**The whole school came out to wish Mr. Hodge a Happy Birthday. What better way then to be Mr. Hodge all day! The students wore their Mr. Hodge masks whenever they went to the office. That's around 500 or so Mr. Hodges!!!! Check out the photo!!
**Route to Reading Rotation 5 will conclude this week. You will be receiving notification on your child's skill mastery. Route to Reading Rotation 6 will begin on Monday, February 16th.
**The BUSY READER CLUB is in full swing! Don't forget to listen to your child read each day. They bring the book back and get a new reader. At the beginning of each morning, the students have an opportunity to read to their peers. "Share a story--share a page" is going great. The students love to read to their peers and practice their decoding and fluency. Let's keep this going!! Be sure to record the time you read on your Reading Log. Don't forget to bring back your book!!
**We are getting ready for our 100th Day/Valentine's Day festivities. Stop by school to check out all the 100 item hearts. They are really cool!! Don't forget to bring in your picture of a 100 day old person and a 100 year old person. Also--on Wednesday, bring a Valentine for each member of our class (18 students.) If you like---you can also bring a treat (nut/dairy free) or a treasure to put into our treat bags. Those bags will be sent home. We are having a double celebration!!!
**Our 100th Day/Valentine's Day Celebration is Wednesday, February 10th from 9-11 am. We have K. Meier, N. Massett, N. Daniel, K. Harris, H. Alvarez, G. Lowell, Amir's Grandma, J. Wulff and P. Jordan helping out. YEAH!!! It will be great!
**Parent/Teacher Conferences are next week. (2/8, 2/9 and 2/10) Looking forward to sharing your child's progress with you. Please confirm your day and time. Don't forget--School in only in session in the MORNING on Thursday and Friday (2/11 and 2/12) Dismissal is at 11:00 am. Hephzibah, District school bus and Club House pick up is at 11:00 am.
**The FUN FAIR IS COMING! THE FUN FAIR IS COMING!! The Annual Irving School Fun Fair is Saturday, February 20th from 11-3 pm throughout the school. There will be games, prizes, silent auction, food, dancing for desserts and much more!! Who will get the PIE in the FACE!!?? The students will be voting by putting coins or other money into the jug with a picture of their favorite person on the front. Students can begin bringing in their coins/money on Tuesday. There will continue to be opportunities for students to vote during the Fun Fair too. What special performances do the teachers have up their sleeves??!! (silent auction items--BID! BID! I will be taking 4 lucky winners to lunch at Junction Diner. I will also be reading a bedtime story to 2 lucky winners in their home) Make a contribution to our class CHEF BASKET. You can send your contribution with your child to school.
**In Friendship Club this week, Ms. Bell Bey introduced the character BODY SNATCHER who tries to distract you from the group. Super Flex to the rescue! Let's not be distracted from learning!!!
**In Mr. Packer Problem Solving, Mr. Packer continued his project on looking for details and retelling using the process of elimination.
**No Mr. Degman this week.
**Keep saving those GIANT BOXES and other cool for our our space station design and construction in April. Keep everything at home until after spring break.
This week:
It was all about Mr. Hodge's Birthday, getting ready for the 100th Day of School and Bubble mania!! What is a bubble made of? Why does it pop? More in the science section. Station day activities this week included build a stairway, count and compare, blizzard bubble paintings and making bubbles using different wands and chasing bubbles from the bubble machine.
