**Our Space Station Project week is 4/27-5/1! Please have your child wear comfortable clothing and clothing that you don't mind getting a little paint on.
**Spring Picture order and money is due on Monday, April 27th.
**Our field trip to the ADLER PLANETARIUM was awesome! The students saw the movie, "One World, One Sky." They visited exhibits about the planets space travel, the moon and saw some cool experiments on air pressure, making craters and made rockets that they flew through an air tunnel. They thoroughly enjoyed the interactive Planet Explorers exhibit wearing jet packs, blasting off, walking in space, seeing a space toilet, sleeping in a space bed, building using pvc pipes, crawling under space tunnels, driving a lunar rover and seeing space rocks. We braved a windy and chilly day and had a quick picnic outside by the lake. The students reflected on their experiences in writing for homework. A BIG THANKS to J. Blecha, C. Wojcik, K. Meier, D. Frank for their help!
**The Academic Fair was very informative! A special SHOUT OUT to Jeremy for his project entitled, "What are air plants?" and Ailsa for her project entitled, "Why do roses have thorns?" Both students are to be commended for their work and effort. Both students spoke about their projects in the evening. It was a very chilly and blustery day for our afternoon Egg Drop Contest. Lots of unique construction! Thanks to participants Ethan, Evelyn, Tate, Ailsa, Jeremy and Evan!
**The Irving Book Fair was a success! Thanks to all who purchased books for our classroom! We will read them all next week!
**Next week is the final week for Student Council's Food Drive. Non perishable foods, baby food, toiletries, diapers and cash will be accepted. Let's help the Oak Park Food Pantry!
**The TRAVELING POETS PROJECT is underway under the direction of Ms. Noonan. Poetry Alert!! Poetry Alert!! Help your child practice their poem for the Traveling Poets Project. Each student chose their poem and will learn it by memory. Please check your child's homework folder for their poem. The event is the weeks of May 11th and May 18th.
**Route to Reading has concluded for this school year. Your child will continue to work on mastery of skills in our classroom.
**Family Trivia Night is Wednesday, April 29th from 6:30-8:00 pm. The money raised will benefit the 5th grade. See the Irving website for details.
**Check out the Cherry Tree planted by the Irving Garden Committee for Arbor Day. It is right across from the planting beds.
**District 97's Annual Ethnic Festival is Saturday, May 2nd with the parade beginning at 9:30 am. See the Irving website for details.
**Run with me! Join the District 97's Fun Run on Saturday, May 9th at 8:00 am. at Lindberg Park celebrating Fitness Week. The sign up form is in your child's homework folder.
This week:
it was all about our field trip, Earth Day, Arbor Day and continued study of the moon, planets and space exploration. The student gathered ideas about space station design from their field trip. Back in the classroom, we used the internet to find pictures of probes, satellites and space stations. Station day activities for this week included pattern block rockets, moonscapes, name rockets and addition rainbows.
Reading/Language Arts: The students have nearly completed Unit 8 Plants in our Treasures Reading series. We will tie up any loose ends at the beginning of next week. This week, the students read and talked about what grows in a garden. They thought aloud and accessed prior knowledge about their back yard gardens. They listened to the trade book, "The Sunflower House." They paid special attention to noting the beginning, middle and end of the story. They also noted any unknown words and used context and pictures to help understand their meaning. They responded to the literature by making connections about plant parts, growth of a flower and size of the sunflower. Target words here, little, said and was were reviewed. Students continued to review target sounds short u, ck and Kk. The students again discussed what an adjective was and created a group list of words that could describe a sunflower. The students worked in small groups using the retelling cards to retell the story in their own words. Robust Vocabulary this week included ARRANGE, TEND, BASIC, SENSES, GARDEN. Workstations this week included leveled readers discussion and fluency checks, elbow chats about main idea and how to figure out word meaning, writing 2-3 sentences about a person who works with plants, sentence mix up activity, creating a diagram of a flower plant, writing about what plants need to grow, reading riddles, elbow chatting about characters, setting and main idea, word family sheet, and writing about seeds and plants sentence starter.
Math: Students reviewed terms and parts of 2D and 3D shapes and continued work on story problems and sums from 1-10. They had a chance to work on games that enhanced geometry, addition and subtraction, counting to 100, numbers that come before and after, decomposing teen numbers and subitizing strategies.
Writing: Students are working on their Shadow paragraphs and did a special writing project on Earth Day wishes. They continue to work on sentence structure and forming upper and lowercase letters.
Science: We continue to talk about the moon phases and the fact that we are really seeing different amounts of light being reflected on the moon. How much light we see depends on the positions of the Earth, sun and moon. Students worked on creating a moonscape with packing peanuts used to form the moons surface showing the craters and seas.
Technology: No new apps were used this week. The students will begin to learn about the app iMovie as we begin to record our space station projects from start to finish.
