**We had a productive and calm classroom this week as we headed into the last week of classes before break. The students reflected on the year 2015 and created a Compliment Card board where they posted written compliments about fellow classmates. The students worked on creating friendship chains and decorated the classroom and our Secret Snowflake classroom.
**Our Winter Concert was fabulous! Our get together afterwards gave the students a chance to showcase some of the work they had done as well as share some treats! Thanks to all who helped out. The students were delighted to see parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles brothers and sisters at their 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. Some of the movies are still being sent to me and hopefully I will share them with you.
**Classes resume on Monday, January 4th.
**Reading Grandma Mary will be returning for her 9th year of hearing our budding readers! She will join our class one morning a week and will work one on one with each student on fluency and comprehension.
** Our other wonderful grandma, Mrs. D. will also be returning on Tuesdays to volunteer at literacy workstations.
**Route to Reading Rotation 4 will begin on January 4th. You will receive notification of the skill your child will be working on.
**Mid Year DIBELS screening for phonemic awareness and Mid Year AIMSWEB screening for math will begin the week of January 11th.
**Vision Screening for Kindergarten students will be held Friday, January 8th in the morning.
**No School on Friday, January 15th--Teacher's Institute Day.
**No School on Monday, January 18th--observance of Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday.
**Swap, Shop and Read Book Exchange will be held on January 21st from 6-7:30 pm. A flyer was in your child's homework folder.
**Hearing Screening for Kindergarten will be held on Friday, February 5th in the morning.
**Our 100th Day of School is Wednesday, February 10th. I need lots of parent help for the activities and festivities. Stay tuned!
**Mid Year Parent Teacher Conferences will be held on Monday, February 8th, Tuesday, February 9th and Wednesday, February 10th. Thursday and Friday (February 11th and 12th) dismissal is at 11:00 am. There is no afternoon session.
**The Fun Fair is Coming!!!! It's Saturday, February 20th from 11-3 pm. Stay tuned!
** Start saving those GIANT BOXES (the kind you can climb in) and other cool stuff for our space station design and construction in APRIL. I cannot store anything now. I will have you start bringing it in after spring break.
LOOKING AHEAD IN 2016-----Assuming we WILL HAVE cold weather and snow......Please send your child with appropriate dress. Boots and snow pants are a must for playing on the snow hills that will form as part of plowing the playground. I will have extra mittens and a few pair of snow pants in the room if you forget. 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 3,4,5, and even 6 phoneme words. We will also work on oral and written comprehension, sequencing events in a story, gathering supporting details in a text, stating an opinion with a supporting reasons, naming the main topic and using text features-like photos/illustrations to help understand the author's message. The students will work on their Blueprint Workmats in these areas. Our BUSY READER CLUB will begin. I will be sending out information about this the first week of school. In the area of writing, the students 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 1's, 10's and beyond, writing numbers, demonstrating knowledge of numbers that are greater than or less than, representing addition and subtraction with objects and mental images, solving story problems using drawing and number work, number bonding to 10, working on teen numbers and fluent addition and subtraction to 5. 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 the 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 on types of food you would have for dinner and if you ever helped make dinner. The students accessed prior knowledge about a meal they helped prepare. They shared information about special foods they may eat during the holidays. The students designed their own workstations this week. They included using the app Montessori Crosswords in the crossword puzzle form to segment and blend 3-4 sound words, writing about their favorite meal and why they liked it, using the foam gingerbread stickers as the characters, they draw the setting and create the events to form their own story, write and illustrate in their own words how they get ready for school each morning and walk their words.
Math: The students worked on a variety of counting and problem solving activities--creating snowflakes--counting the folds to make and where to cut, making Rudolph the Red Nose reindeer by listening to the directions, cutting and figuring where to place the pieces in order to make his face, playing the Dreidel Game and creating a tree using triangles and one rectangle. Some pretty cool thinking going on!
Writing: The students finished up work on uppercase letter formation. They worked on a writing project where they first created a gingerbread person of their choice and then wrote 2-4 sentences to describe them. They continue to work on reading their own writing and are beginning to make their own corrections. They are working on placement of letters on a given line--where do lowercase letters go....uppercase letters....tall lowercase....underground letters???? The students wrote to compliment a classmate on just about anything, Super cute and caring!!
Character Education: The students worked on Growth Mindset/Fixed Mindset thinking and problem and solution while listening to the Rudolph stories--learning from mistakes, keep trying, don't give up, when others do well, I am inspired. Lots of great discussions.
Technology: One new app--Number Find was introduced. This app helps students looked for number patterns in order to find a given number. A blank grid is given. A number is given. What is the quickest way to find that number? Where would you put it on the grid?
Literature: "Rudolph, the Red Nose Reindeer," "Rudolph Shines Again," "There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Bell," "Jingle Bells, Homework Smells," "How Do Dinosaurs Say Merry Christmas?" "Merry Christmas, Hungry Bear," "K is for Kwanzaa," "A Hanukkah Counting Book," "Mooseltoe," "Gingerbread Bear," "Gingerbread Friends," "The Night Before Christmas."
Sunday, December 20, 2015
Sunday, December 13, 2015
UPDATES for 12/7-12/11 2015
**Gingerbread mania, practice for our Winter Concert, sharing our family traditions, so many budding readers and fun times with number bonding were just some of the many cool activities going on in Ms. Gullo's class this week.
**Our 20th Annual Gingerbread Baking, Making and Sharing was a smash!! We could not have done it without the help of our great volunteers--Ms. Meier, Ms. Metz, Ms. Polan, Ms. Constantinescu and Ms. Bell. The students were super charged with enthusiasm and creativity. Lots of time spent on the tiniest of details. Such works of art!! What a tasty treat! We bagged some of our own and shared some of ours with our table friends. Yum! Yum!
**Come One, Come All to the Kindergarten/First Grade Winter Concert on Thursday, December 17th in the Irving Auditorium. There will be 2 performances. The first is at 8:15 am. The concert will be performed again at 9:45 am. Please be prompt so we can begin on time. Stop by our room after the concert for some refreshments and conversation.
**Trimester One Report Cards are in your child's homework folder. Please email me with any questions you may have.
**The Irving Cookie Crumble and Craft Fair was great. Hope you had a chance to go. Our own First Grade teacher, Ms. Woodson was selling handmade bracelets. Cool!! There were many things to look at and lots of great buys.
**Research assignments are due Thursday, December 17th. The ones that have come in are amazing!!! They will be displayed in the hallway.
**Please let me know if you are traveling over the winter break. I will prepare a travel journal for your child to write and draw about their experiences.
**We will be getting together with our 5th Grade Book Buddies on Friday afternoon. The 5th graders have planned a project for our kinders! They will make a getting to know you movie trailer. Stay tuned!! We will also celebrate the beginning of 2016!!
**Our class has a SECRET SNOWFLAKE!! We are working on some cool surprises for them this week. Shhhhhhh.........It's a secret!
**This week in Friendship Club, Ms. Bell Bey conducted a voting session to see what the students wanted to do for our last Friday of the year. Outside recess won out!
** In Mr. Packer Problem Solving this week, Mr. Packer continued to work on a project with the students involving positional concepts.
** In Mr. Degman, Math/Tech this week, the students worked on a project using the app Doodle Buddy creating a number globe with a certain amount of stickers that they then grouped into how many tens and ones. They are up in our hallway.
**School is closed for Winter Break--December 20th-January 3rd. Classes resume on Monday, January 4th.
This week:
It was all 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 at this time of year. Ginger was 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 the characters, setting and main events in the stories. They verbally compared and contrasted the characters and the events. How did it end? (eaten...not eaten) Who were the characters? (boy, man, girl, baby, cowboy, wolf, fox, coyote) What happen in the story? They had loads of fun elbow chatting about and sharing their observations. We did a group Venn Diagram comparing the Gingerbread Man and Gingerbread Girl stories. The students discussed a tradition they had in their household. I shared one of my family traditions. The students read about the Jewish celebration of Hanukkah with its traditions and symbols. Some of the students learned how to play the dreidel game. The students also read about Advent and story of Christmas with all its traditions and symbols. They are beginning to see the unifying theme of the use of lights in these celebrations. Candles, strands of lights, the light of the North Star. Next week we will chat about Kwanzaa, Ramadan and Diwali.
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, "Apple Farmer Annie." They discussed where Annie lived and her daily activities as an apple farmer. Students made connections from their fall theme about apples, types of apples and what you can make with apples. Other students talked about a time when they went to 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 actions words or verbs. They are also beginning to chat about 2 consonants at the beginning or end and even the middle of a word known as a consonant blend because you hear both sounds. The students used their elkonin boxes to segment and blend 4 sound words using consonant blends. Our Robust Vocabulary for this week included FARMER, MARKET, INGREDIENTS, COMBINE, NUTRITIOUS. Students read their pre decodable story, "Can Nan?" They made predictions about story content, read it to themselves and then elbow chatted about the characters, setting and main events with a partner. They reread their story to their partner to practice their fluency. Workstations this week included leveled readers with focus on fluency reading and story elements, making new words (substituting sounds) main events quilt, real or nonsense categorization, write about your favorite meal, roll a word family activity and small group story elements butterfly, Reader's Checklist, Montessori Crosswords (short e and ccvc and cvcc words) create and record.
Math: The students worked on rote counting to 85. How fast can you go without making a mistake?? The students continue to work on beginning number bonding or ways to say a number. They began work on composing and decomposing teen numbers 11-19. They worked with Mr. Degman on a special project. This week, the students again chose the activities for their workstations. They measured items in the room using mini gingerbread men, counted how gingerbread men and then separated the group into a group of ten and how many left over, colored by code and review geometric solid shape names.
Writing: The students are working on a writing and drawing project about a gingerbread character. They designed and created their special gingerbread character. Using a word bank of selected words, the students are working on a writing piece to describe their gingerbread character. They are working to begin with a capital letter, space between words, form their letters and place them on a given line. They also are working on reading back what they have written. The students continue work on letter formation. They are working on "Magic C" letters and center starting letters. Uppercase letters G, S, A, I were introduced this week. The students applied what they learned in their orange practice books.
Technology: No new apps were introduced this week. The students are now working on the second part of the app Montessori Crosswords using the crossword puzzle and 4 sound words.
Literature: "The Book of Celebrations" (highlighting Advent and Christmas) "Countdown to Hanukkah," "The Gingerbread Man," "The Gingerbread Girl," "The Gingerbread Pirates," "The Gingerbread Baby," "Gingerbread Fred," "Gingerbread Man Loose in the School," "The Gingerbread Cowboy," "Ten Gingerbread Men," "The Gingerbread Boy."
**Our 20th Annual Gingerbread Baking, Making and Sharing was a smash!! We could not have done it without the help of our great volunteers--Ms. Meier, Ms. Metz, Ms. Polan, Ms. Constantinescu and Ms. Bell. The students were super charged with enthusiasm and creativity. Lots of time spent on the tiniest of details. Such works of art!! What a tasty treat! We bagged some of our own and shared some of ours with our table friends. Yum! Yum!
**Come One, Come All to the Kindergarten/First Grade Winter Concert on Thursday, December 17th in the Irving Auditorium. There will be 2 performances. The first is at 8:15 am. The concert will be performed again at 9:45 am. Please be prompt so we can begin on time. Stop by our room after the concert for some refreshments and conversation.
**Trimester One Report Cards are in your child's homework folder. Please email me with any questions you may have.
**The Irving Cookie Crumble and Craft Fair was great. Hope you had a chance to go. Our own First Grade teacher, Ms. Woodson was selling handmade bracelets. Cool!! There were many things to look at and lots of great buys.
**Research assignments are due Thursday, December 17th. The ones that have come in are amazing!!! They will be displayed in the hallway.
**Please let me know if you are traveling over the winter break. I will prepare a travel journal for your child to write and draw about their experiences.
**We will be getting together with our 5th Grade Book Buddies on Friday afternoon. The 5th graders have planned a project for our kinders! They will make a getting to know you movie trailer. Stay tuned!! We will also celebrate the beginning of 2016!!
**Our class has a SECRET SNOWFLAKE!! We are working on some cool surprises for them this week. Shhhhhhh.........It's a secret!
**This week in Friendship Club, Ms. Bell Bey conducted a voting session to see what the students wanted to do for our last Friday of the year. Outside recess won out!
** In Mr. Packer Problem Solving this week, Mr. Packer continued to work on a project with the students involving positional concepts.
** In Mr. Degman, Math/Tech this week, the students worked on a project using the app Doodle Buddy creating a number globe with a certain amount of stickers that they then grouped into how many tens and ones. They are up in our hallway.
**School is closed for Winter Break--December 20th-January 3rd. Classes resume on Monday, January 4th.
This week:
It was all 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 at this time of year. Ginger was 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 the characters, setting and main events in the stories. They verbally compared and contrasted the characters and the events. How did it end? (eaten...not eaten) Who were the characters? (boy, man, girl, baby, cowboy, wolf, fox, coyote) What happen in the story? They had loads of fun elbow chatting about and sharing their observations. We did a group Venn Diagram comparing the Gingerbread Man and Gingerbread Girl stories. The students discussed a tradition they had in their household. I shared one of my family traditions. The students read about the Jewish celebration of Hanukkah with its traditions and symbols. Some of the students learned how to play the dreidel game. The students also read about Advent and story of Christmas with all its traditions and symbols. They are beginning to see the unifying theme of the use of lights in these celebrations. Candles, strands of lights, the light of the North Star. Next week we will chat about Kwanzaa, Ramadan and Diwali.
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, "Apple Farmer Annie." They discussed where Annie lived and her daily activities as an apple farmer. Students made connections from their fall theme about apples, types of apples and what you can make with apples. Other students talked about a time when they went to 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 actions words or verbs. They are also beginning to chat about 2 consonants at the beginning or end and even the middle of a word known as a consonant blend because you hear both sounds. The students used their elkonin boxes to segment and blend 4 sound words using consonant blends. Our Robust Vocabulary for this week included FARMER, MARKET, INGREDIENTS, COMBINE, NUTRITIOUS. Students read their pre decodable story, "Can Nan?" They made predictions about story content, read it to themselves and then elbow chatted about the characters, setting and main events with a partner. They reread their story to their partner to practice their fluency. Workstations this week included leveled readers with focus on fluency reading and story elements, making new words (substituting sounds) main events quilt, real or nonsense categorization, write about your favorite meal, roll a word family activity and small group story elements butterfly, Reader's Checklist, Montessori Crosswords (short e and ccvc and cvcc words) create and record.
Math: The students worked on rote counting to 85. How fast can you go without making a mistake?? The students continue to work on beginning number bonding or ways to say a number. They began work on composing and decomposing teen numbers 11-19. They worked with Mr. Degman on a special project. This week, the students again chose the activities for their workstations. They measured items in the room using mini gingerbread men, counted how gingerbread men and then separated the group into a group of ten and how many left over, colored by code and review geometric solid shape names.
Writing: The students are working on a writing and drawing project about a gingerbread character. They designed and created their special gingerbread character. Using a word bank of selected words, the students are working on a writing piece to describe their gingerbread character. They are working to begin with a capital letter, space between words, form their letters and place them on a given line. They also are working on reading back what they have written. The students continue work on letter formation. They are working on "Magic C" letters and center starting letters. Uppercase letters G, S, A, I were introduced this week. The students applied what they learned in their orange practice books.
Technology: No new apps were introduced this week. The students are now working on the second part of the app Montessori Crosswords using the crossword puzzle and 4 sound words.
Literature: "The Book of Celebrations" (highlighting Advent and Christmas) "Countdown to Hanukkah," "The Gingerbread Man," "The Gingerbread Girl," "The Gingerbread Pirates," "The Gingerbread Baby," "Gingerbread Fred," "Gingerbread Man Loose in the School," "The Gingerbread Cowboy," "Ten Gingerbread Men," "The Gingerbread Boy."
Sunday, December 6, 2015
UPDATES for 11/23-24 and 11/30-12/4 2015
**It's been very busy around Ms. Gullo's Kindergarten! I will back track to 11/23. The students heard last minute details about their trip to Brookfield Zoo. We read informational texts about other types of bears. We also began to chat about our upcoming research projects. Students worked in their journals and their writing focused on the Bear of their choice.
**11/24--Our field Trip to Brookfield Zoo was great! We a had a spectacular day of fun and learning. A big thanks to Ms. Pillacela, Mr. Bell, Mr. Daniel, Mr Harris and Ms. Massett for all of their help as volunteers. The students enjoyed the Hamill Play Zoo for face painting and projects. Students got to see a corn snake up close! We had an indoor lunch and then on to the Great Bear Wilderness for our class. Our docents, Jim and Mary were the best! The students examined black bear fur, polar bear and grizzly bear paws and participated in activities in measuring how many students it took to equal the height of a polar bear and grizzly bear. The students also explored a pattern of a polar bear foot. How many students feet equal one polar bear foot??? We saw a hibernating grizzly bear and a snoozing polar bear. What a great day!
