**Walk to School Day was a success! Over half of our class walked to school in the morning. The rest of the class walked with Mr. Hancock at lunchtime. Each student colored their gym shoe and received a hand stamp. Mr. Hancock will put up all the shoes on the gym walls. Cool!
**PICTURE DAY is TUESDAY, OCTOBER 11th. We will be having our pictures taken outside in front of the school at 9:05 am. Come dressed in your best. Volunteers M. Ahring and S. Raphael will lend a helping hand.
**Let's Run! The Annual Fun Run Fundraiser is Friday, October14th. Kindergarten students will run beginning at 8:15 am. Don't forget to sign up and pledge your support online. Come on out and cheer us on!! Make a poster, cheer, take some photos!
**Interested in being a STUDENT COUNCIL REP? I will be selecting 2 reps to attend meetings during their lunch recess twice a month. Read the flyer and sign your name if interested. I will choose 2 names on Friday. The first meeting is October 18th.
**Parent/Teacher Conference response letters are in your child's homework folder. If you haven't signed up yet....email me to select a date and time. Parent Conferences will be held Monday, 10/17, Tuesday, 10/18 and Wednesday. 10/19. Please note: School is NOT in session the AFTERNOON of Thursday and Friday (10/20 and 10/21.) Dismissal will be at 11:00 am. Hephzibah, RFCC, Toon Town and Magical Minds will pick up at 11:00 am.
**Information on our upcoming Field Trip to the Morton Arboretum is in your child's homework folder. We have S. Raphael and B. Ahring volunteering to help. We need 3 more volunteers. Email if interested. Thanks!
**All students took their placement assessment for Lexia Core 5 this week. We spent two- 40 minute periods in the lab with our Tech advisor, Mr. Karol, learning to type username and password. Set up info and username and password are in your child's homework folder. Please note: Usernames are NOT case sensitive. I hand printed username in caps and password below on a index card for each student for class use. You may do the same for home use. We will use one compute lab time a week and time during our small group literacy workstations on iPads for Lexia Core 5.
**Route to Reading Rotation 1 specific skills groupings have begun. You should have received information on the skill your child is working on and the teacher teaching that skill. Email me if you haven't. The students were excited to meet new friends and teachers.
**Excitement is building for participation in Irving School's Annual Egg Drop/Academic Fair. I brought in some examples of Academic Fair projects and showed the class what a presentation board looks like. For our kinders---really anything goes in terms of what they put on their board if they sign up to do a project. Pictures, their writing, drawings are awesome. For the Egg Drop contest---several students have expressed an interest. For both of these events---you must register on line. Info on how to do that is on the Irving website. The Egg Drop/ Academic Fair is Wednesday, October 19th. Join us for the Egg Drop Contest on the blacktop beginning at 12:30 pm. Students will present their projects for the Academic Fair to the class the morning of October 19th. The participants have a chance to come back from 6:00-8:00 pm to present to families and friends.
**Author Lori Degman, will visit Irving School on Wednesday, October 12th at 12:45 in our media center.
**The Mexican Dance Assembly has been rescheduled for November 7th at 10:00 am.
**Information on Trivia Night is in your child's homework folder. Take a peek. It's an adults only get together to raise money for our school.
**Our Room Parents have created a SIGN UP GENIUS for FRIDAY STATION DAY VOLUNTEERS. Awesome! Our first one is Friday, October 14th!
**Our Second Step lesson this week was a review of what we have learned thus far.
**In Friendship Club this week, Dr. Bell Bey continued her lessons on the Zones of Regulation focusing on the YELLOW and RED zones and ways to manage our feelings.
**In Mr. Packer's Thinking Skills this week, the students shared their dot pictures with one another and Mr. Packer began a new thinking adventure reading "Curious George's ABC's." Each letter was part of a larger illustration. Can you guess our next class assignment????
**NO SCHOOL Monday, October 10th in observance of Columbus Day.
This week:
The students were all a chatter about Route to Reading, being in the computer lab, beginning iPad bootcamp, beginning their literacy workstations and their first unit in science. They also began an inquiry into our next cross curriculum theme--Apples/Autumn. The students participated in an inquiry about what they knew about an apple. Jeanette and Lilly kicked off our week with a apple treat for the class. The students had a ball using their magnifiers and microscope to examine the blossom (flower,) seeds, flesh, core, stem and skin. They learned that the blossom was the beginning of the apple. I cut an apple on its side to reveal the star! We read information books (nonfiction) on the subject and used the internet search to find apple names. The students learned how to create a diagram and label apple parts. Part 2 of apple mania is next week. Station day activities included writing and illustrating what you like to do in the fall, stamping your sight words, diagraming and labeling the parts of an apple and playing Heads or Tails Tally.
