**Dare I say it.........No snow pants needed next week......but please continue to send BOOTS as it will be quite wet and messy with the melting snow. Spring may finally be in the air!
**The students had a great time on their field trip to see "Click, Clack Moo." Lots of singing and dancing, plus great costumes. Thanks to B. Howell for volunteering her time.
**Author Aaron Reynolds was the bomb according to my students. The students really enjoyed his presentation. I was sorry I missed it. I was attending the Illinois Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development's Kindergarten Conference. I found inspiration and validation as well as some cool ideas to enhance my teaching.
**Due to PARCC testing of older students, Route to Reading will be suspended for next week.
**Bag Piper, Patrick Lunch 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!
**Please send a POTATO (not cooked...any kind) with your child on Tuesday, March 17th---It's SUPER TUBER DAY! It is our salute to Ireland and the potato. I have K. Meier and D. Frank volunteering but need at least 2 more volunteers to help facilitate potato learning stations. 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 the different varieties. We will also begin 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 an have their pictures taken together.
**Information on New Eagle Extras After School Programs is in your child's homework folder.
**Information on the Irving Classic Basketball Tournament (a PTO fundraiser) is also inyour child's homework folder.
**NO SCHOOL-SPRING BREAK--March 28-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.
**FUTURE FIELD TRIP to Adler Planetarium on Monday, April 20th from 9:00-2:00 pm.
**FUTURE ALL SCHOOL ACTIVITIES---Irving Spelling Bee (date and time TBA) and Egg Drop Contest and Academic Fair on Wednesday, April 22nd. More information soon.
This week:
It was all about the weather and Dr Seuss! We began tracking the weather in the United States via the site Weatherunderground each day as it relates to our current unit in reading. The students have been observing "fronts" moving in and the directions that weather patterns move. They love watching the color changes on the animated radar. They have also become interested in the chance or percentage of precipitation on any given day. Cool! We celebrated the birthday of Dr. Seuss, learning a bit about his life and works. The students listened to and read their own Dr. Seuss books. We discussed the rhyming and nonsense word patterns to many of his stories. We topped off his birthday by playing Seuss Subtraction with partners during our math workshop. Station Day activities included topic writing about spring and playing Penguin Dial-a-Sum.
Reading/Language Arts: The students began Unit 7 Weather in our Treasures Reading series. We began by pondering the question, "What's the weather like today?" They accessed prior knowledge about what they understood about weather, not only in their own area but in other parts of the United States. The students listened to the Big Book story, "The Rainy Day." They thought about what the main idea could be. They made connections about rain in their own daily lives. Sight words this, do and what were introduced. The target sound for this week is short Ee. The students used pictures as well as words to make a group short Ee web. The students continued to work on recognizing nouns and verbs in their daily sentence work. They listened to a rereading of the story and created a picture in their minds (visualize) about what it looks like after it rains. The students reviewed the water cycle (go science!) and facts about rain. They examined 2 more parts of a book--the glossary and the index and what they are used for. The students used their elkonin boxes to segment and blend 4-5 phoneme words. The student read their paper stories to a partner to practice their fluency. Our Robust Vocabulary this week included BLUSTERY, DRIZZLE, CHILLY, CLOUDY and WEATHER. The students also listened to 4 poems related to weather. They did some comparing of information across weather related texts. Students used their white boards and dry erase markers to work on a group substitution activity. Workstations included leveled reader fluency reading, discussion on sequencing main events, draw and write about what you can do outside today, write and draw about you favorite weather activity, reading to a buddy and elbow chatting about what the words and pictures tell us about, walking your words, graphing your favorite season and writing about why it is your favorite season--what can you do, small group sentence building with punctuation and recording sentences made and playing CVC "Pot of Gold Game" and "Three Little Pigs" short vowel game.
Math: The students began work in their March Math Calendar. Among their daily activities contained in the calendar book are number patterns, tally marks, ten frames, number sequence-before and after, addition and subtraction sentences, number bonds, time by the hour and temperature, graphing daily weather and number hunt. The students also worked on the geometric solids-cylinder and cube. They also began an introduction to the difference between 2D and 3D shapes. In math workstations this week students worked on Suess Subtraction, Don't Spill the Beans--addition families, exploring geometric solids, exploring building 3D shapes and writing 2-3 digit numbers.
Writing: The students continue to work on lowercase letter formation and their writing prompts.
This week the students worked on a project on writing on a topic--What do you do in the spring?
Science: The students made their final comments on the subject of water, We traced the path of water and the stages it goes through before it comes into our homes via the faucet. The students observed that more water is gone (evaporated) from the container of water that once was filled to the top. We will begin experiments on Shadows next week. Keep your fingers crossed for sunny weather. Many of our experiments are done outside.
Technology: In reading, students worked individually and with partners on the app Magic Reading 2 building short e words, beginning and ending blends and digraphs, iTalk for recording fluency when reading aloud and Rocket Speller for sound spelling. In the Math, students worked whole group on the app Top It Math Addition, Brainy Bugs for number sequencing and visual integration. Other whole group activities include Number Rack (subitizing,) Oz Phonics (sentence order) and Kids Math (addition.)
Literature: "The Cat in the Hat," "The Cat in the Hat Comes Back," "Green Eggs and Ham," "Fox in Socks," "Oh the Things you Can Think," "A Walk in the Rain with a Brain," "When Will It Be Spring," "Weather," "Look at the Weather," "The Cloud Book," "Little Cloud."
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