**The students have been pretty prepared for the weather. Please keep sending snow pants and boots. When we are in for the cold temperatures, the students will rotate from seeing a story in the auditorium, going up to the gym or to the library for games.
**Come One, Come All to the Kindergarten/First Grade Winter Concert on Wednesday, December 21st in the Irving Auditorium. There will be 2 performances due to the size of our auditorium--the first being at 8:15 and the second at 9:30. There will be a reception after both performances---Please join us for refreshments and conversation. Julianna's mom will be sending some crafts for the students to do in between performances. Thanks much!
**Our Book Buddies will be with us on Friday afternoon. They are going to do an iMovie getting to know you movie trailer. We will also ring in the New Year with them.
**Bear research projects are due Friday, December 22nd.
**Let me know if your child is traveling for the winter break. I will send a travel journal with them.
**Student Council reps, Julianna and Alec will have their final meeting for their term on Tuesday. Their last project is helping to sponsor the Secret Snowflake week which begins next week. Our class was matched up with another class....shhhhhh! It's a secret! The student have planned some cute things to do for them! In January, Student Council will be looking for 2 new reps. Thanks Julianna and Alec for all of your great ideas and service.
**School is closed for Winter Break--December 24th-January 8th. Classes resume on Monday, January 9th.
**In our Second Step lesson this week, the students discussed what to do if something happens by accident---how to let the person know? How would you check to see if they are okay?
**In Friendship Club this week, Ms. Bell Bey worked with the students on asking questions in order to seek answers around a certain subject.
** In Mr. Packer's Thinking Skills this week, Mr. Packer continued work on listening and using shapes to describe a sentence.
This week:
The students worked on rehearsing for the Winter Concert. They got their positions on the stage and part for each song. They are working hard and they sound great! The students continued their study of winter holidays. They are beginning to see the unifying theme of the use of lights in these celebrations. Candles, strands of lights, light of the North Star, lantern lights. Jeanette and Lilly's mom spoke to the students about Hanukkah. She brought lots of menorahs and dreidels and read a cool story to the class. Each student got gelt and a dreidel. Next week, Naomi D."s mom will speak about Kwanzaa. The students continue to listen to and compare and contrast Gingerbread stories. They examined the characters, setting and main events in the stories. How did it end? (eaten...not eaten) Who were the characters? (boy, girl, baby, man, cowboy, wolf, fox, coyote) What happened in the stories? They had loads of fun elbow chatting about and sharing their observations. We did a group Venn diagram comparing Gingerbread Man and Gingerbread Girl stories. In writing, they designed their own gingerbread figure and then wrote a description about their creation.
Reading/Language Arts: The students completed Unit 3 Transportation in our Treasures Reading series and began Unit 4 Food. The unit began with a question about where food comes from. The students accessed prior knowledge about stores, farms, markets, gardens and orchards as places where food is found. Some students offered that they had gardens in their backyard in the summer. The students listened to the Big Book story, "Apple Farmer Annie." They discussed where Annie lives and her daily activities as an apple farmer. Students made connections from their fall theme about apples, types of apples and what you can make with apples. Other students talked about a time when they went to a farmers market and bought apples and apple cider. Our target words are to and have. Our target letter and sound is Nn. The students reviewed the function of nouns and action words or verbs. They are also chatting about 2 consonants at the beginning or end or even in the middle of a word known as a consonant blend because you hear both sounds. The students used their elkonin boxes to blend and segment 4 sound words using consonant blends and 3 sound words using consonant digraphs or words that have 2 consonants together that make only 1 sound. They also worked with white board and markers adding, deleting and substituting sounds in words. Our Robust Vocabulary for this included FARMER, MARKET, INGREDIENTS, COMBINE, NUTRITIOUS. They continue to practice their reading fluency during our group read aloud time. Workstations this week included leveled readers with focus on fluency, story elements and sequencing events, word family activity, word work with substitution and reading CVC, CCVC and CVCC words.
Math: The students completed Module 2-The Study of Shapes and took their end of unit module assessment. They began Unit 3-Comparing Length, Capacity and Numbers to 10. The students began by exploring length--longer/shorter using a variety of nonstandard measures including cubes, string, bears. Students also continued work on vocabulary pertinent to the unit--long/short, enough/not enough, longer than/shorter than and the same as. Workstations included 2 digit number writing, counting quantities to 20, measuring objects using nonstandard measuring tools and finding the hidden partners using numbers 1-10.
Writing: The students continued practicing their uppercase letter formation. We quickly reviewed all uppercase letter forms. The students have been encouraged to practice writing both their first and last name. They each created a gingerbread person complete with as many details as they wanted. Then they wrote about their gingerbread person describing what they look like and what they can do. During Writer's Workshop this week, students continued work on revising old stories and writing new ones. The teaching point focused on writing partners listing to a story written by their partner and using the Writer's Checklist to listen for certain things as your partner reads their story. Listen for--I told, drew and wrote a story. I had a page that showed what happened first. My story told who was there, what they did and how the characters felt
Science: This week, the students took a look at the final topic--Weather. (How timely!) We used our calendar book where the students have been tracking the weather for the month of December. The students compared temperature, precipitation and the amount of sun, snow, clouds.
Technology: No New apps introduced this week.
Literature: "The Book of Celebrations" (highlighting Advent and Christmas), "Countdown to Hanukkah," "The Gingerbread Cowboy, " "Ninjabread Boy," "The Gingerbread Girl," "The Gingerbread Baby," "Gingerbread Friends."
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