Sunday, May 22, 2016

UPDATES for 5/16-5/20 2016

**Time is flying by in Kindergarten!  The students enjoyed their visit into First Grade.  They met the teachers, toured the classrooms and listened to first graders speak about the daily activities and special projects.  Some of my students had questions and they were answered by a first grader.
**The ABC COUNTDOWN continues this week-- highlights--Lemonade Day/King Day on Monday, Monkey Day/Note Day on Tuesday, Obstacle Course/Pajama Day on Wednesday, Queen Day/Rainbow Day on Thursday and Surprise Day on Friday.
**Permission slip for PIZZA and PLAY End of the Year Family Picnic is in your child's homework folder.  Please send back with $3.00.  Instead of the online sign up---I am asking parents to send blankets and ground covers, cut up fruit or veggies and paper plates and napkins.  We will have 2 large thermos containers of water and fruit punch.  If your child does not want pizza, just send a bag lunch.  We will also need some parent help to set up at Rehm Park.  I will be emailing our Room Parents for assistance in getting this all together.  The event is scheduled for Wednesday, June 1st from 9:30-noon at Rehm Park.
**Permission slip for our Walking Trip to the Oak Park Conservatory is also in your child's homework folder.  Let me know if you are interested in waling with us.  That event is Tuesday, June 7th from 9:30-11:30 am.
**One last WALKING TRIP planned is to visit the CHICKEN COUP at the Gurgas/Chien backyard on Tuesday, May 31st from 11:30-12:10.  I will send out that permission slip on Monday.
**The presentation of the Summer Reading Program-Read to Win begins on June 1st.  This year, students can sign up in school thru Ms. Noonan.  Details are forthcoming.
**ALL LIBRARY BOOKS ARE DUE on FRIDAY, JUNE 3rd per Ms. Noonan.
**ALL BUSY READERS ARE DUE  BACK TO MS. GULLO on WEDNESDAY, JUNE 1st.
**Route to Reading has ended for this year.
**The students said goodbye to our workstation Grandma, Ms. Cummings.  We will miss her.  She and the students had so much fun as she worked with various groups during our reading workstations.
**Olympic Day is Friday, May 27th from 8:30-11:00 am.  Come on out and see Team Gullo in all of our Olympic events throughout the school.
**The students have chosen an outside time for their last Friendship Club of the year!
**Mr. Packer will finish up his project with the students on the following Friday, June 3rd.
**Work portfolios will come home this week.
**The last day of school is Wednesday, June 8th.  We will have a regular morning session.  In the afternoon, beginning at 1:00 pm, please join us for autograph signing, light refreshments, report cards and summer packets and maybe something special on the black top!
This week:
The students are having lots of fun with the ABC Countdown.  They are also monitoring our Class Box Garden.  We have beans, watermelon, cantalope and radishes growing along with assorted flowers.  The students began weeding our outside garden bed and preparing it for planting.  We will discuss and choose plants to grow in our  outside garden next week.
Reading/Language Arts:     Students continue to work on skills and literature from Treasures Units 9 and 10.  Sight words for this week are with and my.   Target sounds are Jj and Qu along with long vowels.   Students continue to review all skills on the Phonemic Awareness Continuum as per our Route to Reading format.  They used their dry erase boards to practice blending and segmenting 3-4-5 and even 6 sound words.  All students are working in the first half of the First Grade word list.  The students listened to the Big Book story, "Fish Faces."  They were so interested in the world of fish and sea creatures.  They elbow chatted about what their favorite fish was in the book and why it was their favorite.  The students worked on a summative blueprint about comparing illustrations in a text and a writing summative narrative about what kind of garden they would grow.  Robust Vocabulary this week included CONFUSED, DESCRIBE, INSIST,  TEXTURE, UNDERSTAND.  Workstation for this week included leveled reader self read, partner read and elbow chatting about story elements, comparing and contrasting stories, vocabulary and word choice, drawing a picture of your favorite sea creature and telling why you like it, answering yes/no questions, writing about a comparison--which sea creatures are bigger then you--smaller then you, sort fish pictures into groups and writing about how you sorted them and working with unknown words.
Math:     The students have completed their Story Problem Math Journals.  Next week, their new journals will touch on all areas of math that we have learned this year and some first grade math.   Workstations this week were all about the game.  Students learned to play "Pop for Numbers," "Number Bond Matching Game," "Addition and Subtraction Sort," and "Story Problem Solve."
Writing:     The students continue to reflect in writing on various topics in all their subject areas. They continue to work on writing a "meaty" sentence containing adjectives and other details.  Next week, we will write a thank you note to Ms. Cummings, our workstation Grandma. 
Science:     The students continue to observe plants growing in our class garden.   In Experiment 4, we removed a baby sunflower, nasturtium, morning glory and marigold from the soil to take a closer look at the root system.  The students noted similarities and differences in the stems, leaves and roots. Thicker roots, skinny roots, straight roots, curvy roots, lots of roots, stringy roots were some of their observations.  The students also looked at the leaf structure of each plant and made a sketch  of the leaves.   How do the roots and stem help each plant?  Students reflected in their science journal. What is the job of the leaves?   In Experiment 5 the students pondered the question......do seeds need soil in order to germinate?  Each table placed 5 seeds in a bag with a paper towel and some water.  They taped it to a sunny window.  They made a check each day and on day 5--what ----roots were growing and some little shoots.  Cool!  We will try seeds on sponges next week.  The students weeded the outside garden bed and found lots of rolly polly bugs, worms and other creepy crawly things.  They will decide next week what to plant.  Next week--How seeds travel and WORM study!
Technology:      Reviewing all apps.  Next week, the students will do a project about life cycles of plants that may involve some apps.  Also.....they will begin work on a script for their final project about kindergarten.
Literature:     "The Seed Song," "How and Why Seeds Travel," "Flip, Float, Fly," "A Seed is a Promise," "A Fruit is a Suitcase for Seeds," "Growing a Garden," "Garden Tools," "The Atlas of Plants," "Amazing Bugs," "Tropical Fish."


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