Literature: "Phases of the Moon," "Don't Be a Litterbug," "What is Happening to the Rain Forest?" "What is Global Warming?" "The Moon," "Magic School Bus Gets Recycled," "Grow, Tree, Grow," "Let's Be Water Wise," "Planets," "space Exploration," "Nino Wrestles the World," "If You Decide to Go to the Moon," "Mix It Up," "Watching the Moon."
Sunday, April 26, 2015
Sunday, April 19, 2015
UPDATES for 4/13-4/17 2015
**Our FIELD TRIP to ADLER PLANETARIUM is MONDAY, APRIL 20th. Please send a BAG LUNCH (nut free) and dress for the weather! We would love to picnic by the lake--weather permitting. Keep your fingers crossed!! It will definitely not be as warm as the weekend. The students will be seeing the IMAX movie, "One World, One Sky," exhibits Our Solar System, Shoot the Moon and Planet Explorers--an interactive exhibit. It is going to be a great time! Thanks to our volunteers K. Meier, J. Blecha, D. Frank, C. Wojcik and Navid's mom for their time.
**The Opera for the Young's presentation of "Beauty and the Beast" was terrific! Great singing, costumes and staging! The student parts were exceptional!!
**The Spelling Bee was one for the books!! Our class reps Juancarlos and Jeremy went thru several rounds before stepping down. Great poise and control. A big SHOUT OUT to Jeremy!! He was the last kindergarten student standing! Another SHOUT OUT to Evelyn, our class alternate, who was super ready to step in at a moments notice!
**The Academic Fair/Egg Drop Contest is Wednesday, April 22nd. Please make sure you have registered online or with paper form. I can get you a paper form. The online information is on the Irving Website. There is still time left to create a vehicle or do a project! Students with projects can bring them for set up in the gym before school begins. Our class will visit the Fair in the morning. The projects will be displayed during the day. Students with projects will return in the evening from 6:30-7:30 pm when families and the community will view and hear about the projects. Students can bring in their Egg Drop Vehicle on Wednesday morning. The contest will begin at 12:45 pm on the black top. Students will drop their vehicle from the third floor window. Please join us if you can. It should be very exciting! I know there are students building vehicles and a least 2 students with projects. Way to represent!!'
**Our class was able to donate $20.00 to the All for Books Coin Challenge! Thanks so much for your donations.
**The Irving Book Fair will take place this week (4/20-4/23.) A flyer with information is in your child's homework folder.
**Route to Reading Rotation 7 will conclude on Wednesday, April 22nd. At that time you will receive notification on your child's skill mastery.
**Help Mr. Sak!!! He needs family teams for Irving's Family Trivia Night which will be held on Wednesday, April 29th from 6:30-8:00 pm at Irving. The money raised will benefit the 5th grade. See the Irving website for sign up and details.
**Student Council's Food Drive continues until April 28th. We are already on our second box of donated food. Coins/Dollars will also be accepted. Please send non perishable food, baby food, toiletries, diapers etc. Let's help the Oak Park Food Pantry!!
**Upcoming event--TRAVELING POETS, under the direction of Ms. Noonan. Watch for information about this really cool school wide event. This event is the weeks of May 11th and 18th. The students will be choosing their poem this week. Stay tuned!
**LAST CALL for GIANT BOXES and OTHER COOL STUFF!! Our project week in April 27th-May 1st. Next week, we will form our working groups, select a project manager and sketch a "prototype" drawing of what our space station might look like.
**In Friendship Club this week, Ms. Bell Bey continued her lesson on SMART GUESSES on social situations.
**In Mr. Packer Problem Solving this week, Mr Packer did a cool lesson on using learning clues to solve a mystery. How do you go about figuring out what a good clue is? We listen, we think and we look or observe. We are learning detectives!!
This week:
It was all about telling time with our sundials, learning about the moon and getting ready for our field trip. The students also welcomed a baby red fox exhibit case and information about this local area mammal. "He" will be visiting our classroom and observing us as we observe him for the next 2 weeks. Also, as part of our Unit on Plants, we also have "Who lives in the oak tree?-- puppet theater with a squirrel, cottonwood beetle and pileated woodpecker. Thanks to birdwatcher, Tate for educating us on the pileated woodpecker! Station Day activities this week included small group moon surface experiment to create craters and "seas", moonscape creations, making jet packs for future space travel, and sequencing the planets in order using our space song.
