Tuesday, February 17, 2015

UPDATES for 2/9-2/13 2015

**The frigid weather continues!  Please keep sending your child with snow pants and boots.  We may be watching more "Wild Kratts" during our lunchtime recess this week.   The good news is....we will be able to do all of our "water as ice" experiments this week without using the freezer!  We can use the the great outdoors!!! 
**Hope you had a lovely Valentine's Day and long weekend.  Thanks once again for your attendance at Parent/Teacher conferences.  It was great to share your child's progress with you.  Parents and teachers make such a great team when we work together.  The students surely shine!   I am very fortunate to have you on my team!  Thanks for your continued support.
**The students had an awesome visit from Atessa's Dad, Mr. Chris!  He spoke to the them about the bones of the human body.  He brought bones, bones and more bones.  The students inspected hand, leg, femur, backbone and skull bones among the many.  The students were mesmerized by how many bones we have in our body.  So much fun---they want him to come back! 
**The students will have a visit from "Abraham Lincoln" on Tuesday, February 17th.  He will speak about his life and work as President. 
**The FUN FAIR is SATURDAY!!!!!  Come one, Come all to the Annual Irving Fun Fair on  Saturday,  February 21st from 11-3 pm.  There will be games, prizes, dancing for desserts, photo booth and other attractions plus silent auction (bed time stories read by me and 5 friends for lunch at the Junction Diner--bid! bid!) information for early on line bidding is on the Irving website.  Tickets will be sold everyday after school and on the day of the fair.  Online bidding opens up on Wednesday, February 18th!!  You received an info packet on the auction items in your child's homework folder.  There are some REALLY COOL things to be had!  Special attraction:  Who will get the PIE IN THE FACE????  Three teacher teams are assembled and want your coins.  The team with the most money---gets PIES in their faces!!!!I The students can bring in coins all next week including the day of the fun fair.  I saw Senorita Zaragoza's picture....was that Ms. Sakamoto and Ms. Aguilar????  The teacher attractions and pie in the face will take place beginning at 2:30 pm.  You don't want to miss it!!  All the proceeds from the day go to Irving School.  Come play a game with me!!
**I hear our class WINTER BASKET is awesome!  Thanks to everyone who made a contribution. 
**Student Council is looking for 2 new reps for the Trimester 2.  I will send info home on Tuesday, February 17th.  Interested students came sign up and on Friday, I will put their names in the bucket and choose.
**Route to Reading Rotation 6 will begin on Tuesday, February 24th.  We will take this week to work on formative and summative common core assessments in the areas of English language arts, language foundational skills and writing. 
**Information on Tech Night for Parents featuring Ms. Noonan is in your child's homework folder. 
**Future Author Visit--Author Aaron Reynolds of "Creepy Carrots" fame will come to speak to the students on Thursday, March 5th at 1:45 pm.
**Future Field Trip--to Dominican University to see the production of "CLICK, CLACK, MOO."  We will go on Friday, March 6th from 10-12 pm.  Permission slips will be sent home this week.
This week:
The students listened to stories about Abraham Lincoln and his accomplishments.  They also listened to the story of Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad.   The students were fascinated by the fact that it was not really a railroad but a series of safe places that were used to help slaves escape to the north for freedom. 
Reading/Language Arts:      The students began Unit 6 Neighborhoods in our treasures reading Series.  They accessed prior knowledge about what a neighborhood is and what a neighbor is.  The students made a group list of places and things a neighborhood has.  They listen to the Big Book story, "Russ and the Firehouse."  The students recognized this story as nonfiction.   The students discussed the story elements--Who is Russ?  Why is he at the firehouse?  What does he do there?  Target words for this week were are and for.  They added these words to our growing list of sight words.  The target sounds for the week were Hh and short and long u.  They reviewed all consonant and vowels sounds learned thus far.  The students worked with a partner and practice asking a WH question to their partner, having the partner answer it.  They then worked with their sight words, pictures and punctuation to create sentences.  In the second reading of the Big Book story,  the student discussed the main idea of the story and created a list of the jobs that Russ did at the firehouse.   Students took turns using the retelling cards summarize the events.  They used their elkonin boxes to segment and blend 4-5 phoneme words.   They read the decodable story, "Are Caps Hats?"  The students made predictions about story content.  Each student had the opportunity to read the story aloud.  Some questions to ponder--Could the group hear you?  Did you stop at each ending mark?  Did you pause at the comma?  Were you able to blends sounds together to make words you didn't know?  Did your reading sound choppy or smooth?  The students chose a partner to read to.    They then listened to their partner reread  the story.  The partners listened, discussed and critiqued each other using the Reader's Checklist.  Workstations this week included leveled readers with comprehension check and asking and answering questions, creating a page for our neighborhood book,  short vowel written cloze,  writing about a neighborhood place using the sentence starter  I go to the....., text to picture match,  Write about it--Where is your favorite place to go in your neighborhood?  What do you do there?  Why do you like it? 
Math:     The students continue working in their calendar books on a variety of math concepts--number bonding to 10, even and odd numbers, counting on from a given number, creating a number pattern, tally marks, ten frames, completing a subtraction number story problem and writing numbers 0-20.   The students worked on a project concentrating on the concepts biggest to smallest when arranging hearts.  They worked with a partner to complete an addition color by code activity.  The students topped it off by playing Heart to Heart. 
Writing:     The students continue to work on composing sentences independently using their daily writing journals, reflecting in their science journals and writing in their reading workstations.  They continue to work on Magic "C" lowercase letter formation.
Science:  We did a little review in science about what we have discovered so far in our investigation of water.  Next week--water as ice.
Technology:    No new apps used this week. 
Literature:     "Love Splat," "The Night Before Valentine's Day," "Abraham Lincoln," "Just Like Abraham Lincoln," "Big Hearts," "Rosa Parks," "The Story of Harriet Tubman," a rereading and discussion of "Knuffle Bunny," " I am Sad," and "Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus."




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