**We were thankful for many things! Thankful for our wonderful grandma helper, Ms. D., thankful for our great Irving school family and for each other. I was so thankful for the great support and help from my kindergarten families. You truly make a difference!
**Check your child's homework folder for their RESEARCH ASSIGNMENT. Each student came up with a question they want to find out more about. They worked on special vocabulary. On the left side of this blog are links to Encyclopedia Britannica and PowerkidsLife Science if you need additional resources. The project is due December 17th but you can hand it in sooner if you wish.
**Hibernation Day was awesome! We were cozy in our jammies with our special stuffed animals. We read about how different animals hibernate. The students made Bear Paw Snacks using biscuit dough, We also did a little science of the liquid to solid kind when the students made butter from whipping cream. There was a lot of shaking going on!! They can tell you about it. The students observed curds and whey being formed. Cool! It was perfect to spread on their golden brown Bear Paws. Yum! The students enjoyed a kindergarten Teddy Bear picnic with their peers in the kindergarten hallway. Our culminating activity in the afternoon was for the students to create a bear hibernation spot somewhere in the classroom with whatever was in the classroom. Lots of thinking going on and maybe some snoring too!
**I am still holding out hope that we can get a few more volunteers for Room 110's Annual Gingerbread Baking on Friday, December 11th from 1:15 until dismissal. We have Ms. Meier, Ms. Metz, Ms. Constantinescu and Ms. Polan so far. It is very fun and no experience is needed! Email me if you can help! The recipe is in your child's homework folder for review.
**Trimester 1 REPORT CARDS go home on Friday, December 11th. 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 have any question after reviewing it, please email me.
**Our WINTER CONCERT is fast approaching!! Please join us on THURSDAY, DECEMBER 17th in the Irving Auditorium. There will be 2 performances. The first one is at 8:15 am and it will be repeated again at 9:45 am. We will have a reception in our room after both concerts. All are invited! Come join us!
**The Irving Cookie Crumble and Handmade Craft Fair is Saturday, December 12th from 9-1 pm in the lunchroom and hallways. It is a great place to stock up on those holiday treasures.
**Route to Reading Rotation 3 will conclude on December 9th. Route to Reading Rotation 4 will begin in January.
**We have begun our cross curricular theme on Celebrations and Traditions. If you have a particular holiday tradition you would like to share with the class--email me and we can set it up. Kindergarten students love to have parents come to the classroom!
**In Friendship Club this week, Ms Bell Bey continued chatting with the students about fostering great behavior everywhere they go. She worked individually with each child on the first part of a special project. Stay tuned.
**No Mr. Packer this week.
**In Mr. Degman Math/Tech, the students finished up their project on teen counting.
**School is closed for Winter Break--December20-January 3rd. If you are traveling over the break, let me know and I will send a travel journal.
This week:
It was all about research basics for little ones! Ms. Noonan worked with the students on the question--What is research? The students worked on thinking about a question about something they wanted to find out more about and then discussed how they might find a source to help them answer the question. The major topic is: Bears. The students worked in class on special research vocabulary and examples. I can't wait to see the results! The students continue to work on their talking book project. They practiced reading their story page and will record it on the iPad. Our station day activities this week included creating a sparkly candle, roll/add and color sums to 10, Hanukkah candles color by code, nonstandard measurement with unifix cubes and build a hibernation space in the classroom.
Reading/Language Arts: The students completed Unit 3 Transportation in our Treasures Reading series. The students built back ground knowledge about the different ways wheels are used to move people and things around. We revisited the text, "Duck on a Bike." Students identified the characters, setting and the events in the story. They took a closer look at the way the story was organized. (It had a beginning, middle and end) The students reviewed target sounds Tt and short i and used their elkonin boxes to segment and blend 3 and 4 sound words. The students worked with partners to create noun/action word sentences using words and picture cards. Now that students are reading simple texts, they are working on how they read. Is it choppy or smooth?? The students were introduced to the Reader's Checklist so that they can begin to monitor their own reading fluency. A Checklist is enclosed in your child's homework folder. Robust Vocabulary for this week included ADVENTURE, WHEELS, ATTACH, HAUL, MASSIVE. The students read their predecodable story, "I See the Truck Go" to a partner. They elbow chatted about story content. They also critiqued each other's reading using the Reader's Checklist. Peers listening to each other! Workstations for this week included leveled readers with focus on fluency and main ideas, main events quilt, Reader's Checklist, story elements butterfly, CVC beginning and ending sheet, Magnetic Letters HD sentence building using sight words, writing-where would you take a trip to? What would you bring?
Math: The students began work on their December Calendar Book with some new activities. They recorded numbers, sequenced numbers, counting on from a random number, used tally marks to say how many, added dominoes and dice and the idea of number bonding--ways to say a certain number---ie-- 2 and 2 is a way to 4 and so is 4 and 0, 0 and 4, 3 and 1, 1 and 3. The students continue to work on rote counting to 85, nonstandard measurement using items to measure how long or how high something is and the idea of place value--how many groups of tens to make 33--how many left over. Students selected their own workstations this week. They included Subitize Challenge, measuring around the room. writing teen numbers, working with teen numbers and ten frames and counting bears.
Writing: The students are now working on Magic "C" capitals. The letters C, Q and O were introduced. The students practiced on their mini boards with chalk and then applied their knowledge in their orange practice books. The students continue to work in their new journals thinking about sentence structure, beginning with a capital letter, spacing between words in a sentence, where to put upper and lowercase letters and reading over what they have written.
Technology: Students participated in whole group work using the app Oz Phonics to strengthen their ability to blend CVC words and used the app Sound Sort to strengthen automaticity of sound to letter symbol. Student small groups used the app iTalk to record and listen to their reading for fluency and clarity. Students continue to work on recording their talking book using the app Sonic Pics. Mr. Degman continued his project with the students using the app Chatterpix.
Literature: "Curious George-A Winter's Nap," "Hibernation Station," "Hibernation," "Time to Sleep," "Panda Bear, Panda Bear, What Do You See?" "Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear?" "Baby Bear, Baby Bear, What Do You See?" "What is Hanukkah?" "The Book of Winter Celebrations," (highlighting St, Nicholas Day and Hanukkah) "Adding With Animals."
**11/24--Our field Trip to Brookfield Zoo was great! We a had a spectacular day of fun and learning. A big thanks to Ms. Pillacela, Mr. Bell, Mr. Daniel, Mr Harris and Ms. Massett for all of their help as volunteers. The students enjoyed the Hamill Play Zoo for face painting and projects. Students got to see a corn snake up close! We had an indoor lunch and then on to the Great Bear Wilderness for our class. Our docents, Jim and Mary were the best! The students examined black bear fur, polar bear and grizzly bear paws and participated in activities in measuring how many students it took to equal the height of a polar bear and grizzly bear. The students also explored a pattern of a polar bear foot. How many students feet equal one polar bear foot??? We saw a hibernating grizzly bear and a snoozing polar bear. What a great day!
**We were thankful for many things! Thankful for our wonderful grandma helper, Ms. D., thankful for our great Irving school family and for each other. I was so thankful for the great support and help from my kindergarten families. You truly make a difference!
**Check your child's homework folder for their RESEARCH ASSIGNMENT. Each student came up with a question they want to find out more about. They worked on special vocabulary. On the left side of this blog are links to Encyclopedia Britannica and PowerkidsLife Science if you need additional resources. The project is due December 17th but you can hand it in sooner if you wish.
**Hibernation Day was awesome! We were cozy in our jammies with our special stuffed animals. We read about how different animals hibernate. The students made Bear Paw Snacks using biscuit dough, We also did a little science of the liquid to solid kind when the students made butter from whipping cream. There was a lot of shaking going on!! They can tell you about it. The students observed curds and whey being formed. Cool! It was perfect to spread on their golden brown Bear Paws. Yum! The students enjoyed a kindergarten Teddy Bear picnic with their peers in the kindergarten hallway. Our culminating activity in the afternoon was for the students to create a bear hibernation spot somewhere in the classroom with whatever was in the classroom. Lots of thinking going on and maybe some snoring too!
**I am still holding out hope that we can get a few more volunteers for Room 110's Annual Gingerbread Baking on Friday, December 11th from 1:15 until dismissal. We have Ms. Meier, Ms. Metz, Ms. Constantinescu and Ms. Polan so far. It is very fun and no experience is needed! Email me if you can help! The recipe is in your child's homework folder for review.
**Trimester 1 REPORT CARDS go home on Friday, December 11th. 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 have any question after reviewing it, please email me.
**Our WINTER CONCERT is fast approaching!! Please join us on THURSDAY, DECEMBER 17th in the Irving Auditorium. There will be 2 performances. The first one is at 8:15 am and it will be repeated again at 9:45 am. We will have a reception in our room after both concerts. All are invited! Come join us!
**The Irving Cookie Crumble and Handmade Craft Fair is Saturday, December 12th from 9-1 pm in the lunchroom and hallways. It is a great place to stock up on those holiday treasures.
**Route to Reading Rotation 3 will conclude on December 9th. Route to Reading Rotation 4 will begin in January.
**We have begun our cross curricular theme on Celebrations and Traditions. If you have a particular holiday tradition you would like to share with the class--email me and we can set it up. Kindergarten students love to have parents come to the classroom!
**In Friendship Club this week, Ms Bell Bey continued chatting with the students about fostering great behavior everywhere they go. She worked individually with each child on the first part of a special project. Stay tuned.
**No Mr. Packer this week.
**In Mr. Degman Math/Tech, the students finished up their project on teen counting.
**School is closed for Winter Break--December20-January 3rd. If you are traveling over the break, let me know and I will send a travel journal.
This week:
It was all about research basics for little ones! Ms. Noonan worked with the students on the question--What is research? The students worked on thinking about a question about something they wanted to find out more about and then discussed how they might find a source to help them answer the question. The major topic is: Bears. The students worked in class on special research vocabulary and examples. I can't wait to see the results! The students continue to work on their talking book project. They practiced reading their story page and will record it on the iPad. Our station day activities this week included creating a sparkly candle, roll/add and color sums to 10, Hanukkah candles color by code, nonstandard measurement with unifix cubes and build a hibernation space in the classroom.
Reading/Language Arts: The students completed Unit 3 Transportation in our Treasures Reading series. The students built back ground knowledge about the different ways wheels are used to move people and things around. We revisited the text, "Duck on a Bike." Students identified the characters, setting and the events in the story. They took a closer look at the way the story was organized. (It had a beginning, middle and end) The students reviewed target sounds Tt and short i and used their elkonin boxes to segment and blend 3 and 4 sound words. The students worked with partners to create noun/action word sentences using words and picture cards. Now that students are reading simple texts, they are working on how they read. Is it choppy or smooth?? The students were introduced to the Reader's Checklist so that they can begin to monitor their own reading fluency. A Checklist is enclosed in your child's homework folder. Robust Vocabulary for this week included ADVENTURE, WHEELS, ATTACH, HAUL, MASSIVE. The students read their predecodable story, "I See the Truck Go" to a partner. They elbow chatted about story content. They also critiqued each other's reading using the Reader's Checklist. Peers listening to each other! Workstations for this week included leveled readers with focus on fluency and main ideas, main events quilt, Reader's Checklist, story elements butterfly, CVC beginning and ending sheet, Magnetic Letters HD sentence building using sight words, writing-where would you take a trip to? What would you bring?
Math: The students began work on their December Calendar Book with some new activities. They recorded numbers, sequenced numbers, counting on from a random number, used tally marks to say how many, added dominoes and dice and the idea of number bonding--ways to say a certain number---ie-- 2 and 2 is a way to 4 and so is 4 and 0, 0 and 4, 3 and 1, 1 and 3. The students continue to work on rote counting to 85, nonstandard measurement using items to measure how long or how high something is and the idea of place value--how many groups of tens to make 33--how many left over. Students selected their own workstations this week. They included Subitize Challenge, measuring around the room. writing teen numbers, working with teen numbers and ten frames and counting bears.
Writing: The students are now working on Magic "C" capitals. The letters C, Q and O were introduced. The students practiced on their mini boards with chalk and then applied their knowledge in their orange practice books. The students continue to work in their new journals thinking about sentence structure, beginning with a capital letter, spacing between words in a sentence, where to put upper and lowercase letters and reading over what they have written.
Technology: Students participated in whole group work using the app Oz Phonics to strengthen their ability to blend CVC words and used the app Sound Sort to strengthen automaticity of sound to letter symbol. Student small groups used the app iTalk to record and listen to their reading for fluency and clarity. Students continue to work on recording their talking book using the app Sonic Pics. Mr. Degman continued his project with the students using the app Chatterpix.
Literature: "Curious George-A Winter's Nap," "Hibernation Station," "Hibernation," "Time to Sleep," "Panda Bear, Panda Bear, What Do You See?" "Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear?" "Baby Bear, Baby Bear, What Do You See?" "What is Hanukkah?" "The Book of Winter Celebrations," (highlighting St, Nicholas Day and Hanukkah) "Adding With Animals."
Sunday, November 22, 2015
UPDATES for 11/16-11/20 2015
**Our field trip to BROOKFIELD ZOO is TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 24th from 9:30-2 pm. ALL STUDENTS MUST BRING A BAG LUNCH WITH NAME ON IT and DRESS FOR THE WEATHER. No glass bottles or thermos containers. A big thanks to A. Pillacela, M. Daniel, N. Bell, U. Allgood, N. Massett and M. Harris for volunteering to help. Students and teachers will ride the school bus. Parent volunteers will carpool and meet us at the zoo. I will provide money for your parking fee. I am not able to have younger siblings on this trip. Our trip includes a special tour of the Great Bear Wilderness, a classroom experience, a spot for our picnic lunch and time for your group to explore exhibits on your own.
**Keep those gloves and mittens coming!! The end of the month is soon approaching. Student Council reps Quinn and Jackson are so excited by your contributions. Glove and mitten donations will go to the Oak Park and River Forest Infant Welfare Society.
**Route to Reading Rotation 2 has concluded. You should have received a notice about your child's skill mastery. Please email if you did not. Route to Reading Rotation 3 will begin on Monday, November 30th.
**This year the Turkey Trot took place during our scheduled Art Time. We wished our Book Buddies well but did not get to see them run. We will see our Book Buddies on Monday, November 23rd. They will be helping us create some props for a Winter Concert piece the kindergarten students are working on.
**Bus Evacuation Drill for students will be held on Monday, November 23rd at 9:45 am.
**Meet Children's author, Paul Orchoski ("The Ant and Pancake" and "The Mouse in My House") on Tuesday, December 1st from 6-7 pm. He will be talking to parents and students about coming up with story ideas, writing tips, understanding craft and structure and poetry inspiration.
**CALLING ALL COOKS!! As part of our Traditions and Celebrations cross curricular theme for the month of December, I am looking for volunteers to help with Room 110's Annual Gingerbread Cookie Making and Baking on Friday, December 11th beginning at 1:15 until dismissal. No experience necessary! Roll out, create, decorate, bake and share. Email me if interested. We have 2 volunteers so far. I need about 4 more volunteers for the event to run smoothly. Think about it! I will provide the dough, sprinkles and aprons......you provide the baking sheets, spatulas, man/woman power and the love! I will provide the recipe for your viewing. It is a no egg/no dairy/no nut recipe.
**Come to the Irving Annual Handmade Craft Fair and Cookie Crumble on Saturday, December 12th from 9-1 pm. in the lunchroom and hallways. Great place to shop for holiday items.
**WINTER CONCERT featuring our own Kindergarten and First Graders is Thursday, December 17th. Due to the size of our auditorium, it will be performed twice--once at 8:15 am and again at 9:45 am in the Irving Auditorium. All are welcome to attend! I will be chatting with our Room Parents about refreshments between concerts.
**Please note that you can order from the NOVEMBER and DECEMBER See Saw Book Magazines until November 30th.
**Trimester 1 ends on November 24th. Report Cards will go home on Friday, December 11th.
**NO SCHOOL November 25th-29th in observance of the Thanksgiving holiday. Classes resume on Monday, November 30th.
**In Friendship Club this week, Ms. Bell Bey continued her lessons on behavior and reviewed the behavior hero and challenges to appropriate behavior. The students participated in activities where they thought out solutions to situations posing conflicts.
**In Mr. Packer Problem Solving this week, Mr. Packer began a new project on positional concepts. He showed a video/catchy song about the concepts--in--on--under--in front of---behind --next to--between.
