**It was a wonderful warm week to get out and explore the growing signs of autumn, have an extra recess or two and harvest the rest of our class garden bed. All hands were on deck for our leaf sort project. Each student added their leaves to our giant sort. Students also participated in labeling the different groups. Check out our photo!
**Keep those gloves and mittens coming!! Students are beginning to bring in their donations. Students Council reps Quinn and Jackson are spreading the word. Glove and mitten donations will go to the Oak Park and River Forest Infant Welfare Society.
**Our 50th Day of school is coming!!! It is Wednesday, November 11th. We will be half way to 100! The students will spend some time learning about the decade of the 50's. We will mark part of our day by dressing up like the 50's, having a sock hop at 9:45 and working on math workstations surrounding the number 50 in the afternoon. On Wednesday, November 11th, the students can dress up if they choose. It can be as simple as a white tee shirt and blue jeans--slick back hair for the boys and pony tails for the girls. If you have a poodle skirt--WOW!
**Our Dioramas turned out very cool and creative! Each of the 4 groups chose an event from the story, "Peter's Chair" to recreate. Thanks to all of you who sent in cool stuff. We spent some time brainstorming on how to be a contributing member of the group, share ideas and work cooperatively. No small fete!! There are still 2 groups who would like to add more details. I will photograph the finished products next week.
**In your child's homework folder is the permission slip and information for our FIELD TRIP to BROOKFIELD ZOO. The trip is Tuesday, November 24th from 9-2pm. The students and teachers will travel by school bus. Parent volunteers will carpool. I will provide money for the parking fee. All volunteers have free admission to the zoo. I have U. Allgood and M. Daniel volunteering so far. I would love to have 2-3 more to make the student groups smaller and easy to manage. I am not able to have younger siblings on this trip. Students need to have a BAG LUNCH with NAME on it. No glass or thermos bottles please. We will be outside the much of the day so students should be dressed for the weather. If the weather is too chilly for a picnic, there are indoor places for us to have our lunch. We will have a special tour of the the Great Bear Wilderness and we will meet at the Great Bear Wilderness Center for a special classroom experience.
**The Grade 3-5 Annual Turkey Trot will take place on Thursday, November 19th at 2:00 pm. We will be making posters and signs to cheer our Book Buddies on.
**Meet Children's author, Paul Orchoski ("The Ant and Pancake" and "The Mouse in My House) on Tuesday, December 1st from 6-7 pm. He will be talking to parents and students about coming up with story ideas, writing tips, understanding craft and structure and poetry inspiration. Information on sign up is in your child's homework folder.
**SAVE THE DATE!! Our WINTER CONCERT featuring Kindergarten and First Grade is Thursday, December 17th. Due to the size of our auditorium it will be performed twice--once at 8:15 am and again at 9:45 am in the Irving Auditorium. The student have already begun work on songs and movement activities!
**CALLING ALL COOKS!! As part of our Traditions and Celebrations cross curricular theme for the month of December----I am looking for volunteers to help with Room 110's Annual Gingerbread Cookie Baking, beginning at 1:15 until dismissal. No experience necessary! Roll out, create, decorate, bake and share. Email me if interested. I will provide the dough, sprinkles and aprons.......you provide the baking sheets, rolling pins, man/woman power and the love! I will provide the recipe for your viewing. It is a no egg/no dairy/no nut recipe.
**The end of Trimester 1 is November 24th. Report cards go out on Friday, December 11th.
**In Friendship Club this week, Ms. Bell Bey presented more ways to be a good Social Detective and do the expected when working on positive interactions. She told the students about the Behavior Hero, "Super Flex"---a flexible hero who adapts to situations using his social tools-ears for listening, brain for thinking, eyes for looking/observing and whole body. She also explained about "Rock Brain," who has trouble being flexible, only focuses on himself and does not use his social tools. Which do you want to be?? Remember--the Cool thing about Behavior---is you can CHANGE IT!!! Students watched a video on different behavioral scenes and discussed what Super Flex would do and what Rock Brain would do. Powerful!
**In Mr. Packer Problem Solving this week, students worked on a thinking project using the text "Curious George's ABC's." Each letter became part of a larger picture. Thinking outside the box again! Students incorporated the letter they got into a picture. The students shared their pictures with the group. They were quite interesting!!
