**Another busy week in kindergarten! We are transitioning into our last cross curricular theme of the year--Seeds to Plants! The students are sensing change in the air! We are beginning to talk about first grade. We will be visiting all First Grade classrooms in the coming weeks. We are practicing our POEMS for the Traveling Poets Project. We continue to edit our iMovie on our Space Stations. We have lots of footage!!!
**Our field trip to the Adler Planetarium was awesome! The students saw the movie, "One World, One Sky." They visited exhibits about the moon, the planets. space travel and telescopes. They thoroughly enjoyed the interactive visit to Planet Explorers trying on jet packs, blasting off, walking in space, seeing a space toilet, and sleeping in a space bed. The students also built using pvc pipes, crawled around under space tunnels and drove a lunar rover collecting space rocks. We had a lovely picnic on a hill overlooking the lake. A great day! A HUGE THANKS to our volunteers--M. Daniel, B. Kates, K. Harris, J. Metz and Katherine's Tio for helping us on our special day.
**The sky was a bit threatening but........District 97's Annual Fun Run went on! A special SHOUT OUT to KATHERINE and OMAR for their participation. What fast runners!!!!!
**It was Reading Grandma Mary's final Thursday with students. She was so impressed with all the progress the students have made. We will miss her! Her message to the students----KEEP READING and CHATTING ABOUT WHAT YOU READ!
**The Traveling Poets Project begins MONDAY. Our students will be traveling to recite their poems in selected rooms all over the school. Listen to your child recite his/her poem at home! We will be traveling on May 9th and May 16th.
**The IRVING POETRY SLAM and ART FEST is THURSDAY, MAY 12th from 6-8 pm all over the school. Come on out to see art on the walls from each Irving student, hear the chorus and poetry, see a play and play Spanish games with Senorita. Of course, there is also food involved! Our class has 3 "little slammers" ready to recite poetry in the auditorium along with many others. Mr. Williams will be the "MC." There is still time to get involved!!!! Share your creativity.
**National Sports and Fitness Week was a hit! Sports caps, soccer playing, jump roping and yoga and movement were the ticket.
**I will be speaking to the students on counting down the days until the end of the year. We will create our own ABC Countdown. Look for a calendar of events and activities in your child's homework folder next week.
**I will begin final assessments for the last report card next week. Assessments for phonemic awareness, math, sight words, independent and instructional reading levels and social/emotional growth reflection will be done.
**In Friendship Club this week, Ms. Bell Bey continued to review the years topics in a game show format. So fun! Her final session with the students is May 20th.
**In Mr. Packer Thinking and Problem Solving this week, Mr. Packer began work on a final project involving using the activities in the text, "Logic Links." Students will work on listening to a set of directions and using their knowledge of positional words to move a set of dots into the correct order.
**Future Field Trips--Pizza and Play End of the Year Family Picnic at Rehm Park on June 1st 9:30-noon. Walking Field Trip to the Oak Park Conservatory on Tuesday, June 7th at 10:00 am. Walking Field Trip to the Gurgas/Chen Chicken Coup-TBA and in room guest speaker Ms. Henry to speak about worm composting -TBA.
**June 8th (full day) --Last day of school (tear drop!) Family Hour and final report cards sent home.
This week:
It was all about dramatic play in space stations and reflecting on their field trip. The students are using their space stations for leisure reading complete with flashlights too! The team invited other teams to explore their space stations. The students began their final science unit on seeds and plants. Station day activities included ladybug addition, seed sequence, estimate and measure and having an extra recess outside!
Reading/Language Arts: I am combining vocabulary, phonemic skills, comprehension and literature of our final Treasures Reading series Unit 9-Amazing Creatures and Unit 10-We Know A Lot. Woven into the units will be poetry to close out the year. This week, the students read stories about different types of bugs. Target words were he and she. Target sounds were Gg, Ww and a review of all short and long vowel sounds. We also continue to work on final formative and summative blueprints on comparing and contrasting two texts, narrative writing, word choice and defining an unknown word and a review of all story elements. Students small groups created sentences using all their sight words and pictures. They also began incorporating some First Grade words into their sentences. A whole group lesson focused on the definition and use of pronouns--I, you, he, she, it, we, they. The students worked in small groups with leveled readers, reading for meaning and fluency, discussing story elements, cause and effect, making connections, drawing conclusions and making inferences. Word work centered on using context clues to figure out the meaning on an unknown word. They also continued to review recognizing and using nouns, verbs and adjectives. The true quest of reading for meaning is becoming more apparent to our kindergarten readers. Robust Vocabulary for this week included AMAZING, DEEP, INVITE, OCEAN, REASON, ANNOY, INSECT. The students continue to review sound blending strategies, adding and deleting sounds in words as well as recognizing consonant blends and digraphs and the use of silent e. Workstations this week included writing questions and answers pertaining to a particular text, word families ut and un, writing a sentence about a bug you have seen, writing an opinion piece about which bug you like the best and why, picking two bugs and writing about how they are alike and how they are different, observing details and writing about what you see in a picture and what information that picture gives you about the story, elbow chatting about story elements and word work with silent e and digraphs.
Math: The students are working in their new calendar books. Some new features include number puzzles, writing 2 and 3 digit numbers, dice subtraction, number find 1-200 and nonstandard measurement using unifix cubes. Students also have their new Math Journal. They are reading the story problem and deciding whether to add or subtract, illustrating their problem, showing it on a number line, and writing the equation. Math workstations this week included writing numbers 1-100 or beyond, illustrating and solving subtraction story problems, counting before and after a random number, and building new shapes using existing pattern block shapes.
Writing: The students continue to work on refining upper and lowercase letters and expanding sentence length. We are almost finished with our orange practice books. Look for those to come home next week. Our "Fix It Up Checklist" has really helped students with checking all aspects of their writing. We wrote to our moms, about our favorite field trip experiences and to Ms. Sarah from the Library. Next week, we will write to Reading Grandma!
Science: The students began the inquiry--What is a seed? In our first first experiment, the students took their magnifiers and examined a variety of objects on a tray. Some were seeds......some were not. Each table conducted sorting activities and tried to decide which were seeds and which were not. They looked at color, size, shape and texture. Each table presented their findings. Students were fascinated by seeds that appeared to be mini sticks or oval and ones that were hard and bumpy. We took a look at several types of real seeds. Students took a look at their new science journals. In our next experiment, the students selected their seed for planting and nurturing. They observed the different shapes of the seeds--Nasturtium, Morning Glory, Marigold and Sunflower. All had very different shapes, colors, sizes and textures. Students accessed information on growth patterns--horizontal vs vertical, stems, root structure--tiny, side, large. They also looked at leaf shape--wagon wheel, butterfly wings, oval, skinny ovals. Key vocabulary--germinate, sprout, shoot, root were discussed. Each student planted a seed of their choice. They became responsible for checking to see if it needed water and placing it in a sunny window. Each student knew from prior knowledge that seeds needs sun, air, soil and water to grow. Cant' wait until Monday to see what has happened over the weekend. Next week--seed dissection.
Technology: No new apps this week. We are looking at a lot of footage from our space station filming. Stay tuned!
Literature: "How Do Seeds Grow?" "Beetles," "Beautiful Bugs," "Insects," "From Seed to Plant Part 1," "The Tiny Seed," "Plants" "Seeds," "Roots," "Leaves," "What Mom's Can't Do," "Spring Changes."
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