Reading/Language Arts: The students continue to work on Unit 8 Plants in our Treasures Reading series. They talked and read about seeds and the plants that grow from them. They accessed prior knowledge from our earlier fall unit on apples. The students revisited our apple seed tray. The students also discussed seeds--blowing dandelion seeds everywhere, helping their parents plant seeds in their backyard gardens and the types of seeds they know about. The students listened to the Big Book story, "Seed Secrets." The story contained ways that seeds travel. The students observed pictures and tracked the print as I read the story. They were able to verbally ask and answer questions about the text. The students also examined an unknown word--sprout. How do you know what it means? Where can you look to get help with the meaning. Can the illustrations help you? Can other words in the sentence help you? Our target words for this week are here and was. The students worked with partners to build sentences using all their sight words. Our target sound continues to be short u. We continue to revisit adjectives and how to use them to enhance the way we speak and write. The students created a recall list about how seeds travel. In additional vocabulary development, students reviewed positional words. The students worked with their white boards on exercises involving adding, deleting and substituting sounds. We revisited consonant blends and digraphs at the beginning and ending of words. The students read aloud their decodable story, "The Bud is Up." They made predictions about story content and discussed what the perhaps unknown word bud might mean. They reread their story to a partner to practice fluency. Our Robust Vocabulary for this week included GRADUALLY, SEEDS, OBSERVE. Workstations this week included leveled reader, story elements and main idea elbow chats, word building--defining an unknown word from their story-using illustrations and other words, walk your words--sight word review, writing a complete sentence using the word--little, word search for short u words, beginning sound substitution sentence building with short u words, story elements butterfly, short vowel review, readers response to a story, recording their reading via iTalk.
Math: The students continue to work on counting and writing numbers beyond 100, counting on from a random number and counting by 2's, 5's and 10's beyond 100. Students continue to work on 2D and 3D shape recognition and actual building of shapes. Our "Structure Museum" looks very awesome! In Mr. Degman's math session this week, students worked on creating 2D shapes and then recorded the name name of the shapes and how many sides it had using an app called Educeations. They loved hearing their own voice and all of their recordings were projected on the screen. The story problem math journals continue to motivate the students to present their work to one another. Students are reading their own story problem, showing it on a ten frame, illustrating it and writing their number sentence. Each day a lucky student is chosen to be the teacher and review their story problem and process with the class.
Writing: The students are beginning to work on their shadow pose paragraphs. Their draft is their first writing that can be corrected, changed or reworked. Stay tuned!'
Science: Yes----we had sun this week! In our last sun experiment we read information about the first clocks--using the position of the sun to tell the time of day. We did an internet search of sundials. There were many different types. The students worked with their table mates to construct a sundial using a piece of paper, a dowel and clay to secure the dowel. They wrote the numbers on their paper like clock numbers. Students brought their sundials outside beginning at 8:30 am. They observed the shadow cast by the dowel was very close to pointing to the 9. Back in class, they made a diagram of the sundial and made a arrow to the time the shadow cast. They also sketched a picture of something they would be doing at that time. The students checked their sundials again at noon and before doing home. They recorded where the dowel shadow was and made a sketch of something they were doing at that time. Many students commented that the shadows change as the sun's position in the sky changes. Yes!!!! Students also pondered the question--What is the moon? They compared elements of the daytime and night time sky. They discovered that unlike the sun, the moon can be seen in both the day and night sky. The students discussed the terms sunrise and sunset and their true meaning. In learning about the moon, we used internet resources to view the moon's surface. In an experiment, the students recreated the moon's surface using flour and cocoa powder as the moons surface and then dropped magnetic marbles on it to create the craters (holes) and "seas" (flat places.) Very cool! They also made moonscapes by gluing packing peanuts onto a circular paper and then covering it with aluminum foil so all the craters and seas showed. The students took a look at the different shapes the moon appears to make at night in the course of a month. It appears the "phases" repeat themselves like a pattern each month. The students reflected in their journal their thoughts and sketches. We talked about our upcoming field trip and what the students would be seeing and read about the planets, space travel and space vehicles.
Technology: The students saw some cool videos about the sun, moon and solar system via BrainPop Jr. We also used the an app about locating constellations. The students continued to be fascinated by star pictures in the sky! In reading whole/small and individual work students used the apps OzPhonics, Montessori Crossword for skill building on cvc, ccvc, cvcc and short u and ck words. The app Magnetic ABC's was used to work on sentence writing. In Math, Mr. Degman used the app Educreations to create and record student responses on 2D shapes. Students continued to use the apps Geometry, Build a Pic and Butterfly Math to enhance understanding of 2D and 3D shapes and addition and subtraction problems. Students are using iTalk to record their reading and play back for fluency practice.
Literature: "The Moon Book," "Finding the Moon," "Magic School Bus--Walks on the Moon," "Phases of the Moon," "Moon," "My Place in Space," Smart Words Series--Stars, Space Rocks, Planets, Space Exploration."
**The Opera for the Young's presentation of "Beauty and the Beast" was terrific! Great singing, costumes and staging! The student parts were exceptional!!
**The Spelling Bee was one for the books!! Our class reps Juancarlos and Jeremy went thru several rounds before stepping down. Great poise and control. A big SHOUT OUT to Jeremy!! He was the last kindergarten student standing! Another SHOUT OUT to Evelyn, our class alternate, who was super ready to step in at a moments notice!
