**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."
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