Tuesday, June 6, 2017
Sunday, June 4, 2017
UPDATES for 5/30-6/2 2017
**The students are DAYS closer to becoming First Graders! They are feeling the change as well as seeing it. The classroom is slowly getting ready for Hephzibah Camp and my retirement. Our fish have found a good home in Glen Ellyn. Our Design Challenge Habitats have been recycled. Our ABC Countdown is coming to an end. The students had fun sharing their Toys, drawing their end of the year "Unique" portrait and sharing something of Value to them. On Friday, we Watched 2 great story book movies centering on Author Marcus Pfister's "The Rainbow Fish." Our last X,Y, Z is enclosed.
**The students helped weed our class garden bed. We will amend the soil and plant our baby zucchini, potatoes and pumpkin that have been started in our classroom.
**Our WALKING FIELD TRIP to the Oak Park Conservatory is Tuesday, June 6th. We will be leaving school at 9:00 and returning to school at 11:00 am. I STILL NEED MANY PERMISSION SLIPS! Please send them in. Once again, if your child is not attending the trip, I need to make alternate plans for them at school. Please let me know. Thanks!
**Ms. Noonan is still collecting LIBRARY BOOKS. We have 5 students with books out. Please send them back ASAP! Students with books out have the slip in their homework folder.
**The students had an assembly about the Oak Park Library Summer Reading Program. It starts June 8th. I am hoping lots of my students sign up!
**Our End of the Year Picnic at Rehm Park was awesome! We had perfect weather, plenty of pizza, veggies and fruit and a great time with families and kindergarten students! Thanks to all of you who helped make our day special.
**I was not able to attend the Back to School Block Party but heard it was great! Hope you all had fun. I heard lots of great dance music.
**OUR LAST DAY OF SCHOOL IS WEDNESDAY, JUNE 7th. We will have a regular morning session. In the afternoon, after gym class.....Families and Friends please join us beginning at 1:00 pm for autograph signing and community along with summer packets and report cards to wrap up an awesome year.
**Your child's report card envelope will contain......the report card, DIBELS and AIMSWEB end of the year reports, Route to Reading current skills and info on Irving School's Summer Math Incentive. The Summer Packet will include a journal, word book, math book and phonics skill/writing book. Just to keep everyone sharp!!!
**PLEASE KEEP SENDING YOUR CHILD"S BACKPACK!
**In our final Second Step lesson, the students reviewed all we have learned this year. We invited Ms. Grogan's class to have choice time in our classroom to practice our Fair Ways to Play Rules. So fun!
**Mr. Packer's concluded his Thinking Skills lesson with his "dot" lessons.
This week:
The students spent this week looking over their portfolios and writing folders. They were really astounded by the progress they had made. The writing folders were especially fun. Some students couldn't believe their own writing at the beginning of the year. The students helped put some of the choice time items in storage and spent time with each other during our choice time. We had our final meeting with our Book Buddies from Ms. Balicki's class. The students and buddies shared stories together and we wished them well in their transition to Julian.
Reading/Language Arts: The students continued reviewing all they learned this year. They created their own workstations and we even mixed up the reading groups so everyone could be together and hear each other read. They are READING EVERYWHERE!! It is a great sound!
Math: The students continue to work in their June Calendar Books and their math review journals. They are doing both independently. They are counting, adding, subtracting, reading and solving story problems, writing equations, using the number line, subitizing, using teen numbers, counting by 1's, 5's, 10's and more, differentiating between 2D and 3D shapes and using number bonds and finding the missing addends. Yikes!!!!! They know a lot!
Writing: The students finished their "Thank You" notes to Ms. D. and Reading Grandma. I will send them off soon. Looking thru their Writing Folders was so fun and enlightening. Hope you enjoy them too!
Science: The students did their final investigation on the similarities and differences between guppies and goldfish. We invited Ms, Grogan's class to investigate with us. Each group had time to observe up close and personal both fish tanks. Awesome conversations and discoveries! Lots of great interactions between students in their sharing of information. The students recorded their observations in their science notebooks.
Technology: The students are putting the finishing touches on their iMovie entitled, "The Best Part of Kindergarten." Each student chose an aspect of Kindergarten and wrote a script to recite and created the scene that I filmed. Stay tuned!
Literature: "Nugget and Fang," "Under the Sea," "Coral Reef Homes," "Tropical Fish," "Sea Shore," "There's a Sea in my Bedroom," "When It's the Last Day of School."
