG SHOUT OUT to our volunteers Ms. Frank, Ms. Meier, Ms. Peterson, Ms. Ferrigno, Mr. Hellman, Tate's Grandma and Lily's Grandma. It is a bit messy and dusty so DO NOT come dressed in your best. Students with long hair--please wear a pony tail or up. We will be caring and sharing our cookies with our tablemates. We will get some of our own and get some of theirs too.
**Report Cards go home on Friday, December 12th. Please read the information included to better understand the grading system. Lexia reports will also be included as well as any goal updates by specialists your child may be seeing in the area of speech and language or Tier 3 intervention for reading readiness. The main idea to remember for our report card system is that it is a growth model of progress toward an end of the year goal. If you should have any questions after reviewing it, please email me.
**Route to Reading Rotation 3 had concluded. Route to Reading Rotation 4 will begin on Tuesday, January 6, 2015!!
**Our WINTER CONCERT is fast approaching. Please join us for Kindergarten/Grade 1 Concert on Wednesday, December 17th. The students will perform twice--once at 8:15 and again at 9:45 am in the Irving Auditorium. We will have a reception in our classroom after both concerts. Come join us for some refreshments.
**The Irving Cookie Crumble and Craft Fair is Saturday, December 13th from 9:00-1:00 pm. Stock up on those holiday treasures. Our own Green Team will be selling some nature art.
**Take a look at the cool programs offered by after school Eagle Extras. The brochure is in your child's homework folder.
**We have begun our cross curricular unit on Celebrations and Traditions. If you have a particular holiday or winter tradition you would like to share with the class--email me and we can set it up. Kindergarten students LOVE to have their parents come to the classroom!!
**In Friendship Club this week, Ms. Bell Bey had an awesome and heartfelt sharing and discussion about staying safe at school, at home and in our community and what you can do if you do not feel safe. Being a Social Detective was part of the spotlight. The students remembered that if you do the EXPECTED (pay attention, treat others with respect) others will think nice thoughts about you. If you do the UNEXPECTED (bully, bother, hit) others may not want to be around you.
**In Mr. Packer Problem solving this week, Mr. Packer worked with the students on subitizing skills, symmetry and number recognition using dots. Very cool!!!
**School is closed for Winter Break--December 20th-January 4th. Classes resume on Monday, January 5th.
This week:
It was all about traditions and celebrations. The students talked about what a tradition was--activities that are done routinely at about the same time every year and can be passed down thru generations. I spoke about my family tradition of making ravioli and my school tradition of making gingerbread with my students at this time of year. The students made connections in their own lives and related activities that they do every year at this time. Station day activities included using pattern blocks to build using teen numbers, ten frame activities with teen numbers, writing a caption for their Bear Art Projects made in Ms. Tague's class and taking the subitize challenge with a partner.
Reading/Language Arts: The students completed Unit 3 Transportation in our Treasures Reading series. The students built background knowledge about the different ways wheels are used to move people and things around. They worked on their listening comprehension while listening to David Shannon's story, "Duck on a Bike" read both in English and in Spanish. Students identified the characters and the plot (what is happening in the story.) They took a closer look at the way the story was organized (a beginning, a middle and an end) and responded to the story by discussing the connections that can be made from the story to their daily lives. (I can ride a bike. I see kids riding bikes in my neighborhood.) The students reviewed target sounds Tt and Short i and used their elkonin boxes and cubes to segment and blend 3 and 4 letter words. Lots of discussion on nouns and action words. The students worked with partners to create noun/verb sentences using picture cards. The students were introduced to Consonant Blends and Consonant Digraphs. Do you know the difference? They are learning to. Robust vocabulary for this week included ADVENTURE, WHEE:LS, ATTACH, HAUL, MASSIVE. The students read their pre decodable story, "I See A Truck Go," and made predictions about story content. The students listened to the thinking story, "Timimoto" and discussed the storyteller's message. Workstations this week included recording of level reader reading using iTalk and evaluating how they sounded, creating sentences using words Go and See, read it and add to it activity, sounds match, air, land and water vehicles graph and compare and asking and answering questions about a trip you might like to take.