**The Academic Fair/Egg Drop Contest is Wednesday, April 22nd. Please make sure you have registered online or with paper form. I can get you a paper form. The online information is on the Irving Website. There is still time left to create a vehicle or do a project! Students with projects can bring them for set up in the gym before school begins. Our class will visit the Fair in the morning. The projects will be displayed during the day. Students with projects will return in the evening from 6:30-7:30 pm when families and the community will view and hear about the projects. Students can bring in their Egg Drop Vehicle on Wednesday morning. The contest will begin at 12:45 pm on the black top. Students will drop their vehicle from the third floor window. Please join us if you can. It should be very exciting! I know there are students building vehicles and a least 2 students with projects. Way to represent!!'
**Our class was able to donate $20.00 to the All for Books Coin Challenge! Thanks so much for your donations.
**The Irving Book Fair will take place this week (4/20-4/23.) A flyer with information is in your child's homework folder.
**Route to Reading Rotation 7 will conclude on Wednesday, April 22nd. At that time you will receive notification on your child's skill mastery.
**Help Mr. Sak!!! He needs family teams for Irving's Family Trivia Night which will be held on Wednesday, April 29th from 6:30-8:00 pm at Irving. The money raised will benefit the 5th grade. See the Irving website for sign up and details.
**Student Council's Food Drive continues until April 28th. We are already on our second box of donated food. Coins/Dollars will also be accepted. Please send non perishable food, baby food, toiletries, diapers etc. Let's help the Oak Park Food Pantry!!
**Upcoming event--TRAVELING POETS, under the direction of Ms. Noonan. Watch for information about this really cool school wide event. This event is the weeks of May 11th and 18th. The students will be choosing their poem this week. Stay tuned!
**LAST CALL for GIANT BOXES and OTHER COOL STUFF!! Our project week in April 27th-May 1st. Next week, we will form our working groups, select a project manager and sketch a "prototype" drawing of what our space station might look like.
**In Friendship Club this week, Ms. Bell Bey continued her lesson on SMART GUESSES on social situations.
**In Mr. Packer Problem Solving this week, Mr Packer did a cool lesson on using learning clues to solve a mystery. How do you go about figuring out what a good clue is? We listen, we think and we look or observe. We are learning detectives!!
This week:
It was all about telling time with our sundials, learning about the moon and getting ready for our field trip. The students also welcomed a baby red fox exhibit case and information about this local area mammal. "He" will be visiting our classroom and observing us as we observe him for the next 2 weeks. Also, as part of our Unit on Plants, we also have "Who lives in the oak tree?-- puppet theater with a squirrel, cottonwood beetle and pileated woodpecker. Thanks to birdwatcher, Tate for educating us on the pileated woodpecker! Station Day activities this week included small group moon surface experiment to create craters and "seas", moonscape creations, making jet packs for future space travel, and sequencing the planets in order using our space song.
Reading/Language Arts: The students continue to work on Unit 8 Plants in our Treasures Reading series. They talked and read about seeds and the plants that grow from them. They accessed prior knowledge from our earlier fall unit on apples. The students revisited our apple seed tray. The students also discussed seeds--blowing dandelion seeds everywhere, helping their parents plant seeds in their backyard gardens and the types of seeds they know about. The students listened to the Big Book story, "Seed Secrets." The story contained ways that seeds travel. The students observed pictures and tracked the print as I read the story. They were able to verbally ask and answer questions about the text. The students also examined an unknown word--sprout. How do you know what it means? Where can you look to get help with the meaning. Can the illustrations help you? Can other words in the sentence help you? Our target words for this week are here and was. The students worked with partners to build sentences using all their sight words. Our target sound continues to be short u. We continue to revisit adjectives and how to use them to enhance the way we speak and write. The students created a recall list about how seeds travel. In additional vocabulary development, students reviewed positional words. The students worked with their white boards on exercises involving adding, deleting and substituting sounds. We revisited consonant blends and digraphs at the beginning and ending of words. The students read aloud their decodable story, "The Bud is Up." They made predictions about story content and discussed what the perhaps unknown word bud might mean. They reread their story to a partner to practice fluency. Our Robust Vocabulary for this week included GRADUALLY, SEEDS, OBSERVE. Workstations this week included leveled reader, story elements and main idea elbow chats, word building--defining an unknown word from their story-using illustrations and other words, walk your words--sight word review, writing a complete sentence using the word--little, word search for short u words, beginning sound substitution sentence building with short u words, story elements butterfly, short vowel review, readers response to a story, recording their reading via iTalk.
Math: The students continue to work on counting and writing numbers beyond 100, counting on from a random number and counting by 2's, 5's and 10's beyond 100. Students continue to work on 2D and 3D shape recognition and actual building of shapes. Our "Structure Museum" looks very awesome! In Mr. Degman's math session this week, students worked on creating 2D shapes and then recorded the name name of the shapes and how many sides it had using an app called Educeations. They loved hearing their own voice and all of their recordings were projected on the screen. The story problem math journals continue to motivate the students to present their work to one another. Students are reading their own story problem, showing it on a ten frame, illustrating it and writing their number sentence. Each day a lucky student is chosen to be the teacher and review their story problem and process with the class.