**The students helped weed our class garden bed. We will amend the soil and plant our baby zucchini, potatoes and pumpkin that have been started in our classroom.
**Our WALKING FIELD TRIP to the Oak Park Conservatory is Tuesday, June 6th. We will be leaving school at 9:00 and returning to school at 11:00 am. I STILL NEED MANY PERMISSION SLIPS! Please send them in. Once again, if your child is not attending the trip, I need to make alternate plans for them at school. Please let me know. Thanks!
**Ms. Noonan is still collecting LIBRARY BOOKS. We have 5 students with books out. Please send them back ASAP! Students with books out have the slip in their homework folder.
**The students had an assembly about the Oak Park Library Summer Reading Program. It starts June 8th. I am hoping lots of my students sign up!
**Our End of the Year Picnic at Rehm Park was awesome! We had perfect weather, plenty of pizza, veggies and fruit and a great time with families and kindergarten students! Thanks to all of you who helped make our day special.
**I was not able to attend the Back to School Block Party but heard it was great! Hope you all had fun. I heard lots of great dance music.
**OUR LAST DAY OF SCHOOL IS WEDNESDAY, JUNE 7th. We will have a regular morning session. In the afternoon, after gym class.....Families and Friends please join us beginning at 1:00 pm for autograph signing and community along with summer packets and report cards to wrap up an awesome year.
**Your child's report card envelope will contain......the report card, DIBELS and AIMSWEB end of the year reports, Route to Reading current skills and info on Irving School's Summer Math Incentive. The Summer Packet will include a journal, word book, math book and phonics skill/writing book. Just to keep everyone sharp!!!
**PLEASE KEEP SENDING YOUR CHILD"S BACKPACK!
**In our final Second Step lesson, the students reviewed all we have learned this year. We invited Ms. Grogan's class to have choice time in our classroom to practice our Fair Ways to Play Rules. So fun!
**Mr. Packer's concluded his Thinking Skills lesson with his "dot" lessons.
This week:
The students spent this week looking over their portfolios and writing folders. They were really astounded by the progress they had made. The writing folders were especially fun. Some students couldn't believe their own writing at the beginning of the year. The students helped put some of the choice time items in storage and spent time with each other during our choice time. We had our final meeting with our Book Buddies from Ms. Balicki's class. The students and buddies shared stories together and we wished them well in their transition to Julian.
Reading/Language Arts: The students continued reviewing all they learned this year. They created their own workstations and we even mixed up the reading groups so everyone could be together and hear each other read. They are READING EVERYWHERE!! It is a great sound!
Math: The students continue to work in their June Calendar Books and their math review journals. They are doing both independently. They are counting, adding, subtracting, reading and solving story problems, writing equations, using the number line, subitizing, using teen numbers, counting by 1's, 5's, 10's and more, differentiating between 2D and 3D shapes and using number bonds and finding the missing addends. Yikes!!!!! They know a lot!
Writing: The students finished their "Thank You" notes to Ms. D. and Reading Grandma. I will send them off soon. Looking thru their Writing Folders was so fun and enlightening. Hope you enjoy them too!
Science: The students did their final investigation on the similarities and differences between guppies and goldfish. We invited Ms, Grogan's class to investigate with us. Each group had time to observe up close and personal both fish tanks. Awesome conversations and discoveries! Lots of great interactions between students in their sharing of information. The students recorded their observations in their science notebooks.
Technology: The students are putting the finishing touches on their iMovie entitled, "The Best Part of Kindergarten." Each student chose an aspect of Kindergarten and wrote a script to recite and created the scene that I filmed. Stay tuned!
Literature: "Nugget and Fang," "Under the Sea," "Coral Reef Homes," "Tropical Fish," "Sea Shore," "There's a Sea in my Bedroom," "When It's the Last Day of School."
Friday, May 26, 2017
UPDATES for 5/15-5/19 and 5/22-5/26 2017
**Thanks for your patience. I will be recapping the past 2 weeks. Time is really flying by in Kindergarten!! We are getting closer and closer to becoming First Graders!! The students are doing more independent work like a First Grader. My mantra--"Let's act like First Graders and........" So far......so good.
**The ABC Countdown continues! King and Queen Day were lots of fun! The King's Decree---extra recess, extra choice time, extra reading time and feed the fish. Queen's Decree---feed the fish, extra recess, water the plants.