**In Mr. Degman Math/Tech, students completed their project on teen numbers counting using the app Chatter Pix.
This week: It continues to be all about bears and preparing for our field trip to the Brookfield Zoo. The students reviewed the facts they know thus about all bears. They discussed the similarities and differences of black and brown/grizzly bears. They looked at some cool video feed from National Geographic kids on bears/habitats/foods. We read about and found information via the internet on polar bears. The students discovered that they are different from black/brown bears because of the environment they live in. Waxy waterproof fur and black skin underneath their fur help the polar to stay dry and reflect the suns rays. Their diet is mainly seals, much to the dismay of the class. There is not a lot of plant life. The students began to compare and contrast the types of bears. How are they alike? How are they different? We used a Venn Diagram to help us sort it out. The students began work on an author/illustrator study using the works of Bill Martin Jr. and Eric Carle. They make a great team! The student are using the craft and structure of the story, "Brown Bear, Brown Bear , What Do You See" to write their own class version of the story. They will write and illustrate and then record themselves reading their page. Stay tuned! Station day activities for this week included bear cave habitats, writing and illustrating a page for our class Brown Bear story, teen teddies cut, count and sequence, labeling parts of a bear and partner challenge using the app Top It.
Reading/Language Arts: The students began work on Unit 3 Transportation in our Treasures Reading series. The students discussed what is meant by transportation --a way to move people and things from one place to another. They brainstormed ways to get around and discussed forms of transportation that go fast and slow. We constructed a group transportation word web. The students built background on their travels near and far. They listened to the Big Book story, "On the Go." The students observed how people travel from one place to another and the vehicles they used. We looked up each country on the globe. The students asked and answered questions about the types of vehicles used in other countries. They also worked on words that show ACTION. Our Big Book text became the basis for a summative assessment on naming key details and using text evidence. In their comprehension study, the students compared and categorized the types of travel and vehicles. The sight words go and see where reviewed. The students worked on target sounds Tt and short i. Our Robust Vocabulary this week included TRAVEL, JOURNEY, PREPARE, RELAX, FAMILIAR. The students used their elkonin boxes to segment and blend 3 phoneme words. They read their pre decodable story, "Go, Go, Go." They learned about a comma and how it is used. They made predictions about story content and elbow chatted with a partner about characters, setting and events in the story. The students listened to 2 poems about transportation--"The Bike" and "Riding the Subway." They noticed the rhyming pattern in both and tracked the words as I read them. Workstations this week included leveled readers with focus on fluency and main idea, "How do you go to school?"--graph and compare, using the app Magnetic Letters HD to create sentences using their sight words, word search-ip words, creating your own retelling cards, beginning and ending sound search, word work and writing about your favorite vehicle.
Math: The students continue to work on rote counting to 75 and beyond. The students are really getting the hang of working with ten frames and counting by tens. They worked with partners on counting and cardinality activities representing a group of objects with a written number. The students continue to work with teen numbers sequencing the order/writing them and decomposing the group of ten and what is left over. Workstations this week included working with monkey in the middle teens, sorting by common attribute, working with geometric solids cone, cube, cylinder and sphere and finishing tech teen project with Mr. Degman.
Writing: The students completed work on Starting Corner Capitals. They reviewed H, L, K, U, V, W, X, Y, Z. The students practiced on their mini boards and applied what they learned in their orange practice books. The students are working hard in their new writing journals to begin with a capital letter, space between words in a sentence and where to place letters on a given line and reading their work before they come to conference with me. I love when I hear them reading their work back to themselves as they are beginning the process of self editing their writing.
Technology: In reading, whole and small group used the apps Montessori Crosswords and Rocket Speller to reinforce segmenting and blending as well as sound foundation, In Math, whole and small group used the apps Top It, Monster Squeeze to reinforce greater than/less than and number order. Students began to learn about the app Sonic Pics to record their sentence for our talking story.
Literature: "Desert Homes," "Hibernation Station," "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?" "Baby Bear, Baby Bear, What Do You See?" "Panda Bear, Panda Bear, What Do You Hear/" "Tree Homes," "Who Lives Here?" "Polar Bears," "Follow the Polar Bears," "Amazing Polar Bears."
**Keep those gloves and mittens coming!! The end of the month is soon approaching. Student Council reps Quinn and Jackson are so excited by your contributions. Glove and mitten donations will go to the Oak Park and River Forest Infant Welfare Society.
**Route to Reading Rotation 2 has concluded. You should have received a notice about your child's skill mastery. Please email if you did not. Route to Reading Rotation 3 will begin on Monday, November 30th.
**This year the Turkey Trot took place during our scheduled Art Time. We wished our Book Buddies well but did not get to see them run. We will see our Book Buddies on Monday, November 23rd. They will be helping us create some props for a Winter Concert piece the kindergarten students are working on.
**Bus Evacuation Drill for students will be held on Monday, November 23rd at 9:45 am.
**Meet Children's author, Paul Orchoski ("The Ant and Pancake" and "The Mouse in My House") on Tuesday, December 1st from 6-7 pm. He will be talking to parents and students about coming up with story ideas, writing tips, understanding craft and structure and poetry inspiration.
**CALLING ALL COOKS!! As part of our Traditions and Celebrations cross curricular theme for the month of December, I am looking for volunteers to help with Room 110's Annual Gingerbread Cookie Making and Baking on Friday, December 11th beginning at 1:15 until dismissal. No experience necessary! Roll out, create, decorate, bake and share. Email me if interested. We have 2 volunteers so far. I need about 4 more volunteers for the event to run smoothly. Think about it! I will provide the dough, sprinkles and aprons......you provide the baking sheets, spatulas, man/woman power and the love! I will provide the recipe for your viewing. It is a no egg/no dairy/no nut recipe.
**Come to the Irving Annual Handmade Craft Fair and Cookie Crumble on Saturday, December 12th from 9-1 pm. in the lunchroom and hallways. Great place to shop for holiday items.
**WINTER CONCERT featuring our own Kindergarten and First Graders is Thursday, December 17th. Due to the size of our auditorium, it will be performed twice--once at 8:15 am and again at 9:45 am in the Irving Auditorium. All are welcome to attend! I will be chatting with our Room Parents about refreshments between concerts.
**Please note that you can order from the NOVEMBER and DECEMBER See Saw Book Magazines until November 30th.
**Trimester 1 ends on November 24th. Report Cards will go home on Friday, December 11th.
**NO SCHOOL November 25th-29th in observance of the Thanksgiving holiday. Classes resume on Monday, November 30th.
**In Friendship Club this week, Ms. Bell Bey continued her lessons on behavior and reviewed the behavior hero and challenges to appropriate behavior. The students participated in activities where they thought out solutions to situations posing conflicts.
**In Mr. Packer Problem Solving this week, Mr. Packer began a new project on positional concepts. He showed a video/catchy song about the concepts--in--on--under--in front of---behind --next to--between.
**In Mr. Degman Math/Tech, students completed their project on teen numbers counting using the app Chatter Pix.
This week: It continues to be all about bears and preparing for our field trip to the Brookfield Zoo. The students reviewed the facts they know thus about all bears. They discussed the similarities and differences of black and brown/grizzly bears. They looked at some cool video feed from National Geographic kids on bears/habitats/foods. We read about and found information via the internet on polar bears. The students discovered that they are different from black/brown bears because of the environment they live in. Waxy waterproof fur and black skin underneath their fur help the polar to stay dry and reflect the suns rays. Their diet is mainly seals, much to the dismay of the class. There is not a lot of plant life. The students began to compare and contrast the types of bears. How are they alike? How are they different? We used a Venn Diagram to help us sort it out. The students began work on an author/illustrator study using the works of Bill Martin Jr. and Eric Carle. They make a great team! The student are using the craft and structure of the story, "Brown Bear, Brown Bear , What Do You See" to write their own class version of the story. They will write and illustrate and then record themselves reading their page. Stay tuned! Station day activities for this week included bear cave habitats, writing and illustrating a page for our class Brown Bear story, teen teddies cut, count and sequence, labeling parts of a bear and partner challenge using the app Top It.
Reading/Language Arts: The students began work on Unit 3 Transportation in our Treasures Reading series. The students discussed what is meant by transportation --a way to move people and things from one place to another. They brainstormed ways to get around and discussed forms of transportation that go fast and slow. We constructed a group transportation word web. The students built background on their travels near and far. They listened to the Big Book story, "On the Go." The students observed how people travel from one place to another and the vehicles they used. We looked up each country on the globe. The students asked and answered questions about the types of vehicles used in other countries. They also worked on words that show ACTION. Our Big Book text became the basis for a summative assessment on naming key details and using text evidence. In their comprehension study, the students compared and categorized the types of travel and vehicles. The sight words go and see where reviewed. The students worked on target sounds Tt and short i. Our Robust Vocabulary this week included TRAVEL, JOURNEY, PREPARE, RELAX, FAMILIAR. The students used their elkonin boxes to segment and blend 3 phoneme words. They read their pre decodable story, "Go, Go, Go." They learned about a comma and how it is used. They made predictions about story content and elbow chatted with a partner about characters, setting and events in the story. The students listened to 2 poems about transportation--"The Bike" and "Riding the Subway." They noticed the rhyming pattern in both and tracked the words as I read them. Workstations this week included leveled readers with focus on fluency and main idea, "How do you go to school?"--graph and compare, using the app Magnetic Letters HD to create sentences using their sight words, word search-ip words, creating your own retelling cards, beginning and ending sound search, word work and writing about your favorite vehicle.
Math: The students continue to work on rote counting to 75 and beyond. The students are really getting the hang of working with ten frames and counting by tens. They worked with partners on counting and cardinality activities representing a group of objects with a written number. The students continue to work with teen numbers sequencing the order/writing them and decomposing the group of ten and what is left over. Workstations this week included working with monkey in the middle teens, sorting by common attribute, working with geometric solids cone, cube, cylinder and sphere and finishing tech teen project with Mr. Degman.
Writing: The students completed work on Starting Corner Capitals. They reviewed H, L, K, U, V, W, X, Y, Z. The students practiced on their mini boards and applied what they learned in their orange practice books. The students are working hard in their new writing journals to begin with a capital letter, space between words in a sentence and where to place letters on a given line and reading their work before they come to conference with me. I love when I hear them reading their work back to themselves as they are beginning the process of self editing their writing.
Technology: In reading, whole and small group used the apps Montessori Crosswords and Rocket Speller to reinforce segmenting and blending as well as sound foundation, In Math, whole and small group used the apps Top It, Monster Squeeze to reinforce greater than/less than and number order. Students began to learn about the app Sonic Pics to record their sentence for our talking story.
Literature: "Desert Homes," "Hibernation Station," "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?" "Baby Bear, Baby Bear, What Do You See?" "Panda Bear, Panda Bear, What Do You Hear/" "Tree Homes," "Who Lives Here?" "Polar Bears," "Follow the Polar Bears," "Amazing Polar Bears."
Sunday, November 15, 2015
UPDATES for 11/9-11/13 2015
**Our 50th Day of School was sure fun! Bobby socks, blue jeans, poodle skirts, pony tails, slick back hair and sun glasses. So cool!! The student saw a video depicting the era of the 1950's and the comparison to present day. We did a group compare and contrast Venn Diagram. They enjoyed dancing to the music of the 1950's. Some of these kids can sure "cut a rug." The students worked on math and literacy stations involving the number 50. The countdown continues!! Only 50 more days until our 100th Day celebration.
**Keep those gloves and mittens coming!! Students are continuing to bring in donations. Student Council reps, Jackson and Quinn continue to spread the word. They will take donations until the end of November. Glove and mitten donations will go to the Oak Park and River Forest Infant Welfare Society.
**Route to Reading Rotation 2 will conclude on Wednesday, November 18th. You will receive notification of your child's skill mastery. Route to Reading Rotation 3 will begin on Monday, November 30th.
**Our BROOKFIELD ZOO FIELD TRIP is Tuesday November 24th from 9-2 pm. We would like to have all permission slips and money in by FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 20th please. ALL STUDENTS MUST BRING A BAG LUNCH with NAME on it and DRESS for the WEATHER. No glass bottles or thermos containers. Thanks to U. Allgood, A. Pillacela, M. Daniel, N. Bell and N. Massett for volunteering to come on the trip. Students and teachers will ride the bus. Parent volunteers will carpool. I will provide money for the parking fee. I am not able to have younger siblings on this trip. Our trip includes a special tour of the Great Bear Wilderness, a class at the Great Bear Wilderness Center, a picnic lunch spot and time for your group to explore other exhibits on your own.
**The Grade 3-5 Annual Turkey Trot will take place on Thursday, November 19th at 2:00 pm. We will be making posters and signs to cheer our Book Buddies on.
**Come to the Irving Annual Handmade Craft Fair and Cookie Crumble on Saturday, December 12th from 9-1 pm in the lunchroom and hallways. Great place to shop for holiday items.
**Meet Children's author, Paul Orchoski ("The Ant and Pancake" and "The Mouse in My House") on Tuesday, December 1st from 6-7 pm. He will be talking to parents and students about coming up with story ideas, writing tips, understanding craft and structure and poetry inspiration.
**SAVE THE DATE!! Our WINTER CONCERT featuring Kindergarten and First Grade is Thursday, December 17th. Due to the size of our auditorium, it will be performed twice--once at 8:15 am. and again at 9:45 am. in the Irving Auditorium. I will be chatting with my Room Parents about refreshments between the concerts.
**Please note that you can order from the NOVEMBER and DECEMBER See Saw Catalogs until November 30th. They are in your child's homework folder.
**Trimester 1 ends on November 24th. Report Cards will go home on Friday, December 11th.
**NO SCHOOL November 25th-29th in observance of the Thanksgiving holiday. Classes resume on Monday, November 30th.
**CALLING ALL COOKS!! As part of our Traditions and Celebrations cross curricular theme for the month of December, I am looking for volunteers to help with Room 110's Annual Gingerbread Cookie Making and Baking on Friday, December 11th beginning at 1:15 until dismissal. 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, man/woman power and the love! I will provide the recipe for your viewing. It is a no egg/no dairy/no nut recipe.
**In Friendship Club this week, Ms. Bell Bey continued her lessons on Behavior Hero-Super Flex and the introduction of Glass Man--who gets upset quickly, doesn't want you to be flexible and thinks everything is not fair. Students saw a video followed by a discussion on behavior choices.
**In Mr. Packer Problem Solving this week, Mr. Packer presented his final "thinking outside of the box" project incorporating both letters and a black dot to create a picture or scene. Totally cool!
**In Mr. Degman Math/Tech this week students began working on teen number counting using the app Chatter Pix.
This week: The students took time out of their morning to chat about the meaning of Veteran's Day and to salute those who are in service for our country. The students were interested in the different branches of the military. They made connections in their own lives about people they knew in the military. Ms. Gullo shared her special connection--her wonderful nephew and niece in the Air Force. Then it was all about our new cross curricular theme BEARS/ADAPTATIONS. The students completed and inquiry about what they knew about bears. They gathered information from books and the internet about characteristics all bears share. The students were excited to learn that humans share something in common with bears--they are both mammals. Students found out that the black bear is the most common bear in North America. They read about where they are found, their habitats, characteristics and food. Our nature table has a black bear skull and jaw bone, black bear fur and claw and other interesting artifacts courtesy of the Field Museum. The students noticed that black bears have smaller claws and paws than brown/grizzly bears. They noted similar habitats and foods. Students learned the terms-omnivore (eating plants and meat) carnivore (meat eating) and herbivore (planting eating) BrainPop Jr. provided students with some cool movies and video feed on bears and hibernation. Next week--more study on grizzly and polar bears and prep for our trip. On a vegetable note: Jackson brought back a big carrot with huge green stems and leaves. (check out the photo!) He described his adventure pulling out the carrot from the ground. Cool! Station day activities this week included adding an action word sentence to our sponge painted bears, color by code shape review, writing around the room-50 words and roll, add and color with 2 dice.
Reading/Language Arts: The students completed Unit 2 Friends in our Treasures Reading series. They used the text "Simon and Molly Plus Hester"to work on key details in the story and what a character says that is important. The text was also used to explore the idea of a problem and a solution in a story. Who are the characters? How are they alike? Different? What do you think the author's message is? This text was used for a Blueprint Workmat summative assessment on key details and why they are important to the story. The student put their finishing touches on their dioramas. They are learning to work cooperatively to create a detailed project. Great job! The students reviewed all their sight words presented thus far and played "Hands Up, Hands Down." They also wrote their words and partnered up to use them in oral sentences. Students reviewed target sounds Pp, Tt, Ss, and short Aa. They participated in an activity where they had to tell if they heard a target sound at the beginning, middle or end of a word. We began a conversation on words naming people, places, things being called nouns and looked for them in the stories they read in small group workstations. Students began work on using elkonin boxes and blocks to segment and blend phonemes to create CVC words. The students read the pre decodable story,"We Like Sam." They made predictions about story content, elbow chatted with a partner about characters, setting and recalled an event from the story. The students listened to the thinking tale, "The Little Red Hen." They listened to fluent reading and reoccurring phrases and once again thought about the problem and solution in the tale and sequencing events. Workstations included leveled reading with emphasis on fluency and story elements, word search for short a and short e words, word family sort with word families ad, ap, at words, creating a speech bubble around what 2 friends might say to each other and creating CVC words.