Writing: The students are beginning to work on their shadow pose paragraphs. Their draft is their first writing that can be corrected, changed or reworked. Stay tuned!'
Science: Yes----we had sun this week! In our last sun experiment we read information about the first clocks--using the position of the sun to tell the time of day. We did an internet search of sundials. There were many different types. The students worked with their table mates to construct a sundial using a piece of paper, a dowel and clay to secure the dowel. They wrote the numbers on their paper like clock numbers. Students brought their sundials outside beginning at 8:30 am. They observed the shadow cast by the dowel was very close to pointing to the 9. Back in class, they made a diagram of the sundial and made a arrow to the time the shadow cast. They also sketched a picture of something they would be doing at that time. The students checked their sundials again at noon and before doing home. They recorded where the dowel shadow was and made a sketch of something they were doing at that time. Many students commented that the shadows change as the sun's position in the sky changes. Yes!!!! Students also pondered the question--What is the moon? They compared elements of the daytime and night time sky. They discovered that unlike the sun, the moon can be seen in both the day and night sky. The students discussed the terms sunrise and sunset and their true meaning. In learning about the moon, we used internet resources to view the moon's surface. In an experiment, the students recreated the moon's surface using flour and cocoa powder as the moons surface and then dropped magnetic marbles on it to create the craters (holes) and "seas" (flat places.) Very cool! They also made moonscapes by gluing packing peanuts onto a circular paper and then covering it with aluminum foil so all the craters and seas showed. The students took a look at the different shapes the moon appears to make at night in the course of a month. It appears the "phases" repeat themselves like a pattern each month. The students reflected in their journal their thoughts and sketches. We talked about our upcoming field trip and what the students would be seeing and read about the planets, space travel and space vehicles.
Technology: The students saw some cool videos about the sun, moon and solar system via BrainPop Jr. We also used the an app about locating constellations. The students continued to be fascinated by star pictures in the sky! In reading whole/small and individual work students used the apps OzPhonics, Montessori Crossword for skill building on cvc, ccvc, cvcc and short u and ck words. The app Magnetic ABC's was used to work on sentence writing. In Math, Mr. Degman used the app Educreations to create and record student responses on 2D shapes. Students continued to use the apps Geometry, Build a Pic and Butterfly Math to enhance understanding of 2D and 3D shapes and addition and subtraction problems. Students are using iTalk to record their reading and play back for fluency practice.
Literature: "The Moon Book," "Finding the Moon," "Magic School Bus--Walks on the Moon," "Phases of the Moon," "Moon," "My Place in Space," Smart Words Series--Stars, Space Rocks, Planets, Space Exploration."
Sunday, April 12, 2015
UPDATES for 4/6-4/10 2015
**The students returned from spring break and shared their many adventures. Whether they remained in the area or traveled to another state or country, they had much to tell. We had travel journals shared from the Chicago area, Disney, Cocoa Beach, Boston, Mexico, Lake Tahoe, Belleville, New Buffalo and Miami to name a few. The students loved locating places on our map. '
**Keep sending in BOXES of all kinds including GIANT ONES and other cool things for our space station projects. Empty toilet paper and paper towels are needed too. The design, construction and detailing will take place the week of April 27th-30th. We will need some hot glue volunteers during our detailing phase. Stay tuned!
**OPERA for the YOUNG is MONDAY, APRIL 13th at 1:30 pm in the gym. The students will be participating in an interactive production of "Beauty and the Beast."
**Our Spelling Bee reps, Jeremy and Juancarlos and our alternate, Evelyn are excited to participate in the K-2 Spelling which will be held THURSDAY, APRIL 16th (note the day change) beginning at 11:45 am. in the Irving Auditorium. We will go and cheer them on! Feel free to come and join us in the auditorium.
**Sign up for the ACADEMIC FAIR and EGG DROP CONTEST continues. Ms. Creehan came to our class to show the students examples of past projects and to speak about the egg drop vehicle creation. You can now sign up online on the Irving School website. You can sign up for one or both. I would love to see our class represented in both activities. Please let me know if I can help in any way. Both the ACADEMIC FAIR and EGG DROP CONTEST are WEDNESDAY, APRIL 22nd. The Egg Drop will take place outside on the blacktop beginning at 12:45 pm. Stop by if you have the time! The Academic Fair will be up in the gym all day. Students with projects will go up to present to their class at an arranged time and then will also present again from 6:30-7:30 pm. when it is open to the public.
