**We are off to a great start! I am so glad all of you are part of our Irving School Family! I was so happy to meet all of you and your extended family and caregivers. We are going to have a great year.!
**We were a bit hot and sweaty at the beginning of the week. It was so enjoyable to see the humidity go down at the end of the week. Please continue to send a water bottle with your child.
**I will be giving the Kindergarten Readiness Test (KRT) to those students who did not take it during the summer per a directive from District 97. I will begin doing this next week. Any concerns about taking this test should be address in writing to Mr. Hodge. The test is about 20 minutes long.
**A HUGE SHOUT OUT to Ms. Flannery, Ms. Ahring, Ms. Raphael and Zoey's Grandma for helping us with lunch. Things are going well. The students are learning about the lunch routine and recycling milk cartons and paper trays. Please continue to reinforce--HOME LUNCH? SCHOOL LUNCH?--MILK?--WHAT KIND? Just to check with all grown ups---if you child is ordering MILK with a HOME LUNCH....please email me to confirm. Many students are asking for milk with their home lunches. I would like to get a accurate account so you are not charged in error.
**Your child's RED HOMEWORK FOLDER is in their backpack. It has homework and information items for parents to read. PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU HAVE SIGNED THE ACCEPTABLE TECHNOLOGY USAGE FORM. Our iPads are now in our building and I would like to begin iPad Bootcamp soon. Please check their RED HOMEWORK FOLDER EVERY FRIDAY. If there is an assignment that needs to be sent back, that will be due the following Thursday. Games and stories can remain home. Read the info under "click here for assignments" under my name and title for other learning suggestions.
**Please remember to wear or send gym shoes and socks every day. They are especially needed on gym days.
**Information on being an Irving Volunteer, PTO, Eagle Extra On Line Registration, Menu, New Parent Dinner, Peanut Allergy Letter, Back to School Party/Movie Night and Barrie Fest both at Barrie Park are in your child's red homework folder.
**All special area classes have begun. Friendship Club (character development) with Social Worker, Dr. Bell Bey and Thinking Skills with GTD, Mr. Packer will begin next week.
**As soon as I set up student passwords, students will begin working on Lexia Core 5 in our computer lab. This program is a great companion piece to our Language Arts and Literacy Program. Students are able to work on phonemic awareness, phonics and comprehension skills at their own pace. The skills begin at Kindergarten thru Grade 3.
**Our Room Parents for 2016-2017 are Michelle Ahring, Jessica Flannery, Sarah Pierson, Susan Raphael, Knikia Dantzler and Tahji Dixon. Thanks!
**OPEN HOUSE/CURRICULUM NIGHT is Thursday, September 22nd from 6:30-8:00 pm. More information is forthcoming.
**In the future--if your child is traveling where they are staying overnight--let me know and I will send a "Travel Journal." We are going to be tracking places where we have been and sharing our travel stories. It can be grandma's house, another town, another state or country. Great geography!
**NO SCHOOL--Monday, September 5th in observance of Labor Day.
This week:
It was all about routines, expectations and meeting new friends and teachers. Yes.......I talked a lot! The students met with all of their special area teachers--Ms. Hiolski-Music, Senortia Zaragoza-Spanish, Ms. Noonan-Library, Mr. Hancock-PE, Ms. Tague-Art. The students are getting to know each other and are fostering new friendships. The students have learned how to earn EAGLE SLIPS as part of our school wide behavior program. Our Daily Mantra is--Be Respectful, Be Responsible, Be Safe Everywhere and Have Fun! Students are beginning to earn Eagle Slips. Each Friday, Mr. Hodge picks 10 winners to choose a little token. We had a winner picked from our room!! Congratulations to Jeanette!! What a great start.
Reading/Language Arts: In our first week of school, the students began a 3 week prep in our Treasures Reading series call Smart Start. Our Common Core Standards in Literacy are being taught thru selected texts. I will be speaking about this at Open House/Curriculum Night. The students are using their language skills to respond to a daily warm up question. We are working on raising our hands to volunteer information. Students worked on their listening comprehension skills and making predictions and connections by listening and responding to the Big Book Story, "Animals in the Park-ABC Book." The students also began work on recognizing rhyming sequences. Rhyming words have the same ending parts. Students began to generate words and rhyming patterns. They learned the rhyming chant--bat, cat, they end with at. Students are also working on upper and lowercase letter recognition. They learned how to play the "Hands Up, Hands Down." It is one of their homework assignments. Students also worked on "tracking" words in a sentence from left to right and counting how many words were in a given sentence. In our formative text, "Chrysanthemum," the students worked on finding the title (name), the front and back cover and the spine of the book.
We discussed what an author does and the job of an illustrator. The students worked on foundational skills using the Haggerty Blue Book. Whole group instruction centered around recognizing upper and lowercase letters, counting words in a sentence, isolating the beginning and ending sound of a word, examining what our mouth looks like and what other things happen (puffs of air, vibrations) when we make the sounds of consonants and vowels. Workstation (small group) activities centered around sequencing ABC's, finding a rhyme, writing our name, partner letter sound match and playing Hands Up, Hands Down.
Math: The students were introduced to our daily calendar activities. What is a ten frame? What is a rekenrek? The students began placing a black dot on the ten frame for each day that we are in school. When we get to 100----PARTY!!! The students graphed and counted how many girls and boys are in our class. They also created a "Who's name has the most letters?" graph. The students worked on number recognition and counting objects to 5 and 10. They worked with their towers of ten, choosing a number card and building their tower with that many cubes. Whole group instruction centered around number recognition and counting activities. Small group activities included "egg carton" math--placing the correct number of beans in each section, sorting by 2 attributes, recognizing simple plane shapes and pattern block shapes and writing numbers 0-5. The students also explored pattern blocks, geo boards, simple plane shapes, gears, waffle blocks and magnetiles.
Social Studies/Cross Curricular: Our theme is All About Me and My Family. The students drew self portraits and related a little fact about something we should know about them. They chatted about things that are important to them. The students discussed the importance of their families and drew a picture of their families. (so precious!!) We will begin our Second Step Emotional Health Curriculum next Tuesday.
Writing: The students began Writer's Workshop. They worked off the idea that we are all writers. The students chatted about what writing is and I showed them examples of books and what the writers wrote in them. Writing is putting your ideas on paper with words and pictures. You can write what you know about, or dream about. We can begin with a drawing. The students talked with their partner about what they could write or teach them about. We had lots of great ideas---family, animals, pets, the ocean, going to school. The students also worked on how they hold a pencil or marker---using their tripod grip. Some students shared their drawing and writing with classmates. During my writing conference time, individual students were able to tell me about their drawing and I recorded what they told me. Some students labels certain parts with beginning letters. Some tried their hand at writing some words. It was very exciting!
Technology: We have been working together on a few foundational skills apps that have been projected onto the screen for student interaction. The app Number Rack uses the rekenrek beads and we played a how many game. The app Subitize Tree focused on the idea of visual counting and looking at number patterns. The app Animal Math worked on counting quantities, sequencing numbers, what number comes before or after, which number is greater. I try to find apps that are free or low cost.
Literature: "Kindergarten Rocks," "Red," "What does It Mean To Be Kind?" "Kindergarten is Cool," "When Dinosaurs Go To School," "Kindergarten Rules," "Hands are Not For Hitting," "It's All About You--Writing your own Journal," "Freight Train," "Chrysanthemum."
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