Math: The students worked on rote counting and writing numbers to 50 and played the game "Race to 50." They continue to work on reinforcing recognition and writing of teen numbers, adding quantities to 5 with manipulatives and using their ten frames to build teen numbers. They also reviewed positional concepts, counting by 10's to 100, number rhymes, counting quantities to 30 and greater than/less than activities.
Writing: The students continue to work on Starting Corner Capital letter formation. This week the letters V, W, X were introduced, They worked on letters via their mini boards and chalk, using the wooden pieces and applied what they had learned in their orange practice books. The students are beginning to explore the use of top and bottom lines and a broken middle line for upper and lowercase letters. They will begin using their new Yellow journals with lines soon. The students continue to work on more consistency in using a capital letter at the beginning, spacing between words and having an ending mark. Using inventive or phonetic spelling is very acceptable. They also continue to work on reading their own writing.
Technology: In reading, student whole and small groups are using the apps Magnetic Letters HD to compose sentences using sight words, Sound Sort, Montessori Crosswords for initial sound recognition and segmenting and blending sounds to create words and Reading Magic 2 to reinforce onset and rime word families. In math whole and small groups, students used the apps Top It for greater/less/compare, Monster Squeeze for number sequencing, Number Rack for ways to say 5 and Subitize Tree for number quantity/visualizing number.
Literature: "Amazing Bears," "Bears," "Black Bear Cub," "Sleep Big Bear, Sleep," "Time to Sleep," "Day in the Life of Baby Bear," "Bears in the Forest," "Bears of the World."
**Keep those gloves and mittens coming!! Students are continuing to bring in donations. Student Council reps, Jackson and Quinn continue to spread the word. They will take donations until the end of November. Glove and mitten donations will go to the Oak Park and River Forest Infant Welfare Society.
**Route to Reading Rotation 2 will conclude on Wednesday, November 18th. You will receive notification of your child's skill mastery. Route to Reading Rotation 3 will begin on Monday, November 30th.
**Our BROOKFIELD ZOO FIELD TRIP is Tuesday November 24th from 9-2 pm. We would like to have all permission slips and money in by FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 20th please. ALL STUDENTS MUST BRING A BAG LUNCH with NAME on it and DRESS for the WEATHER. No glass bottles or thermos containers. Thanks to U. Allgood, A. Pillacela, M. Daniel, N. Bell and N. Massett for volunteering to come on the trip. Students and teachers will ride the bus. Parent volunteers will carpool. I will provide money for the parking fee. I am not able to have younger siblings on this trip. Our trip includes a special tour of the Great Bear Wilderness, a class at the Great Bear Wilderness Center, a picnic lunch spot and time for your group to explore other exhibits on your own.
**The Grade 3-5 Annual Turkey Trot will take place on Thursday, November 19th at 2:00 pm. We will be making posters and signs to cheer our Book Buddies on.
**Come to the Irving Annual Handmade Craft Fair and Cookie Crumble on Saturday, December 12th from 9-1 pm in the lunchroom and hallways. Great place to shop for holiday items.
**Meet Children's author, Paul Orchoski ("The Ant and Pancake" and "The Mouse in My House") on Tuesday, December 1st from 6-7 pm. He will be talking to parents and students about coming up with story ideas, writing tips, understanding craft and structure and poetry inspiration.
**SAVE THE DATE!! Our WINTER CONCERT featuring Kindergarten and First Grade is Thursday, December 17th. Due to the size of our auditorium, it will be performed twice--once at 8:15 am. and again at 9:45 am. in the Irving Auditorium. I will be chatting with my Room Parents about refreshments between the concerts.
**Please note that you can order from the NOVEMBER and DECEMBER See Saw Catalogs until November 30th. They are in your child's homework folder.
**Trimester 1 ends on November 24th. Report Cards will go home on Friday, December 11th.
**NO SCHOOL November 25th-29th in observance of the Thanksgiving holiday. Classes resume on Monday, November 30th.
**CALLING ALL COOKS!! As part of our Traditions and Celebrations cross curricular theme for the month of December, I am looking for volunteers to help with Room 110's Annual Gingerbread Cookie Making and Baking on Friday, December 11th beginning at 1:15 until dismissal. 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, man/woman power and the love! I will provide the recipe for your viewing. It is a no egg/no dairy/no nut recipe.
**In Friendship Club this week, Ms. Bell Bey continued her lessons on Behavior Hero-Super Flex and the introduction of Glass Man--who gets upset quickly, doesn't want you to be flexible and thinks everything is not fair. Students saw a video followed by a discussion on behavior choices.
**In Mr. Packer Problem Solving this week, Mr. Packer presented his final "thinking outside of the box" project incorporating both letters and a black dot to create a picture or scene. Totally cool!
**In Mr. Degman Math/Tech this week students began working on teen number counting using the app Chatter Pix.
This week: The students took time out of their morning to chat about the meaning of Veteran's Day and to salute those who are in service for our country. The students were interested in the different branches of the military. They made connections in their own lives about people they knew in the military. Ms. Gullo shared her special connection--her wonderful nephew and niece in the Air Force. Then it was all about our new cross curricular theme BEARS/ADAPTATIONS. The students completed and inquiry about what they knew about bears. They gathered information from books and the internet about characteristics all bears share. The students were excited to learn that humans share something in common with bears--they are both mammals. Students found out that the black bear is the most common bear in North America. They read about where they are found, their habitats, characteristics and food. Our nature table has a black bear skull and jaw bone, black bear fur and claw and other interesting artifacts courtesy of the Field Museum. The students noticed that black bears have smaller claws and paws than brown/grizzly bears. They noted similar habitats and foods. Students learned the terms-omnivore (eating plants and meat) carnivore (meat eating) and herbivore (planting eating) BrainPop Jr. provided students with some cool movies and video feed on bears and hibernation. Next week--more study on grizzly and polar bears and prep for our trip. On a vegetable note: Jackson brought back a big carrot with huge green stems and leaves. (check out the photo!) He described his adventure pulling out the carrot from the ground. Cool! Station day activities this week included adding an action word sentence to our sponge painted bears, color by code shape review, writing around the room-50 words and roll, add and color with 2 dice.
Reading/Language Arts: The students completed Unit 2 Friends in our Treasures Reading series. They used the text "Simon and Molly Plus Hester"to work on key details in the story and what a character says that is important. The text was also used to explore the idea of a problem and a solution in a story. Who are the characters? How are they alike? Different? What do you think the author's message is? This text was used for a Blueprint Workmat summative assessment on key details and why they are important to the story. The student put their finishing touches on their dioramas. They are learning to work cooperatively to create a detailed project. Great job! The students reviewed all their sight words presented thus far and played "Hands Up, Hands Down." They also wrote their words and partnered up to use them in oral sentences. Students reviewed target sounds Pp, Tt, Ss, and short Aa. They participated in an activity where they had to tell if they heard a target sound at the beginning, middle or end of a word. We began a conversation on words naming people, places, things being called nouns and looked for them in the stories they read in small group workstations. Students began work on using elkonin boxes and blocks to segment and blend phonemes to create CVC words. The students read the pre decodable story,"We Like Sam." They made predictions about story content, elbow chatted with a partner about characters, setting and recalled an event from the story. The students listened to the thinking tale, "The Little Red Hen." They listened to fluent reading and reoccurring phrases and once again thought about the problem and solution in the tale and sequencing events. Workstations included leveled reading with emphasis on fluency and story elements, word search for short a and short e words, word family sort with word families ad, ap, at words, creating a speech bubble around what 2 friends might say to each other and creating CVC words.
Math: The students worked on rote counting and writing numbers to 50 and played the game "Race to 50." They continue to work on reinforcing recognition and writing of teen numbers, adding quantities to 5 with manipulatives and using their ten frames to build teen numbers. They also reviewed positional concepts, counting by 10's to 100, number rhymes, counting quantities to 30 and greater than/less than activities.
Writing: The students continue to work on Starting Corner Capital letter formation. This week the letters V, W, X were introduced, They worked on letters via their mini boards and chalk, using the wooden pieces and applied what they had learned in their orange practice books. The students are beginning to explore the use of top and bottom lines and a broken middle line for upper and lowercase letters. They will begin using their new Yellow journals with lines soon. The students continue to work on more consistency in using a capital letter at the beginning, spacing between words and having an ending mark. Using inventive or phonetic spelling is very acceptable. They also continue to work on reading their own writing.
Technology: In reading, student whole and small groups are using the apps Magnetic Letters HD to compose sentences using sight words, Sound Sort, Montessori Crosswords for initial sound recognition and segmenting and blending sounds to create words and Reading Magic 2 to reinforce onset and rime word families. In math whole and small groups, students used the apps Top It for greater/less/compare, Monster Squeeze for number sequencing, Number Rack for ways to say 5 and Subitize Tree for number quantity/visualizing number.
Literature: "Amazing Bears," "Bears," "Black Bear Cub," "Sleep Big Bear, Sleep," "Time to Sleep," "Day in the Life of Baby Bear," "Bears in the Forest," "Bears of the World."
Sunday, November 8, 2015
UPDATES for 11/2-11/6 2015
**It was a wonderful warm week to get out and explore the growing signs of autumn, have an extra recess or two and harvest the rest of our class garden bed. All hands were on deck for our leaf sort project. Each student added their leaves to our giant sort. Students also participated in labeling the different groups. Check out our photo!
**Keep those gloves and mittens coming!! Students are beginning to bring in their donations. Students Council reps Quinn and Jackson are spreading the word. Glove and mitten donations will go to the Oak Park and River Forest Infant Welfare Society.
**Our 50th Day of school is coming!!! It is Wednesday, November 11th. We will be half way to 100! The students will spend some time learning about the decade of the 50's. We will mark part of our day by dressing up like the 50's, having a sock hop at 9:45 and working on math workstations surrounding the number 50 in the afternoon. On Wednesday, November 11th, the students can dress up if they choose. It can be as simple as a white tee shirt and blue jeans--slick back hair for the boys and pony tails for the girls. If you have a poodle skirt--WOW!
**Our Dioramas turned out very cool and creative! Each of the 4 groups chose an event from the story, "Peter's Chair" to recreate. Thanks to all of you who sent in cool stuff. We spent some time brainstorming on how to be a contributing member of the group, share ideas and work cooperatively. No small fete!! There are still 2 groups who would like to add more details. I will photograph the finished products next week.
**In your child's homework folder is the permission slip and information for our FIELD TRIP to BROOKFIELD ZOO. The trip is Tuesday, November 24th from 9-2pm. The students and teachers will travel by school bus. Parent volunteers will carpool. I will provide money for the parking fee. All volunteers have free admission to the zoo. I have U. Allgood and M. Daniel volunteering so far. I would love to have 2-3 more to make the student groups smaller and easy to manage. I am not able to have younger siblings on this trip. Students need to have a BAG LUNCH with NAME on it. No glass or thermos bottles please. We will be outside the much of the day so students should be dressed for the weather. If the weather is too chilly for a picnic, there are indoor places for us to have our lunch. We will have a special tour of the the Great Bear Wilderness and we will meet at the Great Bear Wilderness Center for a special classroom experience.
**The Grade 3-5 Annual Turkey Trot will take place on Thursday, November 19th at 2:00 pm. We will be making posters and signs to cheer our Book Buddies on.
**Meet Children's author, Paul Orchoski ("The Ant and Pancake" and "The Mouse in My House) on Tuesday, December 1st from 6-7 pm. He will be talking to parents and students about coming up with story ideas, writing tips, understanding craft and structure and poetry inspiration. Information on sign up is in your child's homework folder.
**SAVE THE DATE!! Our WINTER CONCERT featuring Kindergarten and First Grade is Thursday, December 17th. Due to the size of our auditorium it will be performed twice--once at 8:15 am and again at 9:45 am in the Irving Auditorium. The student have already begun work on songs and movement activities!
**CALLING ALL COOKS!! As part of our Traditions and Celebrations cross curricular theme for the month of December----I am looking for volunteers to help with Room 110's Annual Gingerbread Cookie Baking, beginning at 1:15 until dismissal. 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, man/woman power and the love! I will provide the recipe for your viewing. It is a no egg/no dairy/no nut recipe.
**The end of Trimester 1 is November 24th. Report cards go out on Friday, December 11th.
**In Friendship Club this week, Ms. Bell Bey presented more ways to be a good Social Detective and do the expected when working on positive interactions. She told the students about the Behavior Hero, "Super Flex"---a flexible hero who adapts to situations using his social tools-ears for listening, brain for thinking, eyes for looking/observing and whole body. She also explained about "Rock Brain," who has trouble being flexible, only focuses on himself and does not use his social tools. Which do you want to be?? Remember--the Cool thing about Behavior---is you can CHANGE IT!!! Students watched a video on different behavioral scenes and discussed what Super Flex would do and what Rock Brain would do. Powerful!
**In Mr. Packer Problem Solving this week, students worked on a thinking project using the text "Curious George's ABC's." Each letter became part of a larger picture. Thinking outside the box again! Students incorporated the letter they got into a picture. The students shared their pictures with the group. They were quite interesting!!
**In Mr. Degman Math/Tech this week, students completed their counting projects using the app Educreations. I will post them soon.
This week:
The students went to our class garden bed to dig up the last of the sweet potatoes and put our garden to sleep for the winter. They observed root systems and lots of different size sweet potatoes. Very cool! Because there were not enough sweet potatoes for everyone to have one, we donated our potatoes to the Friday Potato Tasting sponsored by the Garden Club. Around our school, many leaves are falling. With our Tree Book, we looked up the names of some of the trees and what their leaves look like. The weather was excellent and it was great to get outside for some extra recess and movement activities. The students worked on their dioramas. They are learning what it means to work cooperatively to create and finish a project. The students completed a summative writing assessment using the text, "Peter's Chair." You can see their progress and willingness to try to respond in writing. The students listened to the story, "Leaf Man" by Lois Ehlert. We discussed the rich vocabulary that went with the story and we made a group list of all the animals and shapes the students observed in the story. The students made predictions on where the "Leaf Man" will go next and thought about the authors meaning in the repeated sentence,"Where a Leaf Man will land only the wind knows." Station Day activities this week included creating a leaf man or animal using leaves from their collection, sponge paint bears, completing Seasonal Sam and where will he stand? and taking a Subitize Challenge with friends.
Reading/Language Arts: The students continue working in Unit 2 Friends in our Treasures Reading series. They built background knowledge about how friends around the world share different activities and who can be a friend. The students listened to the Big Book story, "Friends All Around Us." They made connections looking and listening to the activities and places in the world where friends lived. We looked up these countries on our world map. Student reviewed the isolated sounds of M, S, A, P. Our Robust Vocabulary included WORLD, GAMES, PLEASANT, ASSIST, HONEST. The students worked on identifying the MAIN TOPIC on the story. They elbow chatted about how they knew it and told their partners 3 details about the story. Our puppet friends assisted the students in practice on blending letter sounds to create 3 letter words. (CVC) Students reviewed all sight vocabulary presented thus far and student small groups used the pictures, ending marks and words to create simple sentences. Each group shared the sentences they created. Students continue to work with the Haggerty Blue Exercises--isolating beginning and ending sounds, segmenting and blending CVC words and substituting the beginning sound in a word to create a new word. Next week, the students will begin working with elkonin boxes and visual segmenting and blending skills to provide another modality to enhance these skills. Workstations this week included leveled readers story elements/comprehension/ main idea and fluency, draw and write about something you can do with a friend for fun, beginning and ending sound word work, writing uppercase ABC's, syllable count, word builder with ed family words and sentence builder--subject/action.
Math: The students continue to work on rote counting to 50 as our 50th day approaches. We have some new features to our November Calendar books. Along with keeping track of days in school (with ten frames and number writing)and weather, students are working on more complex shape patterns, recording 3 numbers that come next in a sequence, working on teen numbers, rolling the dice and adding the dots, choosing a domino and remembering and recording its dot pattern and estimating the temperature on a thermometer. The students are very excited about it! The students are working on teen numbers. What do we need to make 13? (1 group of 10 or 1 complete ten frame and 3 left over/3 ones on a new ten frame) Math workstations this week included writing numbers to 45, Subitsize Challenge with a partner, pattern block build, count and record, ways to make 5 activities and counting on from a random number 0-50.