**Please keep on sending in permission slips and money for or field trip to the ADLER PLANETARIUM. Currently we only have 2 parent volunteers. Thanks to K. Meier and J. Blecha for volunteering their time. I would love to have 2 more volunteers so that we can have a small student to volunteer ratio. Parents will carpool to the planetarium. Students and teachers will ride the bus. I will give you money for parking. Please email me if interested. ALL students and volunteers need to bring a BAG LUNCH and dress for the weather. We are hoping to picnic outside! Keep your fingers crossed. We will be seeing an IMAX movie called "One World, One Sky at 10:15 am. From there the groups will see Our Solar System, Shoot for the Moon and Planet Explorers exhibit rooms. Planet Explorers is an interactive exhibit that allows only 2 classrooms at a time for a 30 minute period of exploration. It is going to be a great time!
**Student Council's school wide food drive is in full swing! Our reps, Tate and Clara have really motivated the class to bring in food and money. The food drive will continue thru the end of the month. Our class has reached 174 points so far. AWESOME! The OPRF Food Pantry's goal is 100,000 points. Every little bit helps! The Irving website has a list of non perishable food and other items. Our class is very interested in donating diapers and baby food!
**It's another COIN CHALLENGE!!! It will take place April 13-16th. Bring in loose change to our class next week. This coin challenge is sponsored by All for Books and our own teacher librarian, Ms. Noonan. Please read the information sheet in your child's homework folder.
**Please read the information about PACK WEEK located in your child's homework folder. Monday is pack PURPLE in your lunch. How about some grapes or cabbage?? The school lunches will reflect each color too. Tuesday, pack WHITE, Wednesday, pack RED, Thursday, pack GREEN and Friday, pack ORANGE. Let's eat the rainbow!!!
**A group of us worked on cleaning up the Irving Garden beds to prepare them for planting. Evan and his family worked super hard to help clear weeds and turn the soil. You ROCK, Evan!
**In Friendship Club this week, Ms. Bell Bey did a follow up lesson on being a social detective and making SMART GUESSES on social situations by using our brain, eyes and ears!
** In Mr. Packer Problem Solving this week, Mr. Packer used the graphic novel, "The Mystery of the Missing Monster Card," to teach being a "learning detective."
'This week:
It was all about stars, constellations and our tubers sprouting!! The students loved hearing the stories about how some constellations got their names. We have 4 different kinds of potatoes rooting including a sweet potato! (Thanks,Evan!) The weather did not cooperate so we will be finishing our shadow and sun experiments hopefully next week. All of our shadow pose pictures are ready for our writing project on beginning paragraphing. Station day activities this week included creating 3 D structures using marshmallows and toothpicks, creating and naming our own constellation, space math addition-solve/color by code. Next week--Planets and beginning experiments about the moon!
Reading/Language Arts: The students began Unit 8-Plants in our Treasures Reading series. They began by building background knowledge about how a tree grows. The students talked about the Oak Park and how many trees they see daily. We used our Tree Finder Book to look at Oak and other types of trees in our area. Students recognized leaves of the Oak, Elm, Ginko and Ash trees. The students understood that a tree is a plant that begins with an seed and takes many tears to grow. Students listened to the Big Book story, "Oak Trees." They noted that the book was nonfiction or informational. The students responded to the literature expressing that they had seen an acorn (the seed) and some students collected them. The sight words for this week are little and said. Students noted that the word said does not look like how it sounds. Our target sounds are short u and ck. We took a look at the use of quotation marks to tell us who is doing the talking. Students retold the Big Book story is their own words to a partner thinking about the sequence or order. Students took turns verbally asking a question to their partner about the story and having their partner answer it. They reviewed the question words WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN, WHY, HOW. We reviewed all sight words thus far. Student whole group worked on blending and segmenting 4-5 phoneme words and sentence order. Students practiced reading aloud the story, "A Little Acorn." They worked on fluency with support from their partner. Robust Vocabulary this week included GROW, CONCEITED, EQUAL, CHARMING. Workstations this week were handled a bit different. We divided the workstation participants as girl power, boy power and all power as groups. Workstations activities included leveled readers reading and chatting about main idea, roll, say and color--ccvc and cvcc words, writing an opinion piece on why we need trees, word family activities-short u, writing an information piece on what you know about oak trees, creating a save the trees poster and read it-add to it-what could happen next.
Math: The students continued work on counting beyond 100, by tens, fives and ones. We continue to work on 2D and 3D shapes--cube, cone, sphere, pyramid, rectangular prism. We also continue to work on pertinent vocabulary associated with geometric solids--flat, solid, faces, edges, corners/vertices. This week began the addition of Mr. Degman to one of our weekly math workshops. He will continue to come in for 30 minutes once a week to work on technology and math concepts. This week, he worked with the students with an app called Chatterpix. The students each chose found a 3D shape and took a picture of it. They then made it "talk" telling us what the shape was, how many faces/flat sides and corners/vertices it had. Super fun! We also used an app called Build and Play that presented a 3D shape picture, then scrambled it and the students had to put it back together. When completed, the students could move it and make it spin. Partners also took turns using the app Geometry Geoboard--creating 2 and 3D shapes and pictures to share. We are having fun in 3D land! The students also continue to work in their math journals. This week, they read their own story problem, showed it a ten frame, illustrated it and wrote their number sentence. I then chose someones page to project and they became the teacher going over the story and equation.