Math: The students continued work on counting to 75, sequencing what comes before and after a random number, working on teen numbers 11-19 and the idea that a teen number is 1 group of ten (1 complete ten frame) and so many ones (how many on the new ten frame.) The students worked on a shape review project with shapes-circle, oval, trapezoid, hexagon, square, rectangle and triangle counting the side and corners (vertices) using the app Doodle Buddy. The students are working in their new calendar books on recording numbers, sequencing numbers, counting on from a random number, using tally marks to show how many and the idea of number bonds--ways to say a number--ie: 4 and 4 is a way to say 8. Are they other ways to say 8? 3 and 5 6 and 2 etc.
Writing: The students have completed their Starting Corner Capital and applied what they learned in their orange practice books. They continue to work on sentence structure, spacing of words in a sentence, where to put lowercase letters, punctuation and beginning a sentence with a capital letter. The students are working at adding more details to their sentence.
Technology: Students participated in whole group work using the app Montessori Crossword on the projector to strengthen blending and segmenting skills and the app Sound Sort to strengthen automaticity of sound to symbol. Student small groups used iTalk to record and listen to their reading for fluency and clarity. Students are continuing to record their story sentence for our talking book on Sonic Pics. In math, students worked with a partner on the app Subitize Tree to challenge each other to strengthen subitizing/counting skills. Doodle Buddy was used by individual students to create their shape and record their name for the sides and corners project.
Literature: "Duck on a Bike," Poems--"My Bike," "Riding the Subway Train," "Celebrations Around the World," "Which Animals Travel in the Fall?" "Animal Homes," "If You Had Animal Hair," "Adding with Animals," "Animals in Winter."
**11/25--FIELD TRIP to BROOKFIELD ZOO!! It was super chilly but we dressed warmly and had an absolutely fabulous time. A HUGE THANKS to Ms. Frank, Ms. Cummings, Ms. Matta and Ms. Connelly for braving the elements to help out. Hamill Play Zoo had face painting, dramatic play at the vet's office, craft, a cool chicken and bunny to pet and plants to water. Students saw bison, penguins, snakes to name a few. We had an indoor lunch and traveled to our Bear Class. Our docent, Jim was the best! The students got to examine black bear and polar bear fur and see how many students it took end to end to equal the size of a grizzly bear. They learned many more interesting facts about bears. We toured the Bear Grotto and saw a sleeping brown bear up close and personal as well as a polar bear fluffing up his bed of straw. It felt so good to get back on the warm bus. Back at school, the students reflected in their journal about their experience and then topped it off with Art Class with our beloved Ms. Tague.
**The Frosty Fun Friday Jam was a hoot!! Lots of students rocking out to the tunes spun by by our own DJ Mick. There were some very cool moves by our own Jaylen and the newest addition to our classroom---Ashton. Room 110 had some great representation. Hope everyone had a blast. I did!
**We are ready for Room 110's Annual GINGERBREAD BAKING!! It's an 18 year tradition! It's Thursday, December 11th form 12:30-2:55 pm. A BIG SHOUT OUT to our volunteers Ms. Frank, Ms. Meier, Ms. Peterson, Ms. Ferrigno, Mr. Hellman, Tate's Grandma and Lily's Grandma. It is a bit messy and dusty so DO NOT come dressed in your best. Students with long hair--please wear a pony tail or up. We will be caring and sharing our cookies with our tablemates. We will get some of our own and get some of theirs too.
**Report Cards go home on Friday, December 12th. Please read the information included to better understand the grading system. Lexia reports will also be included as well as any goal updates by specialists your child may be seeing in the area of speech and language or Tier 3 intervention for reading readiness. The main idea to remember for our report card system is that it is a growth model of progress toward an end of the year goal. If you should have any questions after reviewing it, please email me.
**Route to Reading Rotation 3 had concluded. Route to Reading Rotation 4 will begin on Tuesday, January 6, 2015!!
**Our WINTER CONCERT is fast approaching. Please join us for Kindergarten/Grade 1 Concert on Wednesday, December 17th. The students will perform twice--once at 8:15 and again at 9:45 am in the Irving Auditorium. We will have a reception in our classroom after both concerts. Come join us for some refreshments.
**The Irving Cookie Crumble and Craft Fair is Saturday, December 13th from 9:00-1:00 pm. Stock up on those holiday treasures. Our own Green Team will be selling some nature art.
**Take a look at the cool programs offered by after school Eagle Extras. The brochure is in your child's homework folder.