Reading/Language Arts: The students continue to work on Unit 1 Families in our Treasures Reading series. The phonemic awareness portion keyed in on target sounds short a and Mm. The students brainstormed a list of animal names. We discussed words that name people, animals and things have a common name--NOUN. The students continue to work on listening comprehension, and identifying story elements--character, setting, main events and why those events are important to the story. In our Big Book story, "Picnic at Apple Park." the students also looked for language patterns as I read. (question/answer format) The students responded and retold events in the story sequence. They had an "elbow "chat with a partner to discuss WHO was in the story, WHERE the story happened and WHAT was happening. We discussed how the story structure can provide evidence for our predictions. Robust vocabulary for this week included COOPERATIVE, EXCITING, CAPTIVATED, STARTLED, GATHER, EXHAUSTED. The students practiced their tracking skills in our read aloud story, "The Baseball." Part of the exercise is to see if students can track the words while another student is reading aloud. Also, are they reading just what is in the sentence? For now, our stories have both words and pictures (rebus sentences) As they expand their sight word base, the stories will include both sight words and words that students will decode or sound out.
Students continue to work on Haggerty Blue Book exercises that focus on initial and final sound recognition, short and long vowels, syllables, adding and deleting sounds to create words and substituting word parts to create new words. Students are also working on the idea of onset (beginning sound) and rime (ending part of the word.) For example--separating the word man as first sound (onset) mmmmm and rime an.
Our literacy workstations are in full swing! The table managers are getting the hang of positive management skills and the groups are working more cooperatively to complete assignments. It is lovely to hear the sounds of beginning and very eager readers! Workstations this week included leveled readers read to self and read to partner, elbow chatting about story elements, walking your sight words, word work with onset/rime, rainbow writing words, sentence building with words and pictures, connecting letter sound to picture symbol, matching upper and lowercase letters, readers response sheet with labeling and working on a story elements butterfly.
Math: Students continue to practice their number formation rhymes. 0-9 focusing on directionality and beginning at the top. Our math whole group less this week continued to focused on the idea of decomposing a number into its hidden partners. An example would be the number 3---as 2 and 1 or 1 and 2. Students also participated in a variety of activities to strengthen the ability to count a group of objects and associate a particular number. Students worked to understand the meaning of zero and write and order numbers from 0-5.
Students are working in their new October calendar books. The activities include recording tally marks, sequencing numbers and number writing, plus 1 number sentences, showing a number using a ten frame. dot patterns on a domino and dice and recording daily weather and temperature and looking at weather patterns.
Writing: Students continue to work on their Frog Jump Capitals practicing on their mini boards and in their Orange Practice books. In Writer's Workshop this week, our young writers worked on labeling parts of their drawings. They are also sharing their writing with each other. They continue to work on feeling comfortable about recording sounds they hear in the words they use to describe their pictures. They are thinking about beginning with an uppercase letter and spacing between their words and also using an ending mark. We are gearing up for our next lessons which are about making books or the idea of writing all we can about a topic may take more than one page. The students will learn to stretch their topic using their question words--Who, Where What, When and even Why. Stay tuned!
Science: The students began their first investigation as part of our unit on Trees and Weather. The students thought about what an investigation is. We also thought about the what it is to observe something. We are going to take much closer look at trees. The students began by drawing a picture of a tree in their science notebook. We then took blanket, camera, our notebooks, magnifiers and equipment boxes outside. The students walked along OBSERVING the trees on our school street. We came upon a particular tree that all the students thought was really cool. This became our class tree! It will be the tree that we will observe throughout the seasons in kindergarten. Using our tree finder reference, the students learned that our particular tree was a White Oak Tree. Some students knew it was an Oak Tree. The student explored the tree--looking up into it and around it. What did they observe? Trunk, leaves, branches, twigs, bark and some students mentioned veins in the leaves. Wait---a nest and a birdhouse and maybe even some roots!!! Wow! We talked about the parts of the tree. We discussed the season we are currently in. The students sat under "their" tree and drew a picture of how they saw it. Some students added words or sentences. Some students added labels to parts. We began also to chat about different types of trees. Students observed a tree that looked like a Christmas tree across the street. Lots of conversation about evergreen, fir, pine and that those trees mainly stay green even though the seasons change. Some of our White Oak Trees leaves are changing color. I talked about the word conifer and how it relates to evergreen trees. We took everything back inside and set up an investigation station where students can bring in items from the outdoor to observe with magnifiers and microscopes. Next week--What are the shapes of trees? Which trees have similar shapes?
Please read the Science News brief that will give further explanation of our unit. The students have a collection project that is due October 27th.
Technology: The Lexia Core 5 program began for students. Really good activities that promote phonemic awareness, phonics, comprehension. In reading whole group, students worked on the apps Montessori Crosswords to enhance sounding blending VC/CVC words and Oz Phonics to work on sentence order and initial and final sound recognition. In math whole group, student worked on the app Easy Match to match counting with cardinality. The students viewed and discussed a short movie on the explorer Christopher Columbus on the app BrainPop Jr.
Literature: "How to Apples Grow," "Apples, Apples, Apples," "The Wonders of Apples," "Where in the Wild," "Trees and Weather," "Picnic at Apple Park."
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