Writing: The students continue to work on refining their upper and lowercase letters. The lowercase letters l, k, y were formally introduced. The students practiced on their mini boards and applied their knowledge in their orange practice books. We began the discussion about what a paragraph is---multiple sentences about one topic that flow together and have an introduction, middle and ending. The students will begin work on their draft next week.
Science: The students continued their study about the sun, day and night, why we have seasons and stars and constellations. Hopefully, we will be able to complete some experiments outside next week including--shadows changing positions throughout the day, creating a sun dial for telling time.
Technology: Whole group centered apps included Oz Phonics and Read on Sight for skill building in sentence word order, vocabulary building, consonant blends and word scramble. Small group work centered around the apps Magnetic ABC for creating sentences using sight words, Montessori Crossword for work on short u and ck words and CVC Sorts 2 for building CVC words. In math whole group and small group work included working with a partner, the apps ChatterPix, Build and Play, Geometry Board and Shapes were used. The students continue to weather watch using our latest app find,--Intellicast HD--kind of like a google earth of weather--very cool! We are using BrainPop Jr. and the NASA app during science.
Literature: "Sing to the Sun,"(poetry) "Once Upon a Starry Night," "The Book of Stars," "What Makes Day and Night," "Zoo in the Sky," "Magic School Sees Stars," "How Night Came to Be," "The Night Sky," "Do Stars Have Points and other questions," "Stories of the Stars," "Sun, Moon and Stars," "Take Me Out to the Ball Game."
**Keep sending in BOXES of all kinds including GIANT ONES and other cool things for our space station projects. Empty toilet paper and paper towels are needed too. The design, construction and detailing will take place the week of April 27th-30th. We will need some hot glue volunteers during our detailing phase. Stay tuned!
**OPERA for the YOUNG is MONDAY, APRIL 13th at 1:30 pm in the gym. The students will be participating in an interactive production of "Beauty and the Beast."
**Our Spelling Bee reps, Jeremy and Juancarlos and our alternate, Evelyn are excited to participate in the K-2 Spelling which will be held THURSDAY, APRIL 16th (note the day change) beginning at 11:45 am. in the Irving Auditorium. We will go and cheer them on! Feel free to come and join us in the auditorium.
**Sign up for the ACADEMIC FAIR and EGG DROP CONTEST continues. Ms. Creehan came to our class to show the students examples of past projects and to speak about the egg drop vehicle creation. You can now sign up online on the Irving School website. You can sign up for one or both. I would love to see our class represented in both activities. Please let me know if I can help in any way. Both the ACADEMIC FAIR and EGG DROP CONTEST are WEDNESDAY, APRIL 22nd. The Egg Drop will take place outside on the blacktop beginning at 12:45 pm. Stop by if you have the time! The Academic Fair will be up in the gym all day. Students with projects will go up to present to their class at an arranged time and then will also present again from 6:30-7:30 pm. when it is open to the public.
**Please keep on sending in permission slips and money for or field trip to the ADLER PLANETARIUM. Currently we only have 2 parent volunteers. Thanks to K. Meier and J. Blecha for volunteering their time. I would love to have 2 more volunteers so that we can have a small student to volunteer ratio. Parents will carpool to the planetarium. Students and teachers will ride the bus. I will give you money for parking. Please email me if interested. ALL students and volunteers need to bring a BAG LUNCH and dress for the weather. We are hoping to picnic outside! Keep your fingers crossed. We will be seeing an IMAX movie called "One World, One Sky at 10:15 am. From there the groups will see Our Solar System, Shoot for the Moon and Planet Explorers exhibit rooms. Planet Explorers is an interactive exhibit that allows only 2 classrooms at a time for a 30 minute period of exploration. It is going to be a great time!
**Student Council's school wide food drive is in full swing! Our reps, Tate and Clara have really motivated the class to bring in food and money. The food drive will continue thru the end of the month. Our class has reached 174 points so far. AWESOME! The OPRF Food Pantry's goal is 100,000 points. Every little bit helps! The Irving website has a list of non perishable food and other items. Our class is very interested in donating diapers and baby food!
**It's another COIN CHALLENGE!!! It will take place April 13-16th. Bring in loose change to our class next week. This coin challenge is sponsored by All for Books and our own teacher librarian, Ms. Noonan. Please read the information sheet in your child's homework folder.
**Please read the information about PACK WEEK located in your child's homework folder. Monday is pack PURPLE in your lunch. How about some grapes or cabbage?? The school lunches will reflect each color too. Tuesday, pack WHITE, Wednesday, pack RED, Thursday, pack GREEN and Friday, pack ORANGE. Let's eat the rainbow!!!
**A group of us worked on cleaning up the Irving Garden beds to prepare them for planting. Evan and his family worked super hard to help clear weeds and turn the soil. You ROCK, Evan!
