**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."
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