**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."
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