Sunday, May 3, 2015

UPDATES for 4/27-5/1 2015

**What a week the students have had!!  They have been working on their space station projects.  Each group of students has 5 team members.  They then elected a project manager.  Our field trip fueled passion and ideas about construction.  The students used their social, behavioral, analytical, scientific and beginning engineering skills that they have embraced throughout the school year.  It was truly teamwork with a capital T!  The students used their prior knowledge and new ideas about space and space station design.  With their team, they discussed and sketched out drawings or "prototypes" of what they thought their projects might look like.  Prior to all of this, the class talked about the word "compromise" and "communication" and what they both mean.  The students discussed and created a set of rules to guide them throughout the process.  The role of the project manager was keep workers on task, gently remind them of their rules and stress the "compromise " piece!  More about their work in the Science section.
**We are counting  down the days the ABC way to the last day of school!!  The students are brainstorming ideas on a week by week basis.  Look for what they have planned for the week of 5/4-5/8 in their homework folder.  MONDAYA-Act like an astronaut and B-Blast off into space!  Wear any kind of space or robot shirt or dark clothes.  We have our jet packs, helmets and star gazers made.  We will blast off at 2:00 pm.  TUESDAY:  C-Costume Day (wear a costume or dress up clothes and we will D-have a Dance PartyWEDNESDAY E-Eat a Healthy Snack (They can bring their own/I will also have some on hand.)  THURSDAY:  F-First Grade Day (We will visit First Grade classes.) FRIDAY:  G-Game Day (bring your favorite board or card games to play with friends.)
**It it also National Sports and Fitness Week! (5/4-5/8)  Look for details in your child's homework folder for each days activities.
**TRAVELING POETS PROJECT is underway under the direction of Ms. Noonan.  Each child has their poem.  Practice!  Practice!  Practice!  It is part of their homework.  The students will travel to other classrooms to recite their poem the weeks of May 11th and May 18th.
**Did you catch the Ethnic Festival Parade??  Irving had a really cool float!  Hope some of you made it to the festivities.  Check out the photo.
**RUN with ME!  Join the District 97's Annual Fun Run on Saturday, May 9th at 8:00 am at beautiful Lindberg Park to help celebrate Fitness Week.  The sign up form is online and a paper copy was sent home.  I will be there along with Mr. Hancock, Mr. Wiza.  Jeremy has signed up!  Come on...join the fun!
**Irving Art Fest 2015 is Thursday, May 14th from 6-8 pm. all around our school.  Ms. Tague will display a piece of art from each student in the school.  Lots of activities going on including Spanish games, folk dancing, traveling poets, a performance by our chorus and the culmination:  THE POETRY SLAM, under the direction of Mr. Williams.  Information on the SLAM will be out next week.  I hope to have some "little slammers!"   
FUTURE FIELD TRIPS--Pizza and Play-End of the Year Family Picnic at Rehm Park on Wednesday, May 27th from 9:30-noon.  More info soon.  Everyone is invited!!  We are also planning a field trip to the Oak Park Conservatory around the third week of May.  Stay tuned for more info.  We will are also planning a field trip to see chicks in the yard of an Irving parent in June.  Stay tuned.   We will have an in house "field trip" on Worm Composting with Irving parent, Ms. Henry on Monday, May 26th!  Yikes!! There is a lot going on!!!!
This week:
It was all about space station construction and working with our team.  All of our afternoons this week were spent on our space stations.  The students continued to work on math, literacy and writing activities during their morning.  They worked on detailing their space stations during our station day time on Friday.  Thanks to Jeremy's mom who was on hot glue patrol!  The students did begin prep for our final science unit "From Seed to Plant" by completing their initial inquiry on "What is a seed?"
Reading/Language Arts:     The students finished Unit 8 Plants in our Treasures Reading series and that unit became the introduction to our final science unit.  The students accessed their prior knowledge about what plants need to grow.  They completed an initial inquiry on what a seed was.  We will begin our seed experiments next week.  The students used the rest of the week in small groupings and with partners working on leveled readers receiving feedback about fluency from their group and their partners, elbow chatting about characters, setting and main events, asking and answering questions about a given text both oral and written, using context clues to find out the meaning of an unknown word and working to compare and contrast the adventures and experiences  of characters in common texts.  The students used their iPads as skill builders with partners.  They worked on sight vocabulary and word building with the apps Sight Words, Spelling Magic 3, sound matching with the app ABC Magic and blending and segmenting sounds with the app Reading Magic 3.  Whole group work centered on the apps Oz Phonics for ccvc and cvcc words and Montessori Crossword for short u and ck word practice. 
Math:    The students enjoyed a game week with partners and small groups.  Games included "Don't Spill the Beans (sums to 5 and 10,) "Blast Off," (number comparison,) "Addition and Subtraction Pails," (adding and decomposing numbers to 10) and "What's My Shape?" (2D and 3D shape recognition.)  The students also used their iPads to enhance and build on learned skills.  The apps Geoboard, Number Find, Butterfly Math, Sam Phibian and Subitize Tree were some of their favorites. 
Writing:     The students completed their primary paragraph on the topic:  "My Shadow."  They wrote about their shadow pose picture.  They began with a discussion and questions and answers to prompt their writing and details to support their paragraph.  Students wrote their draft--proofed their work and used peer readers to help with editing and then wrote their final copy.   Temporary or phonetic spelling continues to be very acceptable.  The students letter formation and placement of letters on a given line continue to develop.   Great work!
Science:     Back to our space stations----Each team got 3 giant boxes.  They chatted about how to use them and them went to the middle of the room for other boxes in different sizes.  Per their specifications, I cut and taped boxes together.  Each team discussed the color palette--white, gray and black were the choices.  I observed lots of discussion and compromise on what color and where to use the color.  The students painted for 2 days.  No spills!!  Next cam the detailing.  Pictures, writing, stickers, drawing, knobs, computer parts, curtains and other cool things were used.  We will finish up detailing on Monday morning and blast off on Monday afternoon.  I have been filming the students during the entire process and hope to complete the editing after our blast off. 
Technology:     All the apps used this week were mentioned in the Reading and Math sections.
Literature:     "One Great Leap," "I Want To Be An Astronaut," "Living in Space," "Space Rocks," "If You Decide to Go to the Moon," "Mercury," "Venus," "Earth," "Mars," "Jupiter," "Saturn," "Uranus," "Neptune," "Pluto, the Dwarf Planet," "Space Vehicles," "Magic School Bus--Walk on the Moon."

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