**We have begun our cross curricular unit on Celebrations and Traditions. If you have a particular holiday or winter tradition you would like to share with the class--email me and we can set it up. Kindergarten students LOVE to have their parents come to the classroom!!
**In Friendship Club this week, Ms. Bell Bey had an awesome and heartfelt sharing and discussion about staying safe at school, at home and in our community and what you can do if you do not feel safe. Being a Social Detective was part of the spotlight. The students remembered that if you do the EXPECTED (pay attention, treat others with respect) others will think nice thoughts about you. If you do the UNEXPECTED (bully, bother, hit) others may not want to be around you.
**In Mr. Packer Problem solving this week, Mr. Packer worked with the students on subitizing skills, symmetry and number recognition using dots. Very cool!!!
**School is closed for Winter Break--December 20th-January 4th. Classes resume on Monday, January 5th.
This week:
It was all about traditions and celebrations. The students talked about what a tradition was--activities that are done routinely at about the same time every year and can be passed down thru generations. I spoke about my family tradition of making ravioli and my school tradition of making gingerbread with my students at this time of year. The students made connections in their own lives and related activities that they do every year at this time. Station day activities included using pattern blocks to build using teen numbers, ten frame activities with teen numbers, writing a caption for their Bear Art Projects made in Ms. Tague's class and taking the subitize challenge with a partner.
Reading/Language Arts: The students completed Unit 3 Transportation in our Treasures Reading series. The students built background knowledge about the different ways wheels are used to move people and things around. They worked on their listening comprehension while listening to David Shannon's story, "Duck on a Bike" read both in English and in Spanish. Students identified the characters and the plot (what is happening in the story.) They took a closer look at the way the story was organized (a beginning, a middle and an end) and responded to the story by discussing the connections that can be made from the story to their daily lives. (I can ride a bike. I see kids riding bikes in my neighborhood.) The students reviewed target sounds Tt and Short i and used their elkonin boxes and cubes to segment and blend 3 and 4 letter words. Lots of discussion on nouns and action words. The students worked with partners to create noun/verb sentences using picture cards. The students were introduced to Consonant Blends and Consonant Digraphs. Do you know the difference? They are learning to. Robust vocabulary for this week included ADVENTURE, WHEE:LS, ATTACH, HAUL, MASSIVE. The students read their pre decodable story, "I See A Truck Go," and made predictions about story content. The students listened to the thinking story, "Timimoto" and discussed the storyteller's message. Workstations this week included recording of level reader reading using iTalk and evaluating how they sounded, creating sentences using words Go and See, read it and add to it activity, sounds match, air, land and water vehicles graph and compare and asking and answering questions about a trip you might like to take.
Math: The students continued work on counting to 75, sequencing what comes before and after a random number, working on teen numbers 11-19 and the idea that a teen number is 1 group of ten (1 complete ten frame) and so many ones (how many on the new ten frame.) The students worked on a shape review project with shapes-circle, oval, trapezoid, hexagon, square, rectangle and triangle counting the side and corners (vertices) using the app Doodle Buddy. The students are working in their new calendar books on recording numbers, sequencing numbers, counting on from a random number, using tally marks to show how many and the idea of number bonds--ways to say a number--ie: 4 and 4 is a way to say 8. Are they other ways to say 8? 3 and 5 6 and 2 etc.
Writing: The students have completed their Starting Corner Capital and applied what they learned in their orange practice books. They continue to work on sentence structure, spacing of words in a sentence, where to put lowercase letters, punctuation and beginning a sentence with a capital letter. The students are working at adding more details to their sentence.
Technology: Students participated in whole group work using the app Montessori Crossword on the projector to strengthen blending and segmenting skills and the app Sound Sort to strengthen automaticity of sound to symbol. Student small groups used iTalk to record and listen to their reading for fluency and clarity. Students are continuing to record their story sentence for our talking book on Sonic Pics. In math, students worked with a partner on the app Subitize Tree to challenge each other to strengthen subitizing/counting skills. Doodle Buddy was used by individual students to create their shape and record their name for the sides and corners project.
Literature: "Duck on a Bike," Poems--"My Bike," "Riding the Subway Train," "Celebrations Around the World," "Which Animals Travel in the Fall?" "Animal Homes," "If You Had Animal Hair," "Adding with Animals," "Animals in Winter."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)