Reading/Language Arts: The students began Unit 6 Neighborhoods in our Treasures Reading series. They accessed prior knowledge about what a neighborhood is and what is included in a neighborhood. The students worked together to create a HUGE word web of places and things that describe a neighborhood. They listened to the Big Book story, "Russ and the Firehouse." The students recognized this story as nonfiction. The students elbow chatted about story elements--Who is Russ? Why is he at the firehouse? What does he do there? The students also retold the story in their own words sequencing main events. Target words for this week were are and for. They added these words to their growing list of sight words. Target sounds for the week were Hh and short and long u. They reviewed all consonant and vowel sounds. Students worked with a partner and practiced asking a WH question about the story and having their partner answer it. In the second reading of the story, the students discussed the main idea of the story and created a list of the jobs that Russ did at the firehouse. Students took turns using the retelling cards and summarized the events. They used their elkonin boxes to segment and blend 4 sound words using consonant blends. They read the decodable book, "Are Caps Hats?" The students made predictions about story content. Each student had an opportunity to read aloud. Some questions to ponder--Could the group hear you? Did you stop at each ending mark? Did you pause at the comma? Were you able to blend the sounds together to make a word you didn't know? Was your reading choppy or smooth? The students chose a partner to read to. The partner listened, discussed and critiqued using the Reader's Checklist. Peers evaluating peers!! We completed our final Blueprint workmat on Martin's Big Words. Next week, we will be taking a look at the life of Jackie Robinson. It will be the text for our next Blueprint. Workstations this week included leveled readers with comprehension check, asking and answering question about a given text, creating a page for our neighborhood book, short vowel written cloze, writing about a neighborhood place/illustrate, word work with blends and digraphs, short vowel work, sentence completion.
Math: The students partnered up and chose an item that they could group by tens to show 100. After their counting and grouping, they labeled each group--10, 20, 30 etc. The photos are up in our hallway. Check them out! The students continued to count and group by tens to 100. Some students even tried to group 2's and 5's. Cool! We continued to work on the process of subtraction using using drawing and objects to show the process. We played game of number find where students search their paper for the numbers called out by the caller. We are also working on writing our numbers from 1-100. The students are exploring building 3 dimensional structures or solid shapes using a variety of straws/pipe cleaners, connects straws, magnetos and mini magnetos. Fun! Fun! We will begin chatting about geometric solids vocabulary next week. Math workstations this week included addition color by code, ten frames count, number bonds to 10, make 5 Bingo and subtraction story problems.
Writing: The students are working on increasing their writing stamina!! They have begun working in their GREEN writing journals. Their green journals have an illustration space and room for 5 sentences. It also has all the kindergarten sight words in ABC order in the front. The students are topic writing each day and taking special care to notice that they begin with a capital letter, space between words in a sentence, forming letters correctly and placing letters (tall lowercase, lowercase, underground letters) in the appropriate spot on the line. Read your sentences? Does is name and tell? Can you add some details to your sentences? Can you tell more? We have just started to work on words that describe. (adjectives) Their goal is to write 4 sentences independently on a given topic. I will be sharing these with you at conferences. It is exciting!!
Science: What is a bubble? The students discussed and made some observations and shared their thoughts. The students learned that a bubble is a thin layer of liquid (soapy water) that is surrounded by a air (gas) The outside layer is like a skin or as one student said, "It is like their jacket." We took a look at utube videos depicting bubble blowing (fill the surrounding soapy water with air) We also saw lots of types of bubble wands and creating a bubble without blowing air. Why do bubbles pop? The students went outside and created bubbles using different types of wands. Some students blew air into the soapy water, others waved or ran with the wand to create the bubbles. Students observed bubbles sticking together (water can stick together) and bubbles floating in the air. Other students saw a bubble stay on the wand and not move. They noted that no matter what shape the wand was the bubble was a sphere. As the bubble popped, students got the idea that the water around the bubble evaporates. The students had a ball chasing the bubbles from the bubble machine. The students continued their exploration on building incline planes. I introduced the vocabulary force (a push or a pull), gravity, weight and motion (changing direction) and speed. They have built some really cool structures!
Technology: The students watched a BrainPop video on the water cycle and loved viewing videos of babies learning to blow bubbles. Mr. Bubble Man and a bubble popping in slow motion courtesy of utube. In reading student partners used the app Spelling Bug and Magnetic Letters HD to working on sound spelling and sentence structure/word order. In math student partners used the app Educreations to write about and illustrate a simple addition story problem.
Literature: "Force and Motion," "Water Cycle," "Water," "Why Does It Float," "Turn on the Faucet," "One Hundred Shoes," "I'll Teach My Dog 100 Words," "Jackie Robinson," "Math-The M and M Way,""Some Things Float."
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