Sunday, October 2, 2016

UPDATES for 9/26-9/30 2016

**It is hard to believe that September has come to an end!  The students are beginning to observe signs of the Fall season.  As we move on to October.......lots of cool things happening at our school and in our classroom.  So exciting!!
**We had our first BOOK BUDDY meeting with the students of Ms. Balick's 5th grade.  Each kindergarten student was paired with a 5th grade buddy.  The pair interviewed each other and completed a little keepsake book.  They then picked a story to share.  We will be meeting with our buddies once a month.  It was awesome!!!
**Eagle Extra classes have begun!  The students are enjoying the classes.
**Route to Reading will begin on Monday, October 3rd.  Our specific skills groupings will be every Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday from 1:50-2:20 pm.  You will receive notification on the skill your child will be working on and the teacher teaching that skill.   The students are looking forward to meeting new friends and teachers in their groups.
**Our Tech advisor, Mr. Karol will be on hand Tuesday, to assist our students as we begin Lexia Core 5 in the computer lab.  I have secured usernames and passwords for the students.  I will be sending them to you next Friday along with instructions for setting up a home program.  This program is super beneficial to our students and a great companion piece to our literacy program. Students will need assistance in typing in their username and password until they get the hang of it. We will be in the lab once a week and also on iPads once a week as part of our workstations.  Students will take a placement test and will work at their own pace at a level appropriate for them.
**You received information in your child's homework folder on WALK to SCHOOL DAY (October 5) PICTURE DAY (October 11th) and the FUN RUN FUNDRAISER (October 14th.) Any questions---please email me.  Also included is information and sign up for the EGG DROP/ACADEMIC FAIR that will be held on Wednesday, October 19th.  The students are really excited about both!  We had a great discussion on constructing vehicles that will hold a egg secure when dropped out of a 3rd floor school window!!!   We supply the eggs---you create the vehicle!  We also chatted about the Academic Fair and how it all can start with a question about something you want to know more about.  Ms. Creehan was not able to show us some examples last week, but she will be coming this week.  Please consider signing your child up if they are interested.  Ms. Noonan and I can assist with resources.
**There are 2 wonderful activities happening on Wednesday, October 12th---Author Lori Degman will visit Irving School at 12:45 pm.   At 10:00 am, The PTO is sponsoring a Mexican Dance Assembly to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month.  
**The Irving School Book Fair is the week of October 24th-27th.  We will be visiting the fair as a class.  It will be open after school and in the evening.  
**Parent/Teacher Conferences will be held on Monday, October 17th, Tuesday, October 18th and Wednesday, October 19th.  Many of you have already signed up.  I will be sending you a confirmation letter on Friday.  PLEASE NOTE--School is NOT in session the AFTERNOON of Thursday, October 20th and Friday, October 21st.  Dismissal will be at 11:00 am.  Hephzibah, District School Bus, River Forest Community Center, Toon Town and Magical Minds will pick up at 11:00 am.
**In Friendship Club this week, Dr. Bell Bey continued her discussion/activities on the Zones of Regulation.  The BLUE ZONE and the GREEN ZONE were discussed this week.  It is all about taking responsibility for your own behavior!!!!
**In Mr. Packer's Thinking Skills this week, the students created their own picture which included a black dot.  Some interesting "thinking outside of the box" going on.!!!!
**In our Second Step lesson this week, the students focused on using self-talk for staying on task.
This week:
We are now in the season of fall/autumn.  The students are beginning to observe changes taking place outside and in their home.  Some students are noticing leaves falling from the trees and whole trees beginning to change color.  In the morning, more students are coming to school with jackets and sweatshirts.  The are noticing less bugs outside.  Our nature table and microscope area is beginning to fill up with items to examine from outdoors.  The changing season has been perfect for our prep for our first science unit--Trees and Weather.  We will begin that next week.  We welcomed our Book Buddies at our station day time.  The students got to know one another, created an interview book with illustrations and writing and shared a story of their choice.  Check out our poster!
Reading/Language Arts:      We have begun Unit 1 FAMILIES in our Treasures Reading series. Students shared background knowledge about types of families they know about.  They discussed human families and animal families.  We also shared experiences about our families and how many family members we have.  The students listened to the Big Book story, "Whose Baby Is It?"  They reviewed the parts of the books--front  and back cover, spine and title page.  They also located where to find the page number.  Students noted the question and answer pattern of the book.  The sight words we and the were introduced.  We used our "feet" to play "Walk Your Words."  Our target sound
