**Thanks so much for your attendance at Open House/Curriculum Night. I know that there was a lot of material presented. Please read through your curriculum handouts. If you have any questions or would like to meet to go over anything, please email me. I know the students had a great time! They were a bit sleepy eyed the next morning, but full of conversation about who they saw and the teachers they introduced you to. Thanks again!
**Pacer's Running and Walking Club is going well! The students are very enthusiastic about their walk/run. Irving School is using Pacer's to get students ready for the FUN RUN Fundraiser on Friday, October 14th. It is our PTO's biggest fundraiser! You will be receiving info on this soon.
**Eagle Extra Classes begin on Monday, September 26th. I have received a roster of names for each class. An adult Eagle Extra supervisor will pick up all kindergarten students from their classrooms at dismissal. They will will be taken to the auditorium where the Eagle Extra teacher will meet them.
**All baseline assessments will be completed this week and Route to Reading skills specific groups will begin on Monday, October 3rd. You will get notification of the skill your child is working on and the teacher teaching it. The skill will be taught for 3 weeks and then assessed. 90% mastery is needed for a student to move on to the next skill. Students can remain at the skill, move to the next skill or even skip/test out of a skill. All kindergarten teachers as well as Ms. Chinn, our Language Arts Specialist and reading tutors Ms. Cruz, Ms. Cairns and Ms. Diehl will each have a group of students. Route to Reading will meet 3 times a week for 30 minutes on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.
**EGG DROP/ACADEMIC FAIR sign up is now on line on the Irving website! I will be speaking to the students about this event on Monday. Do you have a topic that you are interested in? Do you have a question that you want answered on a certain topic? Can you construct a vehicle that will keep an egg from breaking when it is dropped from a 3rd floor window??? Think about it!! Be part of the Irving School's Academic Fair and/or Egg Drop contest on Wednesday, October 19th. Ms. Creehan will be coming around next week to show examples to students and chat a bit about ideas. I would love to see our class represented. The Egg Drop contest will take place on the playground beginning at 12:15 pm. Students can present their Academic Fair projects (places for them in the gym) to their classmates in the morning and again to the public beginning at 6:30 pm.
**There was no Friendship Club this week.
**Our Second Step lesson this week focused on following directions. The concepts taught were--listening and following directions are important skills for learning. Repeating directions helps you remember them. Following directions involves using your eyes, ears, and brain! Of course, our puppet friends, Puppy and Snail assisted in the lesson and activities!
**In Library this week, Ms. Noonan continued discussion and activities on selecting Fiction and Nonfiction books.
**In Mr. Packer's Thinking Skills this week, Mr. Packer read the story "Ten Black Dots, " by Donald Crews. The story uses a certain number of dots that become part of a larger picture. Next week, the students will get a chance to "think outside of the box" by coming up with a picture that includes a certain number of dots. Cool!
**We will have on first meeting with our Book Buddies (Ms. Balicki's 5th grade class) on Friday! Each student will be paired with a 5th grade buddy or two. They will be interviewing each other. They will create a getting to know me book! Stay tuned!
**Information on our first FIELD TRIP will be out next Friday. We will be going to the MORTON ARBORETUM on Thursday, October 27th from 9-1:30 pm. This trip will enhance and support our very first SCIENCE UNIT--TREES and WEATHER. I will need 5 parent volunteers to accompany us on our trip. Email me if you are interested.
This week:
It was all about getting ready for Open House! The students worked hard on projects to display in the hallway. They made sure the room was tidy. They are moving about the building with ease and are able to deliver their own Eagle Slips to the office and well as take the morning attendance down. Station day activities this week included a game format where students worked on math (counting/cardinality) (number writing) (classification) and reading (sight words-walk your words) (beginning letter sounds-letter /sound bump, Little Red Riding Hood sound/symbol) (upper and lowercase match-Froggy Froggy, Where's Your Home?) (reading to self) (reading to a partner) (sentence building) and finished the day with activities from the tripod grasp strengthening box.
