**Happy New Year and welcome back! The students appeared well rested and excited to be back to our routine. Looks like we will be experiencing "real" winter next week. Please continue to send snow pants, boots, gloves and scarves for warmth. Going out for lunchtime recess is determined by Mr. Hodge and the windchill factor. It could be 24 degrees and no windchill and that might mean we will be outside. It pays to be prepared! Our classroom has been very temperate. Some students have chosen to keep a sweater in school in case other classrooms are not so temperate. As always, don't forget to send gym shoes on gym days. (Wednesdays and Thursdays)
**Eagle Extras and World Language will begin on Monday. I will be getting a list of our participants.
**Route to Reading Rotation 4 began last Tuesday. Email me if you did not receive notification of the skill and teacher your child is working with.
**Mid Year DIBELS and AIMSWEB Math assessments will begin on Monday along with Darrell Morris Sound Foundation and mid year assessments in math, reading, writing, social/emotional growth and formative and summative Blueprint assessments. I will be sharing all of these with you are our Mid Year parent conference.
**You will receive notification on Thursday (1/14) about Mid Year Parent/Teacher Conferences. They will be held on Monday, February 8th, Tuesday, February 9th and Wednesday, February 10th. Please note that on Thursday, February 11th and Friday, February 12th school will be in session in the MORNING ONLY. Dismissal will be at 11:00 am. Hephzibah, Club House and district bus pick up will also be at 11:00 am.
**Our 100th Day of School/Valentine's Day Celebration is Wednesday, February 10th. I will let you know Thursday if we will celebrate in the morning or afternoon. We need lots of helpers to man learning station activities that will focus on the number 100 and counting by 10's to 100. Please email me if you can help. Right now, I have K. Meier signed up. I meed LOTS MORE!!. The students will also be working on a special 100 item project. This will be sent home with instructions on Thursday, January 14th.
**The students will see a special Dental Presentation on Monday, January 11th at 10:25 am.
**Reading Grandma Mary will begin her 9th year of volunteering in our class hearing our budding readers! Each student will get to spend private time with her working on fluency and comprehension. She will come to our classroom beginning Thursday, January 21st from 9-11 am and continue every Thursday at that time. We are thrilled to have her!
**NO SCHOOL on Friday, January 15th--Teacher's Institute Day
**NO SCHOOL on Monday, January 18th--ML King Day observance.
**Japanese Exchange students will visit Irving School and come and chat with our students on Thursday, January 28th at 8:25 am. Japan Fest is Saturday, January 30th from 12-4 pm at OPRF.
**Swap, Shop and Read will be held on Thursday, January 21st from 6-7:30 pm in the Kindergarten Hallway. It is a great way to add new books to your home library.
**Friday Night Disco Dance Party to benefit 5th grade outdoor education trip will be held on Friday, January 22nd from 6-8 pm in the gym. Admission is $1.00. All students must be accompanied by an adult.
**No Friendship club this week.
**No Mr. Degman Math/Tech this week.
**In Mr. Packer Problem Solving this week, Mr. Packer began a new thinking project using the text, "Tomorrow's Alphabet" by George Shannon. Stay tuned!
**Keep saving those GIANT BOXES (the ones you can climb in) and other cool stuff for our space station design and construction in APRIL. I cannot store anything now. I will have you start bringing things in after spring break.
This week:
The students were definitely getting back into the swing of all things related to learning. They shared their winter break stories of travels, presents and family fun. Our PTO has funded the continuation of the app Brain Pop and the students showed their appreciation by working on one of our common core standards--writing an opinion and supporting statements about why they like Brain Pop. We sent them off with Mr. Hodge to share at the PTO meeting. The students have also started their inquiry into what they know about WATER. We will begin our science unit on Monday with our first experiment. We do have a cool furry visitor from the Field Museum! I just pick him up so the students will see him on Monday. Station Day activities this week included snowmen wind socks, writing and illustrating using the sentence starter....In the winter...... construct a structure with pattern blocks using the teen number assigned and complete the ten frame, count the snowballs and glue them to the same number shovel and partner work viewing the Brain Pop video on Winter and taking the quiz.