**In Mr. Degman Math/Tech this week, students completed their counting projects using the app Educreations. I will post them soon.
This week:
The students went to our class garden bed to dig up the last of the sweet potatoes and put our garden to sleep for the winter. They observed root systems and lots of different size sweet potatoes. Very cool! Because there were not enough sweet potatoes for everyone to have one, we donated our potatoes to the Friday Potato Tasting sponsored by the Garden Club. Around our school, many leaves are falling. With our Tree Book, we looked up the names of some of the trees and what their leaves look like. The weather was excellent and it was great to get outside for some extra recess and movement activities. The students worked on their dioramas. They are learning what it means to work cooperatively to create and finish a project. The students completed a summative writing assessment using the text, "Peter's Chair." You can see their progress and willingness to try to respond in writing. The students listened to the story, "Leaf Man" by Lois Ehlert. We discussed the rich vocabulary that went with the story and we made a group list of all the animals and shapes the students observed in the story. The students made predictions on where the "Leaf Man" will go next and thought about the authors meaning in the repeated sentence,"Where a Leaf Man will land only the wind knows." Station Day activities this week included creating a leaf man or animal using leaves from their collection, sponge paint bears, completing Seasonal Sam and where will he stand? and taking a Subitize Challenge with friends.
Reading/Language Arts: The students continue working in Unit 2 Friends in our Treasures Reading series. They built background knowledge about how friends around the world share different activities and who can be a friend. The students listened to the Big Book story, "Friends All Around Us." They made connections looking and listening to the activities and places in the world where friends lived. We looked up these countries on our world map. Student reviewed the isolated sounds of M, S, A, P. Our Robust Vocabulary included WORLD, GAMES, PLEASANT, ASSIST, HONEST. The students worked on identifying the MAIN TOPIC on the story. They elbow chatted about how they knew it and told their partners 3 details about the story. Our puppet friends assisted the students in practice on blending letter sounds to create 3 letter words. (CVC) Students reviewed all sight vocabulary presented thus far and student small groups used the pictures, ending marks and words to create simple sentences. Each group shared the sentences they created. Students continue to work with the Haggerty Blue Exercises--isolating beginning and ending sounds, segmenting and blending CVC words and substituting the beginning sound in a word to create a new word. Next week, the students will begin working with elkonin boxes and visual segmenting and blending skills to provide another modality to enhance these skills. Workstations this week included leveled readers story elements/comprehension/ main idea and fluency, draw and write about something you can do with a friend for fun, beginning and ending sound word work, writing uppercase ABC's, syllable count, word builder with ed family words and sentence builder--subject/action.
Math: The students continue to work on rote counting to 50 as our 50th day approaches. We have some new features to our November Calendar books. Along with keeping track of days in school (with ten frames and number writing)and weather, students are working on more complex shape patterns, recording 3 numbers that come next in a sequence, working on teen numbers, rolling the dice and adding the dots, choosing a domino and remembering and recording its dot pattern and estimating the temperature on a thermometer. The students are very excited about it! The students are working on teen numbers. What do we need to make 13? (1 group of 10 or 1 complete ten frame and 3 left over/3 ones on a new ten frame) Math workstations this week included writing numbers to 45, Subitsize Challenge with a partner, pattern block build, count and record, ways to make 5 activities and counting on from a random number 0-50.
Writing: The students worked on Starting Corner Capitals-H, L, U, K. They also continue to strengthen their tripod grasp when holding a pencil, marker or crayon. Students wrote about a time when they did something kind for someone at home for their summative writing assessment. They also began to reflect in writing a sequence of events in a series of pictures. What happens first--next--then--last. Part of their work on their diorama was to create a written list of the supplies they would need to do the project after chatting with group members.
Technology: In reading whole and small groups, the students use the apps Montessori Crosswords for sound blending and recording and Oz Phonics to work on word order in sentence making and strengthen recognition of short vowel sounds. In math whole and small groups, it was all about taking a Subitize Challenge to strengthen recognition of visual number. The students explored counting using teen numbers on the app Doodle Buddy. Students conpleted their counting projects with Mr. Degman using Educreations.
Literature: "Friends All Around Us," "Friends Follow Rules," "Leaf Man," "Fall Leaves Change Color," "Leaves, Leaves, Leaves," "Animals in Fall," "Why Do Leaves Change Color?"
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