Writing: The students worked on Starting Corner Capitals-H, L, U, K. They also continue to strengthen their tripod grasp when holding a pencil, marker or crayon. Students wrote about a time when they did something kind for someone at home for their summative writing assessment. They also began to reflect in writing a sequence of events in a series of pictures. What happens first--next--then--last. Part of their work on their diorama was to create a written list of the supplies they would need to do the project after chatting with group members.
Technology: In reading whole and small groups, the students use the apps Montessori Crosswords for sound blending and recording and Oz Phonics to work on word order in sentence making and strengthen recognition of short vowel sounds. In math whole and small groups, it was all about taking a Subitize Challenge to strengthen recognition of visual number. The students explored counting using teen numbers on the app Doodle Buddy. Students conpleted their counting projects with Mr. Degman using Educreations.
Literature: "Friends All Around Us," "Friends Follow Rules," "Leaf Man," "Fall Leaves Change Color," "Leaves, Leaves, Leaves," "Animals in Fall," "Why Do Leaves Change Color?"
**Keep those gloves and mittens coming!! Students are beginning to bring in their donations. Students Council reps Quinn and Jackson are spreading the word. Glove and mitten donations will go to the Oak Park and River Forest Infant Welfare Society.
**Our 50th Day of school is coming!!! It is Wednesday, November 11th. We will be half way to 100! The students will spend some time learning about the decade of the 50's. We will mark part of our day by dressing up like the 50's, having a sock hop at 9:45 and working on math workstations surrounding the number 50 in the afternoon. On Wednesday, November 11th, the students can dress up if they choose. It can be as simple as a white tee shirt and blue jeans--slick back hair for the boys and pony tails for the girls. If you have a poodle skirt--WOW!
**Our Dioramas turned out very cool and creative! Each of the 4 groups chose an event from the story, "Peter's Chair" to recreate. Thanks to all of you who sent in cool stuff. We spent some time brainstorming on how to be a contributing member of the group, share ideas and work cooperatively. No small fete!! There are still 2 groups who would like to add more details. I will photograph the finished products next week.
**In your child's homework folder is the permission slip and information for our FIELD TRIP to BROOKFIELD ZOO. The trip is Tuesday, November 24th from 9-2pm. The students and teachers will travel by school bus. Parent volunteers will carpool. I will provide money for the parking fee. All volunteers have free admission to the zoo. I have U. Allgood and M. Daniel volunteering so far. I would love to have 2-3 more to make the student groups smaller and easy to manage. I am not able to have younger siblings on this trip. Students need to have a BAG LUNCH with NAME on it. No glass or thermos bottles please. We will be outside the much of the day so students should be dressed for the weather. If the weather is too chilly for a picnic, there are indoor places for us to have our lunch. We will have a special tour of the the Great Bear Wilderness and we will meet at the Great Bear Wilderness Center for a special classroom experience.
**The Grade 3-5 Annual Turkey Trot will take place on Thursday, November 19th at 2:00 pm. We will be making posters and signs to cheer our Book Buddies on.
**Meet Children's author, Paul Orchoski ("The Ant and Pancake" and "The Mouse in My House) on Tuesday, December 1st from 6-7 pm. He will be talking to parents and students about coming up with story ideas, writing tips, understanding craft and structure and poetry inspiration. Information on sign up is in your child's homework folder.
**SAVE THE DATE!! Our WINTER CONCERT featuring Kindergarten and First Grade is Thursday, December 17th. Due to the size of our auditorium it will be performed twice--once at 8:15 am and again at 9:45 am in the Irving Auditorium. The student have already begun work on songs and movement activities!
**CALLING ALL COOKS!! As part of our Traditions and Celebrations cross curricular theme for the month of December----I am looking for volunteers to help with Room 110's Annual Gingerbread Cookie Baking, beginning at 1:15 until dismissal. 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, man/woman power and the love! I will provide the recipe for your viewing. It is a no egg/no dairy/no nut recipe.
**The end of Trimester 1 is November 24th. Report cards go out on Friday, December 11th.
**In Friendship Club this week, Ms. Bell Bey presented more ways to be a good Social Detective and do the expected when working on positive interactions. She told the students about the Behavior Hero, "Super Flex"---a flexible hero who adapts to situations using his social tools-ears for listening, brain for thinking, eyes for looking/observing and whole body. She also explained about "Rock Brain," who has trouble being flexible, only focuses on himself and does not use his social tools. Which do you want to be?? Remember--the Cool thing about Behavior---is you can CHANGE IT!!! Students watched a video on different behavioral scenes and discussed what Super Flex would do and what Rock Brain would do. Powerful!
**In Mr. Packer Problem Solving this week, students worked on a thinking project using the text "Curious George's ABC's." Each letter became part of a larger picture. Thinking outside the box again! Students incorporated the letter they got into a picture. The students shared their pictures with the group. They were quite interesting!!
**In Mr. Degman Math/Tech this week, students completed their counting projects using the app Educreations. I will post them soon.
This week:
The students went to our class garden bed to dig up the last of the sweet potatoes and put our garden to sleep for the winter. They observed root systems and lots of different size sweet potatoes. Very cool! Because there were not enough sweet potatoes for everyone to have one, we donated our potatoes to the Friday Potato Tasting sponsored by the Garden Club. Around our school, many leaves are falling. With our Tree Book, we looked up the names of some of the trees and what their leaves look like. The weather was excellent and it was great to get outside for some extra recess and movement activities. The students worked on their dioramas. They are learning what it means to work cooperatively to create and finish a project. The students completed a summative writing assessment using the text, "Peter's Chair." You can see their progress and willingness to try to respond in writing. The students listened to the story, "Leaf Man" by Lois Ehlert. We discussed the rich vocabulary that went with the story and we made a group list of all the animals and shapes the students observed in the story. The students made predictions on where the "Leaf Man" will go next and thought about the authors meaning in the repeated sentence,"Where a Leaf Man will land only the wind knows." Station Day activities this week included creating a leaf man or animal using leaves from their collection, sponge paint bears, completing Seasonal Sam and where will he stand? and taking a Subitize Challenge with friends.
Reading/Language Arts: The students continue working in Unit 2 Friends in our Treasures Reading series. They built background knowledge about how friends around the world share different activities and who can be a friend. The students listened to the Big Book story, "Friends All Around Us." They made connections looking and listening to the activities and places in the world where friends lived. We looked up these countries on our world map. Student reviewed the isolated sounds of M, S, A, P. Our Robust Vocabulary included WORLD, GAMES, PLEASANT, ASSIST, HONEST. The students worked on identifying the MAIN TOPIC on the story. They elbow chatted about how they knew it and told their partners 3 details about the story. Our puppet friends assisted the students in practice on blending letter sounds to create 3 letter words. (CVC) Students reviewed all sight vocabulary presented thus far and student small groups used the pictures, ending marks and words to create simple sentences. Each group shared the sentences they created. Students continue to work with the Haggerty Blue Exercises--isolating beginning and ending sounds, segmenting and blending CVC words and substituting the beginning sound in a word to create a new word. Next week, the students will begin working with elkonin boxes and visual segmenting and blending skills to provide another modality to enhance these skills. Workstations this week included leveled readers story elements/comprehension/ main idea and fluency, draw and write about something you can do with a friend for fun, beginning and ending sound word work, writing uppercase ABC's, syllable count, word builder with ed family words and sentence builder--subject/action.
Math: The students continue to work on rote counting to 50 as our 50th day approaches. We have some new features to our November Calendar books. Along with keeping track of days in school (with ten frames and number writing)and weather, students are working on more complex shape patterns, recording 3 numbers that come next in a sequence, working on teen numbers, rolling the dice and adding the dots, choosing a domino and remembering and recording its dot pattern and estimating the temperature on a thermometer. The students are very excited about it! The students are working on teen numbers. What do we need to make 13? (1 group of 10 or 1 complete ten frame and 3 left over/3 ones on a new ten frame) Math workstations this week included writing numbers to 45, Subitsize Challenge with a partner, pattern block build, count and record, ways to make 5 activities and counting on from a random number 0-50.
Writing: The students worked on Starting Corner Capitals-H, L, U, K. They also continue to strengthen their tripod grasp when holding a pencil, marker or crayon. Students wrote about a time when they did something kind for someone at home for their summative writing assessment. They also began to reflect in writing a sequence of events in a series of pictures. What happens first--next--then--last. Part of their work on their diorama was to create a written list of the supplies they would need to do the project after chatting with group members.
Technology: In reading whole and small groups, the students use the apps Montessori Crosswords for sound blending and recording and Oz Phonics to work on word order in sentence making and strengthen recognition of short vowel sounds. In math whole and small groups, it was all about taking a Subitize Challenge to strengthen recognition of visual number. The students explored counting using teen numbers on the app Doodle Buddy. Students conpleted their counting projects with Mr. Degman using Educreations.
Literature: "Friends All Around Us," "Friends Follow Rules," "Leaf Man," "Fall Leaves Change Color," "Leaves, Leaves, Leaves," "Animals in Fall," "Why Do Leaves Change Color?"
Sunday, November 1, 2015
UPDATES for 10/26-10/30 2015
**We had a lovely fall afternoon for our Halloween Parade around the school grounds! Darth Vaders, princesses, super heroes, dinosaurs, a friendly police officer and some spooky creatures were some of the many cool costumes worn by students. Room parents provided healthy treats and we made origami bats. A BIG THANKS to Julie Wulff for great story reading and movement and to all of of you who came out to enjoy the afternoon with us.
**Slightly Spooky Family Story Time was a huge success and lots of fun. Ms. Noonan, myself, Ms. Durham and Mr. Sak had a great time reading our stories. Thanks to all who came out to hear us. I want to say a special thanks to those of you who purchased books for our classroom.
**Our Student Council Reps, Quinn and Jackson are extending a shout out to everyone to donate a pair of new mittens or gloves to the Student Council sponsored Mitten Drive. See information on the Mitten Drive in your child's homework folder. Donate the whole month of November. The Oak Park and River Forest Infant Welfare Society will be receiving the bulk of the donation.
**PICTURE RETAKES will be done on MONDAY, NOVEMBER 2nd in the morning. Please send back the the package or form.
**Our 50th Day of School is Wednesday, November 11th. We will be half way to 100!! The students will spend some time learning about the decade of the 50's. We will mark part of our day by dressing up like the 50's, having a sock hop and working on math workstations surrounding the number 50. On Wednesday, November 11th, the student can dress up. It can be as simple as a white tee shirt and blue jeans--slick back hair for the boys and pony tails for the girls. If you should have a poodle skirt--WOW!
**Last call to sign up for TRIVIA NIGHT--a grown up fundraiser for Irving School. It is Thursday, November 5th from 7-10 pm at The Wire in Berwyn.
**Route to Reading Rotation 2 will begin on Monday, November 2nd. You will receive notification of the skill group your child will be participating in at that time. You should have received notification of previous skill mastery. Email me if you did not.
**If you have some time on Tuesday, November 3rd beginning at 1:45 pm, the students will be going to our kindergarten garden bed to see what else there is left to harvest. Come check it out with us. Students will take home what we find.
**In culmination of our text study on "Peter's Chair," the students will be working in small groups to create a diorama to illustrate Peter's reaction to one of the events in the story. I am providing the boxes but students can bring in ribbon, cloth or material, or any cool stuff. We will announce the groups on Monday and dioramas will be designed and worked on Thursday and Friday.
**In Friendship Club this week, Ms.Bell Bey worked on asking questions and good questioning techniques. She played a game with the students where she had a certain animal picture that students couldn't see. She call on students to ask a question about it to see if they could guess what it was by the answer to the question. Does is have stripes? What color is it?
**In Mr. Packer Problem Solving this week, the students shared their pictures using the black dot as part of the picture. Very creative!!!
**In Mr. Degman Tech/Math this week, the students finished their counting projects on the iPad using the Educreations. I will post these.
**Field Trip to Brookfield Zoo on Tuesday, November 23rd from 9-2 pm. Look for information and permission slips this coming Friday.
This week:
It was all about bats and spiders and skeletons. We took the fright out of these creatures. The students listened to informational texts as well as fictional stories. 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---they are both mammals!! What are baby bats called? The students learned that spiders are not so spooky and they are really helpful to our earth. They are arachnids. They have eight legs and eight eyes. The students looked up information through internet sources and also read books with spider facts. The students read about and viewed a human skeleton. Who has more bones--a baby or a 5-6year old? Students delighted in feeling where certain bones were located on their body and reading stories about the function of our bone structure.
Reading/Language Arts: The students began work in Unit 2 Friends in our Treasures Reading series. They built background knowledge about what a friend is and what types of activities you can do with a friend. They listened to the song "The More We Get Together." Many students remembered this song from their preschool days. The students listened to the Big Book story,"What Do You Like?" They responded and made connections about activities they do with friends. The students found the title page and discussed the main characters and setting of the story. They learned how to compare and find differences and commonalities by using a Venn Diagram. They compared a boy and a girl in the story --What they both liked and the types of things each liked separately. The students reviewed all their sight words thus far and worked on the sound of Ss at the beginning and ending of words. Robust Vocabulary for the week included FAVORITE, FRIENDS, PARTNER, HOBBY, COMPLETE. The students read their read aloud story, "I Like," and worked on tracking and fluency. They learned what a speech bubble or balloon was. The students read with a partner and elbow chatted with their partner and discussed the characters and setting and one event in the story. In our continued text study of "Peter's Chair," the students completed a Blueprint workmat on using a quote from the story to illustrate and explain what the character was thinking and why it was important to the story. Workstations for this week included letter/picture/sound sort using the letters M, S, A, P, sound blending 3 phonemes using the app Reading Magic 1--tap the box--record the sound you hear--tap the picture box--did you make the word? word work using the word WE, leveled readers read aloud with discussions on key events, writing and illustrating about a time when you were happy and sad and prep work on sequencing events in a story and what is a diorama.
Math: The students continue to work on rote counting to 50 as our 50th day approaches! The students have completed their calendar books for October. The month of November will bring a new and more challenging calendar book. We will begin to work on sequencing numbers before and after a target number, tally marks, adding plus 1, domino and dice number patterns, ten frames and place value, teen numbers and number bonds to 5. Fun! Fun! The students spent time counting spiders. pumpkins, bats, skeletons and recording their number. Reckenrek exercises are assisting in students looking for ways to say 5. (3 and 2, 4 and 1etc.) and the idea of visual counting and visualizing number. Math workstations this week included count and record, build/count and record, playing the Skeleton Dice game, what number comes next activity and writing numbers to 30.
Writing: We started to chat about our Starting Corner Capitals. Where do they begin--right next to Mr. Smiley! Students continue to work on sentence structure----NAME and TELL (subject/action), beginning with a capital letter, spacing between words and some kind of ending mark. Topics this week included writing about a friend, halloween, your costume, bats and spiders.
Technology: In reading whole and small groups the students used the apps Educreations for drawing and labeling setting of the story, Magic Reading 1 and Montessori Crosswords for sound blending and recording and Oz Phonics for words order and beginning and ending sounds. In math whole group, students used the apps Subitze Tree for visualizing number (subitizing) Easy Match for looking at dice and domino number patterns and Brainy Bugs for counting/cardinality, matching and mazes. Mr. Degman used the app Educreations for his project with students. BrainPOP Jr and UTube video helped us explore the world of bats and dioramas.
Literature: "Amazing Bats," "Bats," "Bats-Strange and Wonderful," "Your Skeleton," "Your Amazing Bones," "Bones," "Spiders,""Spiders and Spiderlings," "Bats Big Game," "The Runaway Pumpkin," "The Little Old Woman Who Wasn't Afraid of Anything,""Inside a House that is Haunted."
**Slightly Spooky Family Story Time was a huge success and lots of fun. Ms. Noonan, myself, Ms. Durham and Mr. Sak had a great time reading our stories. Thanks to all who came out to hear us. I want to say a special thanks to those of you who purchased books for our classroom.
**Our Student Council Reps, Quinn and Jackson are extending a shout out to everyone to donate a pair of new mittens or gloves to the Student Council sponsored Mitten Drive. See information on the Mitten Drive in your child's homework folder. Donate the whole month of November. The Oak Park and River Forest Infant Welfare Society will be receiving the bulk of the donation.