this week is Mm.  We used our sound toys and cards to tell if the sound was heard at the beginning or end of a target word.  The students worked on additional vocabulary when listening to the thinking fable, "The Lioness and the Ostrich."  This vocabulary will be referred to as ROBUST VOCABULARY.  Our words this week were PROTECT, RESEMBLE, TOGETHER, ANIMAL.  We defined the words and gave sentence examples.  It is a great way to boost vocabulary understanding. The students used the retelling cards to retell the Big Book story with a partner.  We read aloud our predecodable  story, "We Can."  The students continue to use their  famous pointing finger to track each word and picture when they read.  In our round robin reading, all students got a chance to read aloud to the group and also read to a partner.
Our summative text this week was "How Rocket Learned to Read."  The students used the same Blueprint Workmat format.  They listened as I read the story.  We discussed as a group sequencing events in the story.  They elbow chatted with a partner about characters, setting and events.  They volunteered to act out events in the story.  During our second reading of the story, students were already volunteering to help me write or draw a picture on the projected workmat. (We do)  The students tried some of their own writing.  Their summative Blueprints (you do) are beginning to show more details in their pictures and more students taking a try at writing about characters, setting and event.  I make my way around to each student during the process and record their thoughts if they are not writing.
The students continue work doing the Haggerty Blue Book exercises working on syllable counting, listening for the target sound at the beginning or end of a word, adding, deleting and substituting sounds to create new words and counting how many words there are in a sentence.  This week, we began the prep for our literacy workstations.  While I work with small groups with leveled readers, the students are working in small rotating groups.  Each group has a story to read to themselves, read again to a partner in their group containing the sight words we are studying that week and then working on activities emphasizing our unit and phonemic awareness (word work.)  Each week, the groups are assigned a "table manager".  Their jobs are to set out the materials needed, control the noise level and give gentle reminders to keep the group on task. We spent time this week role playing various scenes to a workstation.  We will begin our formal workstations next week.  Exciting!
Math:     The students continue to practice their number formation rhymes 0-9.   They continue to work on directionality of the number and beginning at the top when making the number.  Our math whole group lesson this week focused understanding the relationship between numbers and quantities and connecting counting to cardinality. (counting to answer "how many?")  The students are beginning to recognize that numbers can be represented in different ways.  A very fun activity called, "hidden partners" had students "finding the 2 small numbers that are "hiding" in the big number.  For example--I found a 4 and 1 hiding inside my 5 cubes.  A way to say 5 can be 1 and 4.  The students also experimented in vertical and horizontal row counting and matching the objects to the number. Math workstations this week included pattern block shape review, roll, grab and color, number writing, counting to 25 and beyond and recording how many dots?  We ended the week with a Subitize Challenge!
Writing:     In this weeks Writer's Workshop,  I reviewed with students about creating a picture in their mind on a topic before they write and draw about it.  Sometimes writers close their eyes, picture the topic first and then put all the details into the pictures and words.  Starting with a capital letter, spacing between words in sentence, stretching your words out and writing what you hear (can you hear the first sound--last sound--anything in the middle?) and using an ending mark were also reviewed.  The students also went into their Writer's Journal to review items that can assist them--their ABC sound/symbol sheet, the ABC's of names, a word list in their writing.  The students also reviewed looking at their work and saying "I am going to look back on my writing to see if I can add more to it."  I conference individually with students as they work providing support, encouragement and using modeling as well as  projected student work to assist.
Students continue to work on their Frog Jump letters F, E, D, P, B, R.  Where do you start all letters---AT THE TOP!  The students learned a song to help them to remember.  Also--the appearance of Mr. Smiley (smiley face) at the top left hand corner of their mini board is also an assist.  The students began work in their Orange Practice books.  They are also learning that good posture helps in good writing form.  Sitting in their chair, feet on the ground, one hand holding their pencil (tripod grasp!) the other holding down their paper or page is good practice for all writers!!!
Technology:      The students will take their auto place test for Lexia Core 5 this week.  In reading whole group, the app Montessori Crosswords was used to enhance the knowledge of putting together sounds to form a word.   This is a paid app but a very good one!  We concentrated on simple consonant -vowel-consonant word patterns.   We also used the app Magnetic Letters Hd, another paid app, for reinforcing sight word writing/recognition and sentence building.  In math whole group, the apps Subitize Tree, and Easy Match were used to enhance visual counting and looking for number patterns and ways to say a number and matching a number to quantity.
Literature:     "How Rocket Learned to Read," "Animal Babies," "Hop on Pop," "I'm Sorry," "1,2,3, Peas," "The Cheerios Counting Book."


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