**BRRRRR!! The cold air prevails!! Tate remarked,"Ms. Gullo, that ground hog was really right!" Keep sending snow pants and boots!! Our kindergarten door will be open to let students in before the bell. The door will also be open to let parents in at dismissal so that you all do not have to stand out in the cold. March will soon be here. Think Spring!!!
**The FUN FAIR was spectacular! I hope you all had as much fun as I did! There were fun games and prizes, creative desserts and a cool Photo Booth. Our class WINTER FUN basket was superb! Thanks to our room parents for organizing it and all your contributions. It was great to see many of there enjoying yourselves. I was thrilled to see a former student who is now a college grad---so proud!! The teacher acts were a scream! Check them out on the Irving website. The teacher team of PIE SCHMIE featuring Mr. Hodge, Mr. Sak, Ms. Parkinson, Ms. Heaphy and Ms. Hiolski collected the most money to get the PIE in the FACE!!!! The silent auction items were amazing. If you are the recipient of one of my auction items, I will be contacting you in the next few weeks. Once again, this event truly represents our Irving community at its best. I am so proud to be a part of it! Go Irving!!
**The students participated in a visit from "Honest" Abe Lincoln last Tuesday. Abe share some of the aspects of his life as a boy, young man and as the 16th president. The students asked questions and shared their thoughts on slavery and the Civil War with Abe. Great presentation!
**We were so busy Friday that I forgot to choose our 2 next reps for Student Council. I will do that on Monday. The first meeting is Tuesday, February 24th.
**Route to Reading Rotation 6 will begin on Tuesday, February 24th. At that time you will receive notification of the skill your child will be working on.
**Field trip permission slip for the production of "Click, Clack, Moo" is in your child's homework folder. Please sign it and return it with $12 as soon as you can. I will need 1 parent volunteer for this. First come, first serve! We will be gone from 9:30-11:30 am. on Friday, March 6th.
**Please send your book orders in for Author Aaron Reynolds books. He will be visiting Irving School on Thursday, March 5th. Our students will see his presentation at 12:45 pm.
**The end of Trimester 2 is Friday, March 5th. Report cards will go home on Friday, March 20th.
** Spring Pictures will be taken on Monday, March 16th.
**Future event: Bag Piper, Patrick Lynch will come to our class on Monday, March 16th to speak about the the instrument--the bag pipe. A bit of history, putting together the parts and lively music will follow.
**No Friendship Club or Mr.Packer Problem Solving this week.
**We are getting closer to collection of GIANT BOXES (the kind you can climb in) and all the other cool things you can find. Our space stations will use all recyclable materials. You can start bringing them in after spring break.
This week:
The students read about the particular accomplishments of Abraham Lincoln and George Washington. They learned that presidents come from all walks of life. They shared some great insight into what makes a good leader of a country. We concluded our author study of Mo Willems books and will write an opinion on our favorite story next week. The students celebrated the Chinese Year by finding out what animal sign they were born under and their character traits. They practiced picking up objects using their tri pod grasp using their chopsticks. The students listeneed to stories about the origin of the lunar new year. Station Day activities this week included creating a tri cornered hat, graphing winter animal habitats, addition problems color the code and problem solving/visual motor integration building with unifix cubes.
Reading/Language Arts: The students continue to work on Unit 6 Neighborhoods in our Treasures Reading series. They accessed prior knowledge about places in and around their neighborhood and who you can find there. The students talked about what the words community and workers meant. They listened to the Big Book story, "Bus Stop." They made predictions about story content and listened for what happened at the beginning, middle and end of the story. They also made connections about places in the story and how they relate to their own community. The students reviewed the target words for, you, are and target sounds Dd, Hh, and Rr. The students worked in small groups to create sentences using words and pictures. The students listened to the story for a second reading and worked on retelling it in their own words as well as identifying the characters, setting and plot. They used their elkonin boxes to work on sound blending 3,4 and 5 phoneme words. They also used their dry erase boards to work on substituting sounds to create new words. In the decodable story "Are You?" students worked on telling the main idea. We also used the story to review that some stories have a problem and then a solution. The students elbow chatted about the problem and solution. Robust Vocabulary for this week included ADMIRE, DELIVER, SCHEDULE, COMMUNITY, WORKER, ALERT, JOB, CELEBRATION, PRECISE and REPAIR. The students responded to the poem, "The Park." They retold parts of the poem in their own words. Workstations remained the same this week so all groups could cycle through.
Math: As a salute to the Chinese New Year, the students learned about tangrams. They are a geometric Chinese puzzle consisting of a square cut into 5 triangles, a square and a rhombus. The students practiced with paper tans to create different figures . They then worked with partners on the app TanZen lite to create figures on their iPad. Very cool for problem solving, expanding mindset and visual discrimination. They also continued to work on writing 2 digit numbers and figuring out how many ten frames they need to make a number. Other workstations included even/odd sort, number bonds to 10, geometric solid sort, make 5 Bingo and creating shapes using existing shapes.
Writing: Students continued to work on forming lowercase letters a, d, g, u. They applied their knowledge in their orange practice books. The students continue to work on sentence structure and placement of letters on a given line.
Science: The students reviewed their investigation so far about water. They began experiments on water as ice. The students made predictions about what will happen to the water that is put into a bottle and a piece of tin foil put on to seal it. Each table has a plastic bottle. Each member of the table took turns using the funnel to help fill the bottle with water. The bottles were placed outside overnight. When the bottles were brought in, the students observed the water had frozen and became a solid. Students noticed that the frozen water went over the bottle. (it expanded) There was not enough room in the bottle for all the ice. Students commented in their science journals and sketched the results. The bottles were left on their tables for the rest of the day. What happened? The students observed the water in the bottle melting and changing back into liquid. We discussed the idea of temperature for something to freeze (32 and lower) and for melting (above 32) They will continue to observe the water bottles to see if there are any other changes. Next week--water as a gas.
Technology: In reading individual and small group, students continued to work with the apps Montessori Crosswords, Spelling Bug, Rocket Speller and Dolch Words to reinforce segmenting and blending, letter sounds and sight vocabulary. Whole group work used Oz Phonics to work on sentence order and ccvc and cvcc word combinations. In math, individual and student small groups worked on the apps Tanzen Lite, Kids Math, Butterfly Math and Number Find to reinforce number order, place value, problem solving, simple addition and subtraction and shape recognition. Students used BrainPop Jr to watch a video on Abraham Lincoln, the water cycle and Harriet Tubman.
Literature: "Investigating Water-Water as Ice," "George Washington," "A Picture Book of George Washington," "50 Degrees Below Zero," "Harriet Tubman," "Rosa Parks," "Chinese New Year," "Bringing in the New Year," "Ruby's Wish," "Honey I Love You and Other Poems by Eloise Greenfield," "What is a Tangram?" "Abraham Lincoln's Hat."
No comments:
Post a Comment