**PICTURE RETAKES will be done on MONDAY, NOVEMBER 2nd in the morning. Please send back the the package or form.
**Our 50th Day of School is Wednesday, November 11th. We will be half way to 100!! The students will spend some time learning about the decade of the 50's. We will mark part of our day by dressing up like the 50's, having a sock hop and working on math workstations surrounding the number 50. On Wednesday, November 11th, the student can dress up. It can be as simple as a white tee shirt and blue jeans--slick back hair for the boys and pony tails for the girls. If you should have a poodle skirt--WOW!
**Last call to sign up for TRIVIA NIGHT--a grown up fundraiser for Irving School. It is Thursday, November 5th from 7-10 pm at The Wire in Berwyn.
**Route to Reading Rotation 2 will begin on Monday, November 2nd. You will receive notification of the skill group your child will be participating in at that time. You should have received notification of previous skill mastery. Email me if you did not.
**If you have some time on Tuesday, November 3rd beginning at 1:45 pm, the students will be going to our kindergarten garden bed to see what else there is left to harvest. Come check it out with us. Students will take home what we find.
**In culmination of our text study on "Peter's Chair," the students will be working in small groups to create a diorama to illustrate Peter's reaction to one of the events in the story. I am providing the boxes but students can bring in ribbon, cloth or material, or any cool stuff. We will announce the groups on Monday and dioramas will be designed and worked on Thursday and Friday.
**In Friendship Club this week, Ms.Bell Bey worked on asking questions and good questioning techniques. She played a game with the students where she had a certain animal picture that students couldn't see. She call on students to ask a question about it to see if they could guess what it was by the answer to the question. Does is have stripes? What color is it?
**In Mr. Packer Problem Solving this week, the students shared their pictures using the black dot as part of the picture. Very creative!!!
**In Mr. Degman Tech/Math this week, the students finished their counting projects on the iPad using the Educreations. I will post these.
**Field Trip to Brookfield Zoo on Tuesday, November 23rd from 9-2 pm. Look for information and permission slips this coming Friday.
This week:
It was all about bats and spiders and skeletons. We took the fright out of these creatures. The students listened to informational texts as well as fictional stories. 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---they are both mammals!! What are baby bats called? The students learned that spiders are not so spooky and they are really helpful to our earth. They are arachnids. They have eight legs and eight eyes. The students looked up information through internet sources and also read books with spider facts. The students read about and viewed a human skeleton. Who has more bones--a baby or a 5-6year old? Students delighted in feeling where certain bones were located on their body and reading stories about the function of our bone structure.
Reading/Language Arts: The students began work in Unit 2 Friends in our Treasures Reading series. They built background knowledge about what a friend is and what types of activities you can do with a friend. They listened to the song "The More We Get Together." Many students remembered this song from their preschool days. The students listened to the Big Book story,"What Do You Like?" They responded and made connections about activities they do with friends. The students found the title page and discussed the main characters and setting of the story. They learned how to compare and find differences and commonalities by using a Venn Diagram. They compared a boy and a girl in the story --What they both liked and the types of things each liked separately. The students reviewed all their sight words thus far and worked on the sound of Ss at the beginning and ending of words. Robust Vocabulary for the week included FAVORITE, FRIENDS, PARTNER, HOBBY, COMPLETE. The students read their read aloud story, "I Like," and worked on tracking and fluency. They learned what a speech bubble or balloon was. The students read with a partner and elbow chatted with their partner and discussed the characters and setting and one event in the story. In our continued text study of "Peter's Chair," the students completed a Blueprint workmat on using a quote from the story to illustrate and explain what the character was thinking and why it was important to the story. Workstations for this week included letter/picture/sound sort using the letters M, S, A, P, sound blending 3 phonemes using the app Reading Magic 1--tap the box--record the sound you hear--tap the picture box--did you make the word? word work using the word WE, leveled readers read aloud with discussions on key events, writing and illustrating about a time when you were happy and sad and prep work on sequencing events in a story and what is a diorama.
Math: The students continue to work on rote counting to 50 as our 50th day approaches! The students have completed their calendar books for October. The month of November will bring a new and more challenging calendar book. We will begin to work on sequencing numbers before and after a target number, tally marks, adding plus 1, domino and dice number patterns, ten frames and place value, teen numbers and number bonds to 5. Fun! Fun! The students spent time counting spiders. pumpkins, bats, skeletons and recording their number. Reckenrek exercises are assisting in students looking for ways to say 5. (3 and 2, 4 and 1etc.) and the idea of visual counting and visualizing number. Math workstations this week included count and record, build/count and record, playing the Skeleton Dice game, what number comes next activity and writing numbers to 30.
Writing: We started to chat about our Starting Corner Capitals. Where do they begin--right next to Mr. Smiley! Students continue to work on sentence structure----NAME and TELL (subject/action), beginning with a capital letter, spacing between words and some kind of ending mark. Topics this week included writing about a friend, halloween, your costume, bats and spiders.
Technology: In reading whole and small groups the students used the apps Educreations for drawing and labeling setting of the story, Magic Reading 1 and Montessori Crosswords for sound blending and recording and Oz Phonics for words order and beginning and ending sounds. In math whole group, students used the apps Subitze Tree for visualizing number (subitizing) Easy Match for looking at dice and domino number patterns and Brainy Bugs for counting/cardinality, matching and mazes. Mr. Degman used the app Educreations for his project with students. BrainPOP Jr and UTube video helped us explore the world of bats and dioramas.
Literature: "Amazing Bats," "Bats," "Bats-Strange and Wonderful," "Your Skeleton," "Your Amazing Bones," "Bones," "Spiders,""Spiders and Spiderlings," "Bats Big Game," "The Runaway Pumpkin," "The Little Old Woman Who Wasn't Afraid of Anything,""Inside a House that is Haunted."
Sunday, October 25, 2015
UPDATES for 10/19-10/23 2015
**Thanks so much for your attendance at Parent/Teacher Conferences. It was great to chat with you and share your child's progress. The students are sure working very hard!
**WOW! Our Fun Run was awesome! We had a beautiful morning for our run. The Irving Eagle helped fire up our kinders! Thanks to those of you who came out to support us and to those of you who pledged your support. Our class raised $520.00!!!!
**Set up for LEXIA CORE 5 is in your child's homework folder. The students need practice typing in their username (case sensitive) and password. We will be using LEXIA on our iPads and up in the computer lab for keyboard and mouse experience. Home practice is recommended 2-3 times a week for 20 minutes. Email me with any questions. They are enjoying it!
**School photos or information on ordering school photos are also in your child's homework folder. Our class picture will be sent at a later date. A copy of the School Directory is also there.
**Come join ME, Ms. Noonan, Ms. Durham and Mr. Sak for an evening of "Slightly Spooky Family Stories" on Wednesday, October 28th from 6:30-7:30 pm in the Irving Auditorium. Come browse the Book Fair too and enjoy a sweet treat!
**The Irving Book Fair will be held Monday, October 26th-29th in the Irving Auditorium. Our class will visit the Book Fair on Monday to browse. The Book Fair will be open after school and in the evening.
**Halloween is almost here!! Please join us for fun and festivities on Friday, October 30th in the afternoon. The schedule is as follows: Our morning will be a regular morning of learning. If your child chooses to, they may bring their costume/make up/props in a bag to school. At 12:45 pm--students will change into their costumes. At 1:30 pm--the students will participate in an all school PARADE around the school grounds. Classroom celebrations will take place from 2:15-2:55 pm. In keeping with our non violent atmosphere, please do not send toy guns, swords, hooks, light sabers, poles, knives, brooms, ropes or handcuffs. There are no other restrictions on costumes. Students may bring a treat or trinket for the class if they wish. These items will go into a treat bag that will be sent home. Please--NO NUTS/NUT PRODUCTS or DAIRY. Parents and sibs are invited to attend both events.
**Fundraiser Alert!! Sign up for TRIVIA NIGHT This grown up night of fun and entertainment will be held on Thursday November 5th from 7-10 pm at The Wire in Berwyn.
** In Friendship Club this week, Ms. Bell Bey continued her lesson on being a Social Detective. She shared with the students the tools for being a Social Detective--Eyes--Ears--Brain. She presented several situations where the students used their tools to figure out the most appropriate behavior. Ms. Bell Bey also read examples from the book--"You Are a Social Detective," by Michelle Winner and Pamela Crooke. Lots of great discussion!!!
**In Mr. Degman Math/Tech this week, Mr. Degman began a project with small groups of students on the iPad using selected icons, recording their voices counting the icons and writing the number. We will post the project when all students have completed it. Super cute!
**Our kindergarten team has decided to move our Library trip to the spring. Too much going on in our curriculum right now.
**Future trip to Brookfield Zoo on Tuesday, November 23rd from 9-2pm. Look for information permission slips soon.
This week: It was all about the culmination of apple mania!! The students did a taste test of 6 different types of apples and they graphed their favorite one. In our class the preferred apple is Golden Delicious with Red Delicious coming in a close second. The students discussed the sequence of events surrounding the making of applesauce. The key words--recipe and ingredients. What do you need to do first? next? then? last? They observed and assisted in using the apple peeling machine. The skin came off like a ribbon!! Students also assisted in cutting the apple flesh into small pieces using our special plastic knives. Super great helpers! The students discussed the cooking process and talked about the function of a crock pot and slow cooking. Lots of language and conversation. Everything was put into the crock pot along with some apple cider for sweetness and the cooking began. The students observed the different cooking stages and saw the apples get mushy. The smell of cooking apples permeated our classroom. As a final step, I used the immersion blender to make it all very smooth. The students enjoyed the slightly warmed applesauce at the end of the day. In apple science, the students offered their prediction on whether the 3 apples would sink or float. They illustrated their predictions. We did the experiment and the students check their prediction against the result. Lots of guesses on why an apple would sink or float. Ask you child what their prediction was. How did they do? We began prep for our next mini unit on bats, spiders, skeletons and nocturnal animals.
Reading/Language Arts: The students took a break from our Treasures Reading series this week to continue work on the text, "Peter's Chair." Along with summative work on characters, setting and main events, the students worked on matching text to pictures and working on finding key details in the story. A key detail is something important that happens in the story that effects the character or characters. It can be something the character said or did. The final item the students worked on was sequencing events in the story. What happened first? next? then? last? The students are working verbally and with picture cards. Next week, we will try some writing. They are having lots of fun acting out scenes, working in small groups and elbow chatting with partners. A culmination to this formative/summative text study will be small group diorama making about 1 event in the story. More info on that next week. The students continued work on their sight words--walking them--writing them--and using them in sentence building. Workstations this week included partner reading of leveled readers with elbow chatting about story elements, word work, beginning sound blending activities, color by code sight words and color words and sequencing story event pictures.
Math: The students continue work on counting rote counting to 50 and counting quantities to 25. They are working on their calendar books and getting quite creative with patterning and number formation steadily improves. The students also worked on ways to make 5 using the reckenrek. We continue the introduction of geometric solids introducing cubes and cones. How are these shapes different from squares and triangles??? The students worked on a counting project with Mr. Degman in small groups. Math workstations this week included playing Apple Roll, Count and Color, counting apples and recording the number, sequencing number cards from least to greatest and back, using cones and cubes in basic building and reinforcing positional concepts.
Writing: The students continue to work on writing and illustrating in their writing journals. This weeks focus was on sentence structure. We are working on a sentence being a group of words that NAMES and TELLS. You have a subject and an action. Next week we will begin the set of uppercase letters called the Starting Corner Capitals.
Technology: The students are now working on the Lexia Core 5. It is a great skill building program centering on phonemic awareness and phonics skills. Students are able to work at their own rate and move up levels. The hardest part of the program is logging in. Each student has a username that contains 2 uppercase and 2 lowercase letters along with some numbers. The password is the same for everyone. We are using both iPad and computer/mouse. Practice entering the username. On the iPad, it is touching the arrow to make it black for uppercase and touching the number icon to access numbers. On a computer, it is touching the caps lock to make the dot turn green for uppercase and then touching it again to release it. The students did well and were also able to log out too! Information for set up are in your child's homework folder. Mr. Degman is using the app Educreations for his project with students on counting/recoding and writing. I will post them when the project is completed, The students are having fun and learning!! In whole group reading work, the apps Magnetic ABC HD for reinforcing and practice of sight words and Reading Magic 1 for blending and segmenting short vowel words. In math whole group this week the apps Subitize Tree was used for visual/number pattern and counting and Geoboard was used reinforce shape recognition and drawing.
Literature: "Ten Apples Up On Top," "The Bad Apple," "Skeleton Meets Mummy," "The Skeleton Cat," "The Apple Pie Tree," "It's Halloween," "Words are Not for Hurting," "Bigger than Alexander," "Leaves, Leaves, Leaves."
**WOW! Our Fun Run was awesome! We had a beautiful morning for our run. The Irving Eagle helped fire up our kinders! Thanks to those of you who came out to support us and to those of you who pledged your support. Our class raised $520.00!!!!
**Set up for LEXIA CORE 5 is in your child's homework folder. The students need practice typing in their username (case sensitive) and password. We will be using LEXIA on our iPads and up in the computer lab for keyboard and mouse experience. Home practice is recommended 2-3 times a week for 20 minutes. Email me with any questions. They are enjoying it!
**School photos or information on ordering school photos are also in your child's homework folder. Our class picture will be sent at a later date. A copy of the School Directory is also there.
**Come join ME, Ms. Noonan, Ms. Durham and Mr. Sak for an evening of "Slightly Spooky Family Stories" on Wednesday, October 28th from 6:30-7:30 pm in the Irving Auditorium. Come browse the Book Fair too and enjoy a sweet treat!
**The Irving Book Fair will be held Monday, October 26th-29th in the Irving Auditorium. Our class will visit the Book Fair on Monday to browse. The Book Fair will be open after school and in the evening.
**Halloween is almost here!! Please join us for fun and festivities on Friday, October 30th in the afternoon. The schedule is as follows: Our morning will be a regular morning of learning. If your child chooses to, they may bring their costume/make up/props in a bag to school. At 12:45 pm--students will change into their costumes. At 1:30 pm--the students will participate in an all school PARADE around the school grounds. Classroom celebrations will take place from 2:15-2:55 pm. In keeping with our non violent atmosphere, please do not send toy guns, swords, hooks, light sabers, poles, knives, brooms, ropes or handcuffs. There are no other restrictions on costumes. Students may bring a treat or trinket for the class if they wish. These items will go into a treat bag that will be sent home. Please--NO NUTS/NUT PRODUCTS or DAIRY. Parents and sibs are invited to attend both events.
**Fundraiser Alert!! Sign up for TRIVIA NIGHT This grown up night of fun and entertainment will be held on Thursday November 5th from 7-10 pm at The Wire in Berwyn.
** In Friendship Club this week, Ms. Bell Bey continued her lesson on being a Social Detective. She shared with the students the tools for being a Social Detective--Eyes--Ears--Brain. She presented several situations where the students used their tools to figure out the most appropriate behavior. Ms. Bell Bey also read examples from the book--"You Are a Social Detective," by Michelle Winner and Pamela Crooke. Lots of great discussion!!!
**In Mr. Degman Math/Tech this week, Mr. Degman began a project with small groups of students on the iPad using selected icons, recording their voices counting the icons and writing the number. We will post the project when all students have completed it. Super cute!
**Our kindergarten team has decided to move our Library trip to the spring. Too much going on in our curriculum right now.
**Future trip to Brookfield Zoo on Tuesday, November 23rd from 9-2pm. Look for information permission slips soon.
This week: It was all about the culmination of apple mania!! The students did a taste test of 6 different types of apples and they graphed their favorite one. In our class the preferred apple is Golden Delicious with Red Delicious coming in a close second. The students discussed the sequence of events surrounding the making of applesauce. The key words--recipe and ingredients. What do you need to do first? next? then? last? They observed and assisted in using the apple peeling machine. The skin came off like a ribbon!! Students also assisted in cutting the apple flesh into small pieces using our special plastic knives. Super great helpers! The students discussed the cooking process and talked about the function of a crock pot and slow cooking. Lots of language and conversation. Everything was put into the crock pot along with some apple cider for sweetness and the cooking began. The students observed the different cooking stages and saw the apples get mushy. The smell of cooking apples permeated our classroom. As a final step, I used the immersion blender to make it all very smooth. The students enjoyed the slightly warmed applesauce at the end of the day. In apple science, the students offered their prediction on whether the 3 apples would sink or float. They illustrated their predictions. We did the experiment and the students check their prediction against the result. Lots of guesses on why an apple would sink or float. Ask you child what their prediction was. How did they do? We began prep for our next mini unit on bats, spiders, skeletons and nocturnal animals.