Reading/Language Arts: The students have completed the prep Start Smart for our Treasures Reading series. We will begin Unit 1 FAMILIES on Monday. We continue to review consonant and short and long vowel sounds. We are also imprinting sound to symbol or letter. Our mirror exercises continue to assist the students as another modality in solidifying the automaticity of producing letter
sounds. The students began work on their sight word vocabulary. The sight words I, go, we, see, can, am, yes, no, the have been introduced. The students "Walked their Words" using the word feet and making a path. The students also worked with partner to build a sentence using their sight words and pictures. They shared their sentences with the other partners. The students brainstormed words that show ACTION. I read the trade book, "Jazz Baby." Before reading, the students made predictions about story content. They were able to point to the title, title page, front and back cover of the book and the spine of the book. They were also able to tell that the book was fiction. During the reading, the students were able to tell me about the words that showed action in the story. (dance, sway, sing etc) After a second reading, the students were able to use the retelling cards to retell the story. Some students volunteered to write some words about each picture. It was a group effort to sound out words and record letters to create sentences. Great team work! During our group read aloud of the paper story "I Can," the students were spot on at naming the action pictures and words.
We continue to work on tracking words in a sentence from left to right and only reading the words we see on each line. The students are loving volunteering to read while the others are following along. In our formative text study this week, we read the story, "Duck on a Bike." In the first reading, the students continue to work on setting, characters and main events in the story. I read and they elbow chat with a partner about those story elements. They also volunteered to act out their favorite parts. We use the sequencing board to sequence the events in the story using pictures. In our second reading, the students help me (We do) to complete a Blueprint Workmat that is projected on the screen. They volunteer to draw pictures and help me to write down the characters, setting and some main events. Students did their own Blueprint Workmat of the story. (You do) What do you remember? (sequencing, comprehension, story elements) It is pretty cool to see their thinking reflected in their drawings and a little more attempts at writing words or letters. I continue to provide support by recording what they tell me about the characters, setting and events. Next week, we will begin our summative text, "How Rocket Learns to Read." The students continue their work with exercises from the Haggerty Blue Book which include letter naming, rhyming syllables, counting words in a sentence, beginning and ending sounds, adding, substituting and deleting word parts. Workstations this week included upper/lowercase match, write the room--sight words, walking your words, practice read and discussion.
Math: The students continue to work on number formation rhymes 0-9. Morning math sessions concentrate on number writing, counting quantities, sequencing numbers and tracking the weather. In our afternoon whole group math sessions this week, the students worked on classifying into pre-determined categories using toys with a wide range of attributes to facilitate sorting, classifying into 3 categories and determining the count in each and classifying into 3 categories, determining the count in each and the reason about how the last number named determines the total. Partner activities Birthday Candles and Show Me Another Way assisted in providing fluency practice. Math workstations this week included working with attribute blocks classifying into 3 categories, pattern block shape recognition activity, counting quantities-record number, writing numbers. We ended the sessions with a Subitize Challenge. The students are becoming more observant at recognizing patterns in numbers or ways to say numbers---6 can be 3 and 3 etc.
Writing: The students set up their Writer's Workshop journals. They now have a journal paper, a place to put finished pieces and pieces they are still working on and sight words and sound/symbol pictures to assist them in their composing. In Writer's Workshop this week, we chatted about the idea that writer's often "visualize" or create a picture in their mind before they write. They picture the topic and then all the details into the pictures and words. We also had a conversation about showing action in your pictures. I did a mini lesson on stretching your words out to write them. (slowly saying and recoding the sounds you hear--inventive spelling) and adding labels to pictures. The students are very enthusiastic about their writing journal. They are working on their drawings and trying their hand at writing something down. At the journal conference with each student, I am having students chat about their drawing and I will model writing, or ask students to read what they wrote. We are having some beginning chats about starting with an uppercase letter and spacing between words. It is getting exciting!!!!
Technology: No new apps introduced this week. I am in the process of securing usernames and passwords in order to begin iPad Boot Camp and Lexia Core 5.
Literature: "Hop on Pop," "I Will Try," "Pete the Cat," "Made From Clay," "Night Animals," "Paper Wasps Nests," "Duck on a Bike," "David Get's in Trouble," "Jazz Baby."
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