**FIELD TRIP REMINDER: We will be going to Dominican University Lund Auditorium on FRIDAY, MARCH 6th to see the production of "Click, Clack Moo!" We will leave school at 9:30 am and return in time for lunch recess at 11:30 am. Lunch is as usual. Our parent volunteer will be B. Howell. I still need permission slips and money from a few students. Please get that in ASAP.
**Author Aaron Reynolds will visit Irving School on Thursday, March 5th. Kindergarten students will hear him speak at 12:45 pm in the Irving Auditorium.
**Trimester 3 has begun!! Report cards reflecting growth from Trimester 2 will be sent home on Friday, March 20th.
**Due to PARCC testing of the older students, Route to Reading will be suspended the week of March 9th-13th.
**Bag Piper, Patrick Lynch will visit our class on Monday, March 16th at 1:45 pm to share and speak about the instrument--the bagpipe. A bit of history, examining and putting together the parts and lively music will follow!
**It's SUPER TUBER DAY on Tuesday, March 17th. It is our salute to the country of Ireland and the potato. We will hear a bit about leprechuans too! Please send a POTATO (not cooked ...any kind) on March 17th. I need about 3 volunteers to help facilitate potato learning stations. I have K.Meier already signed up. Email me if you can help. The time will be 10:15-11:15 am. that morning. We will learn a little history about the potato and Ireland, examine its surface, measure its length, count the "eyes," and take a look at some different varieties. We will also try to grow a potato plant.
**Spring Pictures will be taken on Monday, March 16th during the morning. It will be an individual picture with a backdrop. Siblings from Irving can have their pictures taken together.
**Our new Student Council Reps for this trimester are Clara and Tate. Ailsa was an original pick but she had another class conflict so Tate stepped in. The reps reported back to our class that they are working on activities for an All School Spirit Week. Stay tuned!!!
**Green Team Reps Evan and Atessa are working on creating houses out of recycled materials...Cool!
**In Friendship Club this week, Ms. Bell Bey spoke about inspiration and things or ideas that inspire us in our world. She read the story "Little Melba and Her Big Trombone," about trombone player, Melba Liston, who used music as her inspiration. Even as a young girl, she wanted to study the trombone and ended up playing with the jazz greats of her time. The students had a lively discussion on what inspires them. Some said it was their school or family, others said it was a famous person or a just regular person in their life. Insightful lesson!
**In Mr. Packer Problem Solving this week, Mr. Packer began preparation for the next class project that has to do with listening very carefully for key vocabulary in order to complete a directive using dots. The lessons come from Logic Links. He began by teaching vocabulary (directly, neither, left, right, immediately.)
**NO SCHOOL-SPRING BREAK March 28th-April 5th. School resumes on Monday, April 6th. Let me know if you are traveling and I will send along a Travel Journal for your child.
**We are getting closer to the collection of GIANT BOXES and other cool stuff for our upcoming space station projects. Keep saving them. You can bring everything in after spring break.
This week:
We continue to brave the elements. The students expressed some thoughts on the coming of spring and WHEN it will exactly be here. We will be beginning a new reading unit aptly entitled Weather next week. They long to get outside everyday for recess!!! The students saw "The Story of Ruby Bridges," and learned about the accomplishments of a little girl who was the first African American child to go to a white school in 1960 in the south. They were proud to know that even a child can affect change in our country. We used our station day time this week to write letters to our former classmate, Walker, who lives in Michigan. He sent us a postcard last week. It was a great way to practice our letter formation and sentence writing.
Reading/Language Arts: The students completed Unit 6 Neighborhoods in our Treasures Reading Series. The students talked and read about jobs people do in the neighborhood such as driving a bus or preparing food. Lots of discussion about workers they see in their neighborhood. We made a group word web of community worker titles. The students reviewed all their sight vocabulary thus far and all of the target sounds covered. I read the trade book, "Alicia's Happy Day" to the students. The students made predictions about story content. As they listened to the story, I asked them to think about the events that happened at the beginning, middle and end of the story. The students also made connections in their own lives about why Alicia might feel happy. As she walks down the street....what does she see and hear? Students took turns retelling the story in their own words. In their journals, they reflected their connection by writing about when they had a happy day. Students worked with a partner and filled out a Story Elements Butterfly identifying the characters, setting, main events and main idea. Each group shared their butterfly with the class. Workstations for this week included leveled readers/discussion/reader's checklist, completing their group neighborhood maps, sentence completions, word work with short vowels, writing a question for their particular story and answering that question and CVC word sort. We also took time this week to write our opinion piece for our common core summative using Mo Willems books.
Math: The students worked on number bonds to 10 and recognizing geometric solids. We continue work on counting to 130 and writing 2-3 digit numbers. The students are working on story problems as a whole group to prepare them for future work in their new math journals. We are reading the problem together, deciding the operation, illustrating the operation and writing the number sentence. They will begin working in them next week! Whole group work on a new app Brainy Bugs was very fun.....counting, puzzles, building and connecting. TanZen Lite and Butterfly Math continue to be the favorites. Math workstations for this week centered around written number practice, story problem practice, working with geometric solids and creating shape patterns.
Writing: The students continued work on forming lowercase letters. Some of these letters can be very tricky and require lots of thought. The students applied what they learned in their orange practice books. The students learned about basic letter writing. They wrote letters to their former classmate, Walker. They learned about the greeting and the body of a letter. The students are also doing more "proofing" themselves, reading their writing before coming to journal conference. Their journal entries this week included writing about a happy day they had, writing about a community worker, and using target words in their writing.
Science: The students kept up their observation of their water bottles noting that each day the water level is decreasing. The scientific term evaporation was talked about. The students know about water as a liquid and solid and this week experimented with water as a gas in the form of steam. We discussed the freezing temperature of water (32 degrees) and boiling temperature (212 degrees) and from that boiling created steam. The students observed the "smoke" or steam coming out of the container. After releasing some steam, I covered the container with plastic wrap. What will happen? Students gave their thoughts. We left the container and went to class. Upon returning, students observed water droplets on the top of the plastic wrap. How did they get there? Jeremy thought, "the water cannot evaporate because it is trapped by the plastic and can't get out into the air." Wow! The water droplets got bigger and bigger until they fell back into the water. mmmmm....precipitation!!It is raining inside the container. Cool! The students reflected in their science journals what they experienced. They then watched a BrainPop movie of the water cycle and the idea of evaporation, condensation, precipitation.
Technology: In reading, student small groups and individuals used the apps Spelling Bug, Dolch Words and Rocket Speller for vocabulary development and word practice. Whole group skill building centered around Montessori Crosswords (blending and segmenting) and Oz Phonics (sentence building and adding and deleting sounds.) In math, student small groups and individuals used the apps Number Find, Monster Squeeze and Math Bug for number order, addition and subtraction. Whole group skill building centered around the apps Brainy Bug and Kids Math. The app Fire Finger enhanced students groups working with substitution and CVC word making. BrainPop and Flocabulary had awesome movie and raps song about the water cycle.
Literature: "Little Melba Liston and Her Big Trombone," "The Story of Ruby Bridges," "Night on Neighbor Street," Langston Hughes--"Poetry for Young People," "Honey, I Love"--Poetry by Eloise Greenfield, "The Water Cycle," "Water's Journey," "Rosa Parks," "Wilma Rudolph," "Knuffle Bunny," "I Am Sad," "Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus."
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