Reading/Language Arts: The students took a break from our Treasures Reading series this week to continue work on the text, "Peter's Chair." Along with summative work on characters, setting and main events, the students worked on matching text to pictures and working on finding key details in the story. A key detail is something important that happens in the story that effects the character or characters. It can be something the character said or did. The final item the students worked on was sequencing events in the story. What happened first? next? then? last? The students are working verbally and with picture cards. Next week, we will try some writing. They are having lots of fun acting out scenes, working in small groups and elbow chatting with partners. A culmination to this formative/summative text study will be small group diorama making about 1 event in the story. More info on that next week. The students continued work on their sight words--walking them--writing them--and using them in sentence building. Workstations this week included partner reading of leveled readers with elbow chatting about story elements, word work, beginning sound blending activities, color by code sight words and color words and sequencing story event pictures.
Math: The students continue work on counting rote counting to 50 and counting quantities to 25. They are working on their calendar books and getting quite creative with patterning and number formation steadily improves. The students also worked on ways to make 5 using the reckenrek. We continue the introduction of geometric solids introducing cubes and cones. How are these shapes different from squares and triangles??? The students worked on a counting project with Mr. Degman in small groups. Math workstations this week included playing Apple Roll, Count and Color, counting apples and recording the number, sequencing number cards from least to greatest and back, using cones and cubes in basic building and reinforcing positional concepts.
Writing: The students continue to work on writing and illustrating in their writing journals. This weeks focus was on sentence structure. We are working on a sentence being a group of words that NAMES and TELLS. You have a subject and an action. Next week we will begin the set of uppercase letters called the Starting Corner Capitals.
Technology: The students are now working on the Lexia Core 5. It is a great skill building program centering on phonemic awareness and phonics skills. Students are able to work at their own rate and move up levels. The hardest part of the program is logging in. Each student has a username that contains 2 uppercase and 2 lowercase letters along with some numbers. The password is the same for everyone. We are using both iPad and computer/mouse. Practice entering the username. On the iPad, it is touching the arrow to make it black for uppercase and touching the number icon to access numbers. On a computer, it is touching the caps lock to make the dot turn green for uppercase and then touching it again to release it. The students did well and were also able to log out too! Information for set up are in your child's homework folder. Mr. Degman is using the app Educreations for his project with students on counting/recoding and writing. I will post them when the project is completed, The students are having fun and learning!! In whole group reading work, the apps Magnetic ABC HD for reinforcing and practice of sight words and Reading Magic 1 for blending and segmenting short vowel words. In math whole group this week the apps Subitize Tree was used for visual/number pattern and counting and Geoboard was used reinforce shape recognition and drawing.
Literature: "Ten Apples Up On Top," "The Bad Apple," "Skeleton Meets Mummy," "The Skeleton Cat," "The Apple Pie Tree," "It's Halloween," "Words are Not for Hurting," "Bigger than Alexander," "Leaves, Leaves, Leaves."
Sunday, October 18, 2015
UPDATES for 10/13-10/16 2015
**REMINDER--Parent/Teacher Conferences are Monday, October 19th, Tuesday, October 20th and Wednesday, October 21st. MONDAY---7:15 am Polan....5:00 Constantinescu...6:00 Lowell...6:30 Wulff and 7:00 Guzman. TUESDAY--7:15 am Bell...3:00 Massett....3:30 Meier...5:30 Harper....6:00 Daniel....6:30 Metz....7:00 Harris....7:30 Hagedorn. WEDNESDAY--2:00 Allgood...3:30 Awad....5:00 Jackson....6:30 Nelson. On Tuesday, October 27th at 7:15 am Pillacela. I am looking forward to sharing your child's progress with you.
**REMINDER--School is in session in the MORNING ONLY on Thursday, October 22nd and Friday, October 23rd. Dismissal will be at 11:00 am. Hephzibah, District School Bus and Clubhouse will pick up at 11:00 am.
**GO Ms. Gullo's Class!! Don't forget to sign up and send your pledge money in!!! The FUN RUN is Wednesday, October 21st. Kindergarten will be running at beginning at 8:15 am on the turf. Come cheer us on!! Make a poster if you like!!
**WOW! The Egg Drop and Academic Fair was awesome! Ella, Zadie, Hattie, Aidan, Jackson and Quinn designed cool vehicles. Check out their picture. Ella and Audrey did a super job with their projects and speaking about their projects to those that stopped by. A HUGE SHOUT OUT to all of our participants!!!
**Route to Reading skills specific groups has begun. If you did not receive notification of the skill your child is working on and the teacher teaching it, please let me know.
**A few more photos to go and we will do our SEASONAL BABIES project. Don't forget to bring in your baby picture.
**Ah Yes! The topic of Halloween is being discussed. The schedule is as follows--Friday, October 30th will be a regular morning of learning. If your child chooses to, they may bring their costumes/make up/props to school in a bag. At 12:45 pm --students will change into their costumes. At 1:30 pm-Students will participate in an all school Parade around the outside of school. Classroom celebrations will take place from 2:15-2:55 pm. In keeping with our non violent classroom atmosphere, please do not send toy guns, swords, hooks, light sabers, poles, knives, brooms, ropes or handcuffs. There are no other restrictions on costumes. Students will be allowed to bring a candy treat if they wish. It will go into a treat bag that will be sent home. Please----NO NUTS/ NUT PRODUCTS or DAIRY. I will be chatting with room parents who will have a healthy snack on hand. We will also do a craft related to our study of nocturnal animals. Parents and sibs are invited to attend both events. I will also need some parent help with costume changing.
**The Irving Book Fair will be the week of October 26th-29th in the auditorium. We will be visiting the book fair as a class. Your child may be chatting with you about a special book they saw. The book fair will be open in the evening.
**Slightly Spooky Family Storytime will be held in the the auditorium during the book fair on Wednesday October 28th from 6:30-7:30 pm. I will be reading a cool Halloween story and so will my friends Ms. Noonan, Mr Sak and Ms. Durham. It may be slightly spooky but very fun!!!
**In Friendship Club this week, Ms. Bell Bey chatted with the students about what is means to be a Social Detective and doing what is expected in our daily lives. She shared a story and posters and discussed what expectations are in terms of good behavior.
**In Mr. Packer Problem Solving this week, Mr. Packer read a story called "Ten Black Dots," and encouraged students to think "outside of the box" and use their imagination on a project that involved making a black dot part of a bigger picture. Some really cool ideas!!! Great thinking going on!!!
**Field Trip to Maze Branch Library. Our tentative date is Thursday, November 5th. It will be a walking field trip. I will send out more info next week. There will be an opportunity for your child to get a library card if they do not have one.
**Future Trip to Brookfield Zoo on Tuesday, November 23rd from 9-2 pm.
This week:
It was all about APPLE MANIA!! The students participated in an inquiry to determine what they know about apples. They had a ball using the magnifiers and the microscope to observe the blossom (flower) seeds, flesh, core and skin. They learned what a blossom was--the beginning of the apple. Some apples were cut on their sides to reveal the star!! We read information books (nonfiction) books on the subject and used the internet search to find out names the apples have. The students explored some of the many types of apples and observed their similarities and differences. The students learned how to create a diagram and label apple parts. Part two of apple mania next week. Station day activities included apple print trees, mixed media apples, build, count and record using unifix cubes and color by code autumn leaves.
Reading/English Language Arts: The students completed Unit 1 Families in our Treasures Reading series. The students began their next Blueprint workmat using the text, "Peter's Chair." We will be doing 2 Blueprint Workmats this time. The students will continue working on story elements--characters, setting, main events in the story and why they are important. We will also be working on what key details in a story are. We talked about a key detail as being something important that happens in the story that effects the characters. In our first reading of the text, students listened to the story of Peter, a boy who experiences a change in his family and himself on a few different levels. We worked on story structure--the way in which things in the story happen. Stories can have a beginning, middle and end. The students made predictions about story content before I began to read using the title and cover picture. After the first reading, the students elbow chatted with a partner about story elements. I did a group outline where with the help of the students, we discussed what the beginning, middle and ending of the story was. The students thought about something the characters said or how they acted. The students took turns acting out certain parts of the story they thought were important. This text study will take about 2 weeks with a culminating project. Fun! The students continue to work on beginning and ending sounds in words as well as short and long vowel sounds and beginning sound blending. Workstations this week included leveled readers and discussion about story elements, read alouds and partner reading, rainbow writing sight words, writing and illustrating before (when you were a baby) and after (now that you are 5/6) how did you look? What could you do? creating words using the word family ad and am, word work focusing on ending sounds and sound games.
Math: The students are continuing to work on counting quantities to 20 and writing their numbers to 20 as well as rote counting to 40. They reviewed their number rhymes for numbers 6-9. They worked on activities that involve subitizing or looking for number patterns and visualization to come up with the answer. Students reviewed all basic and pattern block shapes and begun looking at geometric solids--cone and cube. How are they different from a triangle or square?? We began chatting about what numbers we can use to make another number. If we want to make 5 and we already have 3....how many more do we need? Math workstations this week included writing numbers to 9, building, counting and recording and comparing a number, working with concepts greater than/less than, and playing "Hungry for Apples."
Writing: The students completed formation work on the Frog Jump Capitals. F, E, D, P, B, R, N, M have been introduced. They applied what they had learned in their orange practice books. Students wrote and illustrated in their journals about apples using the words from their sight word list. The focus of this weeks writing workshop was on posture, reinforcing tripod grasp, one hand holding their pencil and other holding their paper and sitting up so their back is touching the back of the chair.
Technology: No new apps introduced this week. Students began working on Lexia Core 5 on their iPads. You will receive information at parent conference on how to set up the program on your home iPad and computer or tablet. Students have their own username (which is case sensitive and requires some practice) and password. They are very excited to be working on it!
Literature: "How Do Apples Grow?" "Johnny Appleseed," "The Wonders of Apples," "Amazing Apples," "The Big Apple Mystery," "Apples, Apples, Apples," "Apples A-Z,"
**REMINDER--School is in session in the MORNING ONLY on Thursday, October 22nd and Friday, October 23rd. Dismissal will be at 11:00 am. Hephzibah, District School Bus and Clubhouse will pick up at 11:00 am.
**GO Ms. Gullo's Class!! Don't forget to sign up and send your pledge money in!!! The FUN RUN is Wednesday, October 21st. Kindergarten will be running at beginning at 8:15 am on the turf. Come cheer us on!! Make a poster if you like!!
**WOW! The Egg Drop and Academic Fair was awesome! Ella, Zadie, Hattie, Aidan, Jackson and Quinn designed cool vehicles. Check out their picture. Ella and Audrey did a super job with their projects and speaking about their projects to those that stopped by. A HUGE SHOUT OUT to all of our participants!!!
**Route to Reading skills specific groups has begun. If you did not receive notification of the skill your child is working on and the teacher teaching it, please let me know.
**A few more photos to go and we will do our SEASONAL BABIES project. Don't forget to bring in your baby picture.
**Ah Yes! The topic of Halloween is being discussed. The schedule is as follows--Friday, October 30th will be a regular morning of learning. If your child chooses to, they may bring their costumes/make up/props to school in a bag. At 12:45 pm --students will change into their costumes. At 1:30 pm-Students will participate in an all school Parade around the outside of school. Classroom celebrations will take place from 2:15-2:55 pm. In keeping with our non violent classroom atmosphere, please do not send toy guns, swords, hooks, light sabers, poles, knives, brooms, ropes or handcuffs. There are no other restrictions on costumes. Students will be allowed to bring a candy treat if they wish. It will go into a treat bag that will be sent home. Please----NO NUTS/ NUT PRODUCTS or DAIRY. I will be chatting with room parents who will have a healthy snack on hand. We will also do a craft related to our study of nocturnal animals. Parents and sibs are invited to attend both events. I will also need some parent help with costume changing.
**The Irving Book Fair will be the week of October 26th-29th in the auditorium. We will be visiting the book fair as a class. Your child may be chatting with you about a special book they saw. The book fair will be open in the evening.
**Slightly Spooky Family Storytime will be held in the the auditorium during the book fair on Wednesday October 28th from 6:30-7:30 pm. I will be reading a cool Halloween story and so will my friends Ms. Noonan, Mr Sak and Ms. Durham. It may be slightly spooky but very fun!!!
**In Friendship Club this week, Ms. Bell Bey chatted with the students about what is means to be a Social Detective and doing what is expected in our daily lives. She shared a story and posters and discussed what expectations are in terms of good behavior.
**In Mr. Packer Problem Solving this week, Mr. Packer read a story called "Ten Black Dots," and encouraged students to think "outside of the box" and use their imagination on a project that involved making a black dot part of a bigger picture. Some really cool ideas!!! Great thinking going on!!!
**Field Trip to Maze Branch Library. Our tentative date is Thursday, November 5th. It will be a walking field trip. I will send out more info next week. There will be an opportunity for your child to get a library card if they do not have one.
**Future Trip to Brookfield Zoo on Tuesday, November 23rd from 9-2 pm.
This week:
It was all about APPLE MANIA!! The students participated in an inquiry to determine what they know about apples. They had a ball using the magnifiers and the microscope to observe the blossom (flower) seeds, flesh, core and skin. They learned what a blossom was--the beginning of the apple. Some apples were cut on their sides to reveal the star!! We read information books (nonfiction) books on the subject and used the internet search to find out names the apples have. The students explored some of the many types of apples and observed their similarities and differences. The students learned how to create a diagram and label apple parts. Part two of apple mania next week. Station day activities included apple print trees, mixed media apples, build, count and record using unifix cubes and color by code autumn leaves.
Reading/English Language Arts: The students completed Unit 1 Families in our Treasures Reading series. The students began their next Blueprint workmat using the text, "Peter's Chair." We will be doing 2 Blueprint Workmats this time. The students will continue working on story elements--characters, setting, main events in the story and why they are important. We will also be working on what key details in a story are. We talked about a key detail as being something important that happens in the story that effects the characters. In our first reading of the text, students listened to the story of Peter, a boy who experiences a change in his family and himself on a few different levels. We worked on story structure--the way in which things in the story happen. Stories can have a beginning, middle and end. The students made predictions about story content before I began to read using the title and cover picture. After the first reading, the students elbow chatted with a partner about story elements. I did a group outline where with the help of the students, we discussed what the beginning, middle and ending of the story was. The students thought about something the characters said or how they acted. The students took turns acting out certain parts of the story they thought were important. This text study will take about 2 weeks with a culminating project. Fun! The students continue to work on beginning and ending sounds in words as well as short and long vowel sounds and beginning sound blending. Workstations this week included leveled readers and discussion about story elements, read alouds and partner reading, rainbow writing sight words, writing and illustrating before (when you were a baby) and after (now that you are 5/6) how did you look? What could you do? creating words using the word family ad and am, word work focusing on ending sounds and sound games.
Math: The students are continuing to work on counting quantities to 20 and writing their numbers to 20 as well as rote counting to 40. They reviewed their number rhymes for numbers 6-9. They worked on activities that involve subitizing or looking for number patterns and visualization to come up with the answer. Students reviewed all basic and pattern block shapes and begun looking at geometric solids--cone and cube. How are they different from a triangle or square?? We began chatting about what numbers we can use to make another number. If we want to make 5 and we already have 3....how many more do we need? Math workstations this week included writing numbers to 9, building, counting and recording and comparing a number, working with concepts greater than/less than, and playing "Hungry for Apples."
Writing: The students completed formation work on the Frog Jump Capitals. F, E, D, P, B, R, N, M have been introduced. They applied what they had learned in their orange practice books. Students wrote and illustrated in their journals about apples using the words from their sight word list. The focus of this weeks writing workshop was on posture, reinforcing tripod grasp, one hand holding their pencil and other holding their paper and sitting up so their back is touching the back of the chair.
Technology: No new apps introduced this week. Students began working on Lexia Core 5 on their iPads. You will receive information at parent conference on how to set up the program on your home iPad and computer or tablet. Students have their own username (which is case sensitive and requires some practice) and password. They are very excited to be working on it!
Literature: "How Do Apples Grow?" "Johnny Appleseed," "The Wonders of Apples," "Amazing Apples," "The Big Apple Mystery," "Apples, Apples, Apples," "Apples A-Z,"
Saturday, October 10, 2015
UPDATES for 10/5-10/8 2015
**Our Walk to School Day was a success! Over half of our class walked to school in the morning. The rest of the class walked with Mr. Hancock at lunchtime. Each student colored their gym shoe and received a hand stamp. Mr Hancock will put up all the shoes on the gym walls. Cool!
**Thanks for sending in your Parent Conference confirmed responses. Keep them coming! I will reschedule parents who need a new day and time this week. I will email you. Parent/Teacher Conferences will be held on Monday, October 19th, Tuesday, October 20th and Wednesday, October 21st. Please note: On Thursday, October 22nd and Friday, October 23rd school will be in session in the MORNING ONLY. Dismissal will be at 11:00 am. There will be district bus service, Hephzibah and Clubhouse pick up at 11:00 am. There is NO afternoon session.