Reading/Language Arts: The students completed Unit 4 Food and began Unit 5 Animals in our Treasures Reading series. They accessed background knowledge by discussing where animals might live. House, zoo, outside, forest, jungle, trees, caves were just some of their thoughtful answers. The students listened to the Big Book story, "Mama Cat and Her Three Kittens." They made predictions about story content. The elbow chatted with a partner about the actions the kittens were performing. The students took turns retelling the story in their own words to their partner. We took a look at sentence structure in the story--subject/action. We did a group Story Elements Butterfly, The students are doing a great job of volunteering to write characters, setting and main events. Our sight words for this week are is and in. Our target sounds are short o and long o. They continued their student of action words by creating a group list of action words (verbs ) that a kitten can do. Our robust vocabulary for this week included ACTION, GENTILE, COMPARE, CONTENT, POUNCE. The students continued work on sequencing events in a story using the words--first, next, then and last. They worked with a partner verbally retelling the story, "Bears Snores On." We worked on our Blueprint workmat with me first presenting the format (I do) then students helping me (we do) and finally the students completing their formative Blueprint workmat on their own. We also discussed what an OPINION is. They verbally discussed the question--Do you like cats or dogs? Why? They are learning to give supporting details to back up their claim. They used the question--Why do you like Brain Pop? The students then wrote a sentence or sentences to support their opinion. Cool! The students continue to work on segmenting and blending 3. 4 and 5 phoneme words using the app OZ Phonics projected on the screen. They also continue to work on strengthening auditory skills and verbal responses by deleting, adding and substituting sounds to create new words using the Haggerty Bluebook exercises. We are also doing an exercise where they see how fast they can say or sound out a nonsense word in preparation for our DIBELS testing. Workstations this week included Lexia Core 5 work, leveled readers with concentration on sequencing events, finding main topic and reading fluency, short o and short e word sort, ch/sh digraph sort, real or nonsense word find, using the app Spelling Bug to sequence sounds to make the word.
Math: The students continue to practice counting to 100 and beyond by 1's and 10's. They continued to work on teen numbers as one group of tens and what is left over or one complete ten frame and what is on the other ten frame. The students began work on formal number sentence writing now they have learned the process of addition. I showed examples of vertical and horizontal addition problems and the signs needed to create them--plus sign, equal sign. The students are beginning to listen as I read a story problem to decide what is being added together and how they arrive at an answer. There is not just one way! The students also continued to work on the concepts GREATER THAN/LESS THAN in speaking about numbers from 1-100. Workstations this week included sorting by common attribute review, let's make ten, number bonds to 10, even or odd number activity, recognizing geometric solids review.
Writing: Students began formal lowercase letter formation. The letters c, o, s were introduced with practice on their mini boards and application in their orange books. They worked on their opinion pieces and sentences relating to winter. We also began a process called sentence lifting, where I take a sentence from somebody's journal and project it so all students can examine it. How does the sentence look? Can you read it? Does it make sense? Does it have spaces between words? Does it have an ending mark? Does it begin with an uppercase letter? Are the letters where they should be? So much to think about!! The students give positive feedback and make suggestions. We are learning from each other!!
Technology: In reading small groups, the apps Rocket Speller and Spelling Bug were used to work on letter sequencing in a word. The students also used Oz Phonics to work on consonant blends and digraphs in words as well as short vowel sounds in a whole group setting. In math small group, students used the app Butterfly Math to work on vertical and horizontal addition facts to 10. In whole group, students used Number Find to continue work on recognizing a pattern to find the target number as quickly as they can. Partners used Brain Pop to view a video on the subject of Winter and to take the quiz.
Literature: "Bear Snores On," "10 Little Dinosaurs," "It's Winter," "Mam Cat and Her Three Kittens," "I Have To," "Hello Snow," "Snowmen at Christmas," "In the Snow--Who's Been Here?"
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