**Thanks so much for your attendance at Parent/Teacher Conferences. It was great to chat with you and share your child's progress. The students are sure working very hard!
**WOW! Our Fun Run was awesome! We had a beautiful morning for our run. The Irving Eagle helped fire up our kinders! Thanks to those of you who came out to support us and to those of you who pledged your support. Our class raised $520.00!!!!
**Set up for LEXIA CORE 5 is in your child's homework folder. The students need practice typing in their username (case sensitive) and password. We will be using LEXIA on our iPads and up in the computer lab for keyboard and mouse experience. Home practice is recommended 2-3 times a week for 20 minutes. Email me with any questions. They are enjoying it!
**School photos or information on ordering school photos are also in your child's homework folder. Our class picture will be sent at a later date. A copy of the School Directory is also there.
**Come join ME, Ms. Noonan, Ms. Durham and Mr. Sak for an evening of "Slightly Spooky Family Stories" on Wednesday, October 28th from 6:30-7:30 pm in the Irving Auditorium. Come browse the Book Fair too and enjoy a sweet treat!
**The Irving Book Fair will be held Monday, October 26th-29th in the Irving Auditorium. Our class will visit the Book Fair on Monday to browse. The Book Fair will be open after school and in the evening.
**Halloween is almost here!! Please join us for fun and festivities on Friday, October 30th in the afternoon. The schedule is as follows: Our morning will be a regular morning of learning. If your child chooses to, they may bring their costume/make up/props in a bag to school. At 12:45 pm--students will change into their costumes. At 1:30 pm--the students will participate in an all school PARADE around the school grounds. Classroom celebrations will take place from 2:15-2:55 pm. In keeping with our non violent atmosphere, please do not send toy guns, swords, hooks, light sabers, poles, knives, brooms, ropes or handcuffs. There are no other restrictions on costumes. Students may bring a treat or trinket for the class if they wish. These items will go into a treat bag that will be sent home. Please--NO NUTS/NUT PRODUCTS or DAIRY. Parents and sibs are invited to attend both events.
**Fundraiser Alert!! Sign up for TRIVIA NIGHT This grown up night of fun and entertainment will be held on Thursday November 5th from 7-10 pm at The Wire in Berwyn.
** In Friendship Club this week, Ms. Bell Bey continued her lesson on being a Social Detective. She shared with the students the tools for being a Social Detective--Eyes--Ears--Brain. She presented several situations where the students used their tools to figure out the most appropriate behavior. Ms. Bell Bey also read examples from the book--"You Are a Social Detective," by Michelle Winner and Pamela Crooke. Lots of great discussion!!!
**In Mr. Degman Math/Tech this week, Mr. Degman began a project with small groups of students on the iPad using selected icons, recording their voices counting the icons and writing the number. We will post the project when all students have completed it. Super cute!
**Our kindergarten team has decided to move our Library trip to the spring. Too much going on in our curriculum right now.
**Future trip to Brookfield Zoo on Tuesday, November 23rd from 9-2pm. Look for information permission slips soon.
This week: It was all about the culmination of apple mania!! The students did a taste test of 6 different types of apples and they graphed their favorite one. In our class the preferred apple is Golden Delicious with Red Delicious coming in a close second. The students discussed the sequence of events surrounding the making of applesauce. The key words--recipe and ingredients. What do you need to do first? next? then? last? They observed and assisted in using the apple peeling machine. The skin came off like a ribbon!! Students also assisted in cutting the apple flesh into small pieces using our special plastic knives. Super great helpers! The students discussed the cooking process and talked about the function of a crock pot and slow cooking. Lots of language and conversation. Everything was put into the crock pot along with some apple cider for sweetness and the cooking began. The students observed the different cooking stages and saw the apples get mushy. The smell of cooking apples permeated our classroom. As a final step, I used the immersion blender to make it all very smooth. The students enjoyed the slightly warmed applesauce at the end of the day. In apple science, the students offered their prediction on whether the 3 apples would sink or float. They illustrated their predictions. We did the experiment and the students check their prediction against the result. Lots of guesses on why an apple would sink or float. Ask you child what their prediction was. How did they do? We began prep for our next mini unit on bats, spiders, skeletons and nocturnal animals.
Reading/Language Arts: The students took a break from our Treasures Reading series this week to continue work on the text, "Peter's Chair." Along with summative work on characters, setting and main events, the students worked on matching text to pictures and working on finding key details in the story. A key detail is something important that happens in the story that effects the character or characters. It can be something the character said or did. The final item the students worked on was sequencing events in the story. What happened first? next? then? last? The students are working verbally and with picture cards. Next week, we will try some writing. They are having lots of fun acting out scenes, working in small groups and elbow chatting with partners. A culmination to this formative/summative text study will be small group diorama making about 1 event in the story. More info on that next week. The students continued work on their sight words--walking them--writing them--and using them in sentence building. Workstations this week included partner reading of leveled readers with elbow chatting about story elements, word work, beginning sound blending activities, color by code sight words and color words and sequencing story event pictures.
Math: The students continue work on counting rote counting to 50 and counting quantities to 25. They are working on their calendar books and getting quite creative with patterning and number formation steadily improves. The students also worked on ways to make 5 using the reckenrek. We continue the introduction of geometric solids introducing cubes and cones. How are these shapes different from squares and triangles??? The students worked on a counting project with Mr. Degman in small groups. Math workstations this week included playing Apple Roll, Count and Color, counting apples and recording the number, sequencing number cards from least to greatest and back, using cones and cubes in basic building and reinforcing positional concepts.
Writing: The students continue to work on writing and illustrating in their writing journals. This weeks focus was on sentence structure. We are working on a sentence being a group of words that NAMES and TELLS. You have a subject and an action. Next week we will begin the set of uppercase letters called the Starting Corner Capitals.
Technology: The students are now working on the Lexia Core 5. It is a great skill building program centering on phonemic awareness and phonics skills. Students are able to work at their own rate and move up levels. The hardest part of the program is logging in. Each student has a username that contains 2 uppercase and 2 lowercase letters along with some numbers. The password is the same for everyone. We are using both iPad and computer/mouse. Practice entering the username. On the iPad, it is touching the arrow to make it black for uppercase and touching the number icon to access numbers. On a computer, it is touching the caps lock to make the dot turn green for uppercase and then touching it again to release it. The students did well and were also able to log out too! Information for set up are in your child's homework folder. Mr. Degman is using the app Educreations for his project with students on counting/recoding and writing. I will post them when the project is completed, The students are having fun and learning!! In whole group reading work, the apps Magnetic ABC HD for reinforcing and practice of sight words and Reading Magic 1 for blending and segmenting short vowel words. In math whole group this week the apps Subitize Tree was used for visual/number pattern and counting and Geoboard was used reinforce shape recognition and drawing.
Literature: "Ten Apples Up On Top," "The Bad Apple," "Skeleton Meets Mummy," "The Skeleton Cat," "The Apple Pie Tree," "It's Halloween," "Words are Not for Hurting," "Bigger than Alexander," "Leaves, Leaves, Leaves."
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