Sunday, January 11, 2015

UPDATES for 1/-1/9 2015

**Happy New Year and welcome back!  Our frigid forecast lead to the closing of our school for 2 days.   The students were excited to be back, however.  We were inside for lunch recess and enjoyed viewing episodes of "Wild Kratts."  Great sharing of Travel Journals to New York, Pittsburgh, California, Belleville and Sheboygan.  Even though the temperatures will rise next week--please continue to send snow pants and boots.   We may go outside for lunch recess and it will be quite messy and wet.  I have 4 pair of extra snow pants in case to lend out.  It is really the best way to stay dry.  Also---don't forget to send gym shoes.  Our gym days are Mondays and Wednesdays.
**Eagle Extras begin on Monday.  Participating students will be picked up from our classroom at dismissal. 
**Route to Reading Rotation 4 began Tuesday, January 6th.  You should have received notification of the skill your child will be working on. 
**I will begin Mid Year Assessments next week including DIBELS, Darrell Morris Sound Foundation and mid year assessments in reading, math and writing and some Common Core Formative assessments.    I will share all of this with you at Mid Year Conferences. 
**You will receive notification on Thursday (1/15) about Mid Year Parent/Teacher Conferences.  They will be held on Monday, February 9th, Tuesday, February l0th and Wednesday, February 11thPlease note that Thursday, February 12th and Friday, February 13th school will be in session in the MORNING ONLY.  Dismissal will be at 11:00 am.   Hephzibah and bus pick up will also be at 11:00 am.  
**Our 100th Day of School Celebration is THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 5th from 12:30 until dismissal.  I have K. Meier, L. Makonnen and C. Cummings signed up to help so far.  We need LOTS of volunteers to help with learning station activities that will focus on the number 100 and counting by 10's to 100.  Email me if you can help.  It is REALLY FUN!  The students will also work on a special 100 item project.  This will be sent home with instructions on THURSDAY, January 15th.
**Reading Grandma Mary came to class on Friday to begin her 8th year of listening to young readers.  Each student will get to spend some time reading with her every Friday morning from 9:30-11:45 am.   We are thrilled to have her!
**No Friendship Club this week.  Ms. Bell Bey was absent.
**In Mr. Packer Problem Solving this week, Mr. Packer read the student a story about the number 10 and worked on number patterns.
** No School on Friday, January 16th--Teacher's Institute Day.
**No School on Monday, January 19th in observance of M. L. King's Birthday.
**FUTURE FIELD TRIP to Dominican University to see the production of "Click, Clack, Moo!" on Friday, March 6th from 10:00 -12:00 pm. 
**Start saving those GIANT BOXES (the ones you can climb in) and other cool stuff for our space station design and construction in APRIL during our SPACE THEME.  I cannot store anything now.  I will have you start bringing things in after spring break.
This week:     It was all about frigid temperatures, snow and sharing their winter break stories.  Winter is here!  Frostbite was a big topic.  The students were interested in weather patterns and looked on Weather Underground.   They discovered that we were not the only ones experiencing cold weather.  It was 16 degrees in Jacksonville, Florida!!!  The students began work on a snowman writing project.  They also began their inquiry into what they knew about WATER.  Our experiments begin next week.  We are lucky to have a Snowshoe Hare visiting our Nature Table this month.  We will find out more about him and how he adapts to his environment during the winter.  Station Day activities included windsock snowmen, snowflake shape and color by code, counting on with snowmen to solve addition problems and working on the first part of their snowman writing project. 
Reading/Language Arts:     The students used the short week as a review for all skills related to reading.  They will finish Unit 4 Food next week.  They reviewed their current sight vocabulary and played, "Hands Up, Hands Down.  They worked with partners to create sentences using their sight words, pictures and punctuation marks and recorded their sentences on paper.  Whole group lesson focused on MAIN EVENTS in a story using the text, "The Mitten Tree."  Students also worked on PROBLEM and SOLUTION in a story using the text, "Yoko."  We did some work with nouns and verbs in writing a recipe---What you need--(noun) and what you do--(verb).  Students worked on leveled readers naming main events, practicing reading to a partner for fluency and asking and answering questions about a text they read.  Students worked on making words, finding CVC words and searching for missing vowel sounds using our latest cool app--Oz Phonics 2.  Very fun!  They continue to use their elkonin boxes to record the order in which they hear sounds in a 3, 4 and 5 letter words.  Thee students selected their own groups and games that focused on letter/sound correspondence, creating and sound blending CVC, CCVC and CVCC words, finding and writing words inside of other words, word family work and spelling their sight words.
Math:      The students continue to work on rote counting to 100 and beyond and counting on from a random number.  They began work in their new calendar books.  The new skills included writing 3 numbers that come before a target number, ways to say a targeted number thru number bonds, strategies for recognizing even and odd numbers, patterns continuation, using ten frames to illustrate a given number and adding using dominoes and dice.  Instant recognition is becoming more apparent when using ten frames, dice and dominoes. 
Writing:    The students continue to work on "Magic C" starting Center Capitals--this week concentrating on the letters S, A, G, I, T, J.  They applied what they learned in their orange practice books.  The students are also working on proofing their own writing before they come to journal conference with me.  Students are working on 1-4 sentences in their journals.  They are really looking at where they place their lowercase letters on a given line. 
Science:   The students began their inquiry and discussion on WATER and their Next Generation Science connection on waters relationship to weather.  Stay tuned!!
Technology:     The app Oz Phonics was introduced to enhance sound blending, sound foundation and CVC words as a whole group.  Next week, I will be introducing another cool app called Learn to Read.  It has some really cool activities--build a word, word scramble, find the word, sentence wheel and sentence builder.  Add them to your child's tablet or iPad.  They are low cost.  In math, the students worked on the apps Number Find and Easy Match.  They also chose partners and had a Subitize Tree challenge!.
Literature:     "The Mitten Tree," "Yoko," "Water," "There was a Cold Lady Who Swallowed Some Snow," "The Snowy Day," "It's Winter," "Thomas' Snowsuit."


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