**CALLING ALL CURIOUS KIDS!!! There is still time to design a vehicle for the Egg Drop or create a project for the Academic Fair. Both events are Wednesday, October 14th. We have 2 students doing projects that I know of and 5 students who have designed vehicles. Don't forget you need to sign up online for one or both events on the Irving website. Come on....the more the merrier!!! Come join us on Wednesday afternoon beginning at 1:00 pm on the turf for the Egg Drop Contest. Come to view and hear the students speak about their projects on Wednesday night beginning at 6:30 pm in the gym. It will be one FUN day!
**The students began prep for Lexia Core 5 in the lab this week. They will be getting their usernames and passwords next week and will begin work in the lab 2X week for 30 minutes. I will also send information home with them on adding Lexia Core 5 to your home computer or tablet for practice at home.
**Our Pacer's Walking/Running Club is in full swing. The students are enjoying the fresh air and the activity. Each student has earned 2 foot charms to put on their necklaces. We will keep our necklaces in a special envelope here at school.
**The first rotation of Route to Reading skills specific groups will begin on Tuesday. October 13th. You will receive notification of the phonemic awareness skill your child will be working on and the teacher who is teaching it. Route to Reading will meet Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday from 9:05-9:45. Each rotation is 3 weeks with assessment of the skill in the third week. Students must score 90% on the skill to move to another skill. Students have the opportunity to remain at the skill, move to the next skill or skip skills. I will speak about this in more detail at parent conferences.
**WOW! Thanks to the great response for Friday Station Day helpers. The Sign Up Genius did the trick. If you are interested and there are no more spots.....email me a Friday and we can have 2 parents helping out. I would love it and your child would too. I believe Sign Up Genius will send out a reminder to you. Thanks again K. Meier for suggesting this.
**Let's Run!!!! Information about the Annual Irving Fun Run in is your child's homework folder. This is a BIG fundraiser for our PTO. Sign up online to pledge your support. The Fun Run will be held on Wednesday, October 21st beginning at 8:30 am. Our Kindergarten classes will run first at 8:15 am. Come out and support us on Wednesday morning!! Cheer, make signs, take a picture of us with the Irving Eagle!! Let's get moving!!
**While we are on the subject of fundraisers.......sign up for TRIVIA NIGHT another huge fundraiser. It's super great for grown ups. It will be held on Thursday, November 5th from 7-10 pm at the Wire in Berwyn.
**Our Student Council Reps, Quinn and Jackson went to their first meeting. They met with other students representing grades K-5. They discussed their mission and began chatting about different projects and events that would benefit Irving School and our community. They came back to class and reported on some of the ideas. Stay tuned!
**No School Monday, October 12th in observance of Columbus Day.
**Walking Field Trip to Maze Library is in the works for the first week in November. Details and permission slip soon. I will need 1-2 volunteers.
**Field Trip to Brookfield Zoo on Tuesday, November 23rd from 9-2 pm. I will need 4-5 volunteers.
**Yes......Halloween is coming (the afternoon of October 30th) There is chatter amongst the children!!! We have not talked about it as a class yet. Too early. Our approach will be to study nocturnal animals, the skeleton as it relates to humans and animals and a mini unit on spiders. Informational and noncreepy!! I will be chatting with our room parents as soon as I know what the PTO has planned for that day. Our afternoon usually begins with a all school parade, some all school event and then our class party. We will follow our regular schedule in the morning. More info on costumes and treats to come. All families are welcome to attend!
This week:
Yes! We do have a striped skunk visiting our class for a few weeks courtesy of the Field Museum. The students were all a buzz about this nocturnal animal......Is it dead? How did it get in that exhibit case? We discussed how the museum can let us borrow an animal that is stuffed so we can learn about it and see it up close. Yes...It was once alive! The students observed its fur, face and claws. Skunks are common to Oak Park and they are nocturnal. Skunks, like humans are mammals. We also talked about what makes a mammal. We humans are observing what happens in the fall. What are skunks doing in the fall? Stay tuned. The students began an initial inquiry about what they knew about apples. Next week is all about apple science!
Reading/Language Arts: The students continue to work on Unit 1 Families in our Treasures Reading series. The students discussed how families can change. Family members move away or move in. Children grow older. Family sizes can increase. The students elbowed chatted with a partner about an activity they did when they were a baby and an activity they can now do as a 5/6 year old. We made a list of activities we did when we were babies.....cry, be carried, crawl, drink a bottle and a list of activities that we can now do.....ride a bike, dress ourselves, walk.....This preparation will assist the students next week when they begin their summative text activity using the trade book, "Peter's Chair." We continue to work on story structure and will begin to look more closely at the details that support the story. The students continue work on retelling a story and that most stories have a beginning, middle and ending part. We use the text, "Picnic at Apple Park" from last week. The students took turns using the retelling cards to retell the story in order. They worked on thinking about the big or main idea of the story. What is this story about? How do you know? Can you find evidence for your thinking in the story? Can the pictures help you? The students reviewed the sight words taught thus far. They "walked their words." Robust Vocabulary for this week included CHANGE, RELATIVES, EAGER, OCCASION, CELEBRATE. In our phonemic awareness activities this week, the students continue to work on rhyme patterns, 2-4 syllables words and beginning sound blending of 2 sound words. During our read aloud time, the students read "Can We." Students caught on to the story structure.....a question and an answer. Tracking skills are becoming more consistent. Pointing to each word and picture and keeping your place while other are reading are important in our whole group read aloud. Target sounds reviewed were Mm and Ss and short A. Students did a formative text Blueprint Workmat about characters, setting and main event on the nonfiction story, "How Do You Get To School?" Our Haggerty BlueBook exercises continue to reinforce rhyming, initial and final sounds, syllables, blending sounds, counting words in a sentence and adding and substituting word parts. Workstations this week included leveled read aloud, elbow chatting about characters, setting and main events, walking your words, drawing your family and writing about an activity you like to do with them (sentence starter....We like to.....) sentence building with sight words and pictures, sentence writing, What can happen next?--adding to the story you read, the syllable game and roll, cover and bump-initial sounds and Monster Mash--initial sound activity.
Math: This week, the students began work on their number rhymes for 6-9. They continue to work on counting quantities to 15 and writing their numbers. In their calendar books, the students are becoming more comfortable telling and writing which number will come next, recording the date, writing the number of the day, working on A/B, AA/B and ABC patterns and completing their ten frames. The students are finding the temperature on the weatherunderground app and recording it and what kind of weather we are having each day. They are working to understand place value--number of groups of tens and ones. The students worked on reckenrek activities "Slide and Say" and "Show Me." They learned and played the game "Heads or Tails Tally" with a partner. Our math workstations included pattern block shape find, "Heads or Tails Tally," "Swat the Number," Writing numbers 0-20 and how high can you count?
Writing: The students continue to work on Frog Jump capitals. This week, letters N and M were introduced. Students experimented with using the wooden pieces to form the letters. They used their mini boards and tripod grasp with their tiny chalk. In Writer's Workshop, the students illustrated and wrote about an animal and one fact about it, something they like to do with their family and something they can see outside. The students are working on beginning with a capital letter, spacing between words and having an ending mark. At this point, it is still very early in letter formation and all letter types (all upper or some lowercase) are acceptable. Students continue to use their letter/sound cards to assist in their writing. Labeling of pictures is occurring along with inventive or phonetic spelling. Students are talking more chances and feeling more confident about trying to write on their own. During Journal conference time, I am working individually with students on sentence structure.
Technology: In reading whole group, the app My ABC was used to reinforce letter recognition, sound/symbol and upper and lowercase math and Word Wizard to reinforce blending sounds to creating words. The app Oz Phonics was used to enhance knowledge od beginning and ending sounds. In Math whole group, the apps Easy Match, Number Rack (reckenrek app) and Geoboard were used to enhance study of number patterns, shapes and visual thinking. Next week, iPad assignment may be part of a student workstation in reading and math.
Literature: "How Do You Go To School?" "Me and My Family Tree," "In 1492," "Where in the Wild," "Why Do Leaves Change Color?" "Picnic at Apple Park," "Night Animals."
**Thanks for sending in your Parent Conference confirmed responses. Keep them coming! I will reschedule parents who need a new day and time this week. I will email you. Parent/Teacher Conferences will be held on Monday, October 19th, Tuesday, October 20th and Wednesday, October 21st. Please note: On Thursday, October 22nd and Friday, October 23rd school will be in session in the MORNING ONLY. Dismissal will be at 11:00 am. There will be district bus service, Hephzibah and Clubhouse pick up at 11:00 am. There is NO afternoon session.
**CALLING ALL CURIOUS KIDS!!! There is still time to design a vehicle for the Egg Drop or create a project for the Academic Fair. Both events are Wednesday, October 14th. We have 2 students doing projects that I know of and 5 students who have designed vehicles. Don't forget you need to sign up online for one or both events on the Irving website. Come on....the more the merrier!!! Come join us on Wednesday afternoon beginning at 1:00 pm on the turf for the Egg Drop Contest. Come to view and hear the students speak about their projects on Wednesday night beginning at 6:30 pm in the gym. It will be one FUN day!
**The students began prep for Lexia Core 5 in the lab this week. They will be getting their usernames and passwords next week and will begin work in the lab 2X week for 30 minutes. I will also send information home with them on adding Lexia Core 5 to your home computer or tablet for practice at home.
**Our Pacer's Walking/Running Club is in full swing. The students are enjoying the fresh air and the activity. Each student has earned 2 foot charms to put on their necklaces. We will keep our necklaces in a special envelope here at school.
**The first rotation of Route to Reading skills specific groups will begin on Tuesday. October 13th. You will receive notification of the phonemic awareness skill your child will be working on and the teacher who is teaching it. Route to Reading will meet Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday from 9:05-9:45. Each rotation is 3 weeks with assessment of the skill in the third week. Students must score 90% on the skill to move to another skill. Students have the opportunity to remain at the skill, move to the next skill or skip skills. I will speak about this in more detail at parent conferences.
**WOW! Thanks to the great response for Friday Station Day helpers. The Sign Up Genius did the trick. If you are interested and there are no more spots.....email me a Friday and we can have 2 parents helping out. I would love it and your child would too. I believe Sign Up Genius will send out a reminder to you. Thanks again K. Meier for suggesting this.
**Let's Run!!!! Information about the Annual Irving Fun Run in is your child's homework folder. This is a BIG fundraiser for our PTO. Sign up online to pledge your support. The Fun Run will be held on Wednesday, October 21st beginning at 8:30 am. Our Kindergarten classes will run first at 8:15 am. Come out and support us on Wednesday morning!! Cheer, make signs, take a picture of us with the Irving Eagle!! Let's get moving!!
**While we are on the subject of fundraisers.......sign up for TRIVIA NIGHT another huge fundraiser. It's super great for grown ups. It will be held on Thursday, November 5th from 7-10 pm at the Wire in Berwyn.
**Our Student Council Reps, Quinn and Jackson went to their first meeting. They met with other students representing grades K-5. They discussed their mission and began chatting about different projects and events that would benefit Irving School and our community. They came back to class and reported on some of the ideas. Stay tuned!
**No School Monday, October 12th in observance of Columbus Day.
**Walking Field Trip to Maze Library is in the works for the first week in November. Details and permission slip soon. I will need 1-2 volunteers.
**Field Trip to Brookfield Zoo on Tuesday, November 23rd from 9-2 pm. I will need 4-5 volunteers.
**Yes......Halloween is coming (the afternoon of October 30th) There is chatter amongst the children!!! We have not talked about it as a class yet. Too early. Our approach will be to study nocturnal animals, the skeleton as it relates to humans and animals and a mini unit on spiders. Informational and noncreepy!! I will be chatting with our room parents as soon as I know what the PTO has planned for that day. Our afternoon usually begins with a all school parade, some all school event and then our class party. We will follow our regular schedule in the morning. More info on costumes and treats to come. All families are welcome to attend!
This week:
Yes! We do have a striped skunk visiting our class for a few weeks courtesy of the Field Museum. The students were all a buzz about this nocturnal animal......Is it dead? How did it get in that exhibit case? We discussed how the museum can let us borrow an animal that is stuffed so we can learn about it and see it up close. Yes...It was once alive! The students observed its fur, face and claws. Skunks are common to Oak Park and they are nocturnal. Skunks, like humans are mammals. We also talked about what makes a mammal. We humans are observing what happens in the fall. What are skunks doing in the fall? Stay tuned. The students began an initial inquiry about what they knew about apples. Next week is all about apple science!
Reading/Language Arts: The students continue to work on Unit 1 Families in our Treasures Reading series. The students discussed how families can change. Family members move away or move in. Children grow older. Family sizes can increase. The students elbowed chatted with a partner about an activity they did when they were a baby and an activity they can now do as a 5/6 year old. We made a list of activities we did when we were babies.....cry, be carried, crawl, drink a bottle and a list of activities that we can now do.....ride a bike, dress ourselves, walk.....This preparation will assist the students next week when they begin their summative text activity using the trade book, "Peter's Chair." We continue to work on story structure and will begin to look more closely at the details that support the story. The students continue work on retelling a story and that most stories have a beginning, middle and ending part. We use the text, "Picnic at Apple Park" from last week. The students took turns using the retelling cards to retell the story in order. They worked on thinking about the big or main idea of the story. What is this story about? How do you know? Can you find evidence for your thinking in the story? Can the pictures help you? The students reviewed the sight words taught thus far. They "walked their words." Robust Vocabulary for this week included CHANGE, RELATIVES, EAGER, OCCASION, CELEBRATE. In our phonemic awareness activities this week, the students continue to work on rhyme patterns, 2-4 syllables words and beginning sound blending of 2 sound words. During our read aloud time, the students read "Can We." Students caught on to the story structure.....a question and an answer. Tracking skills are becoming more consistent. Pointing to each word and picture and keeping your place while other are reading are important in our whole group read aloud. Target sounds reviewed were Mm and Ss and short A. Students did a formative text Blueprint Workmat about characters, setting and main event on the nonfiction story, "How Do You Get To School?" Our Haggerty BlueBook exercises continue to reinforce rhyming, initial and final sounds, syllables, blending sounds, counting words in a sentence and adding and substituting word parts. Workstations this week included leveled read aloud, elbow chatting about characters, setting and main events, walking your words, drawing your family and writing about an activity you like to do with them (sentence starter....We like to.....) sentence building with sight words and pictures, sentence writing, What can happen next?--adding to the story you read, the syllable game and roll, cover and bump-initial sounds and Monster Mash--initial sound activity.
Math: This week, the students began work on their number rhymes for 6-9. They continue to work on counting quantities to 15 and writing their numbers. In their calendar books, the students are becoming more comfortable telling and writing which number will come next, recording the date, writing the number of the day, working on A/B, AA/B and ABC patterns and completing their ten frames. The students are finding the temperature on the weatherunderground app and recording it and what kind of weather we are having each day. They are working to understand place value--number of groups of tens and ones. The students worked on reckenrek activities "Slide and Say" and "Show Me." They learned and played the game "Heads or Tails Tally" with a partner. Our math workstations included pattern block shape find, "Heads or Tails Tally," "Swat the Number," Writing numbers 0-20 and how high can you count?
Writing: The students continue to work on Frog Jump capitals. This week, letters N and M were introduced. Students experimented with using the wooden pieces to form the letters. They used their mini boards and tripod grasp with their tiny chalk. In Writer's Workshop, the students illustrated and wrote about an animal and one fact about it, something they like to do with their family and something they can see outside. The students are working on beginning with a capital letter, spacing between words and having an ending mark. At this point, it is still very early in letter formation and all letter types (all upper or some lowercase) are acceptable. Students continue to use their letter/sound cards to assist in their writing. Labeling of pictures is occurring along with inventive or phonetic spelling. Students are talking more chances and feeling more confident about trying to write on their own. During Journal conference time, I am working individually with students on sentence structure.
Technology: In reading whole group, the app My ABC was used to reinforce letter recognition, sound/symbol and upper and lowercase math and Word Wizard to reinforce blending sounds to creating words. The app Oz Phonics was used to enhance knowledge od beginning and ending sounds. In Math whole group, the apps Easy Match, Number Rack (reckenrek app) and Geoboard were used to enhance study of number patterns, shapes and visual thinking. Next week, iPad assignment may be part of a student workstation in reading and math.
Literature: "How Do You Go To School?" "Me and My Family Tree," "In 1492," "Where in the Wild," "Why Do Leaves Change Color?" "Picnic at Apple Park," "Night Animals."
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