**In Friendship Club this week, Ms. Bell Bey did a follow up lesson on being a social detective and making SMART GUESSES on social situations by using our brain, eyes and ears!
** In Mr. Packer Problem Solving this week, Mr. Packer used the graphic novel, "The Mystery of the Missing Monster Card," to teach being a "learning detective."
'This week:
It was all about stars, constellations and our tubers sprouting!! The students loved hearing the stories about how some constellations got their names. We have 4 different kinds of potatoes rooting including a sweet potato! (Thanks,Evan!) The weather did not cooperate so we will be finishing our shadow and sun experiments hopefully next week. All of our shadow pose pictures are ready for our writing project on beginning paragraphing. Station day activities this week included creating 3 D structures using marshmallows and toothpicks, creating and naming our own constellation, space math addition-solve/color by code. Next week--Planets and beginning experiments about the moon!
Reading/Language Arts: The students began Unit 8-Plants in our Treasures Reading series. They began by building background knowledge about how a tree grows. The students talked about the Oak Park and how many trees they see daily. We used our Tree Finder Book to look at Oak and other types of trees in our area. Students recognized leaves of the Oak, Elm, Ginko and Ash trees. The students understood that a tree is a plant that begins with an seed and takes many tears to grow. Students listened to the Big Book story, "Oak Trees." They noted that the book was nonfiction or informational. The students responded to the literature expressing that they had seen an acorn (the seed) and some students collected them. The sight words for this week are little and said. Students noted that the word said does not look like how it sounds. Our target sounds are short u and ck. We took a look at the use of quotation marks to tell us who is doing the talking. Students retold the Big Book story is their own words to a partner thinking about the sequence or order. Students took turns verbally asking a question to their partner about the story and having their partner answer it. They reviewed the question words WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN, WHY, HOW. We reviewed all sight words thus far. Student whole group worked on blending and segmenting 4-5 phoneme words and sentence order. Students practiced reading aloud the story, "A Little Acorn." They worked on fluency with support from their partner. Robust Vocabulary this week included GROW, CONCEITED, EQUAL, CHARMING. Workstations this week were handled a bit different. We divided the workstation participants as girl power, boy power and all power as groups. Workstations activities included leveled readers reading and chatting about main idea, roll, say and color--ccvc and cvcc words, writing an opinion piece on why we need trees, word family activities-short u, writing an information piece on what you know about oak trees, creating a save the trees poster and read it-add to it-what could happen next.
Math: The students continued work on counting beyond 100, by tens, fives and ones. We continue to work on 2D and 3D shapes--cube, cone, sphere, pyramid, rectangular prism. We also continue to work on pertinent vocabulary associated with geometric solids--flat, solid, faces, edges, corners/vertices. This week began the addition of Mr. Degman to one of our weekly math workshops. He will continue to come in for 30 minutes once a week to work on technology and math concepts. This week, he worked with the students with an app called Chatterpix. The students each chose found a 3D shape and took a picture of it. They then made it "talk" telling us what the shape was, how many faces/flat sides and corners/vertices it had. Super fun! We also used an app called Build and Play that presented a 3D shape picture, then scrambled it and the students had to put it back together. When completed, the students could move it and make it spin. Partners also took turns using the app Geometry Geoboard--creating 2 and 3D shapes and pictures to share. We are having fun in 3D land! The students also continue to work in their math journals. This week, they read their own story problem, showed it a ten frame, illustrated it and wrote their number sentence. I then chose someones page to project and they became the teacher going over the story and equation.
Writing: The students continue to work on refining their upper and lowercase letters. The lowercase letters l, k, y were formally introduced. The students practiced on their mini boards and applied their knowledge in their orange practice books. We began the discussion about what a paragraph is---multiple sentences about one topic that flow together and have an introduction, middle and ending. The students will begin work on their draft next week.
Science: The students continued their study about the sun, day and night, why we have seasons and stars and constellations. Hopefully, we will be able to complete some experiments outside next week including--shadows changing positions throughout the day, creating a sun dial for telling time.
Technology: Whole group centered apps included Oz Phonics and Read on Sight for skill building in sentence word order, vocabulary building, consonant blends and word scramble. Small group work centered around the apps Magnetic ABC for creating sentences using sight words, Montessori Crossword for work on short u and ck words and CVC Sorts 2 for building CVC words. In math whole group and small group work included working with a partner, the apps ChatterPix, Build and Play, Geometry Board and Shapes were used. The students continue to weather watch using our latest app find,--Intellicast HD--kind of like a google earth of weather--very cool! We are using BrainPop Jr. and the NASA app during science.
Literature: "Sing to the Sun,"(poetry) "Once Upon a Starry Night," "The Book of Stars," "What Makes Day and Night," "Zoo in the Sky," "Magic School Sees Stars," "How Night Came to Be," "The Night Sky," "Do Stars Have Points and other questions," "Stories of the Stars," "Sun, Moon and Stars," "Take Me Out to the Ball Game."
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