**Next weeks Countdown activities are in your child's homework folder
**The Poetry Slam was the bomb! Our "Lil Slammers" Lilah, Alec, Camille, Jeanette and Lily, Zoey, Nyah and guest little sister, Nora did such a good job! So proud!!! They represented our class well. Start planning for next year!
**I was not able to make the Dance Party, but heard all who attended had a blast!
**Pacers Walking/Running Club will have its final run/walk on Friday, June 2nd. The students will bring home their feet necklace that they have been working on.
**Our walking trip to Maze Library was awesome! We had a beautiful afternoon walk. Maze librarian, Ms. Sarah had a special reading/movement session and provided a tour of the library. The students then got to read, work a puzzle, build and color in the Children's Section. Several students got their LIBRARY CARDS. They are in a white envelope in their backpacks. Our hope is that they will be using them from now on to take out books. There is a SUMMER READING CHALLENGE at all Oak Park Libraries that starts when school is out. We will have an assembly on June 1st at Irving and Ms. Sarah will come to explain the challenge. Thanks to K. James, Judea's Grandpa, J. Flannery, M. Maldonado, RD Danley and S. Raphael for their help.
**Olympic Day was so fun! Team Gullo showed great teamwork and sportsmanship during all activities. Hula Hoops, Basketball Shoot, Nerf Ball Battle, Yoga, 50 Yard Dash, Scooter Relay, Team Skiing and Parachute were just some of our activities. The students watch a video on why Olympic Day is important produced by 3 students from the Julian Middle School--2 are former Irving students from my class. The boys helped out during our parachute activity.
**Our siblings are the coolest! A BIG SHOUT OUT to Rylee, Emmett, Bobby, Jasmyn, Sophie, AJ and Cora who joined our class and had a ball!
**Information and permission slip for Pizza and Play End of the Year Family Picnic went home last week. The cost is $4.00 which includes pizza and a drink. There is a Sign Up Genius online that I sent last week for sign up to provide veggies and fruit along with set up, clean up, blankets, card tables, vans for transport, napkins, plates and cups. I have 2 large thermos containers for water and fruit punch. You can drop off all items at the patio door that morning or send them with your child. If your child does not want pizza or cannot have pizza, please send a lunch. We have a permit for 9:30-noon on Wednesday, May 31st at Rehm Park. Come join us! I will resend the the Sign Up Genius.
**Permission slip and info on our last WALKING FIELD TRIP to the OAK PARK CONSERVATORY is in your child's backpack. We will need 3 volunteers.
**Students will continue to bring home portfolios of work from Writer's Workshop and their Science Notebooks. WOW! It's amazing!
**Homework has ended but.......keep reading every night!
**ALL LIBRARY BOOKS ARE NOW DUE TO MS. NOONAN!
**ALL BUSY READERS ARE DUE TO MS. GULLO!
**The students said goodbye to Mrs. D and Reading Grandma Mary. We are so grateful for their help. Volunteers are so very important! We love our GRANDMAS!!!!
**Please continue to send your child's backpack. Writing portfolios, calendar books, science notebooks and math journals will be coming home.
**Our Final Second Step lesson is next Tuesday, We will be inviting Ms. Grogan's class to help us demonstrate Fair Play/Sharing/Positive Interactions by sharing our choice time with them so they can have dramatic play with us in our design challenge structures.
**Friendship Club has concluded for the year.
**Mr Packer will have his final Thinking Skills session next Tuesday.
**NO SCHOOL--May 29th--Memorial Day observance.
**The LAST DAY of SCHOOL is Wednesday, June 7th. We will have a regular morning session. In the afternoon, we will have our gym class and then beginning at 1:00 pm families can join us for autograph signing, light refreshments, report cards and summer packets to wrap up this awesome year.
The past two weeks:
The students continue to observe our goldfish and guppies. They also are monitoring what is growing in our inside box gardens. The zucchini and milkweed along with pumpkins, cucumbers and carrots are growing. We will be planting these items in our outdoor garden bed next week. The students are examining their work portfolios from this trimester and really realizing how much they have learned. Next week, they will look at their writing portfolio and draw a current picture of themselves and compare it with their drawing from the first day of school. Amazing!!! The students began work on an iMovie about the Best Part of Kindergarten. They chose a subject and wrote a script and I began filming. We will finish edit it and post it before school ends.
Reading/Language Arts: Students continue to work on skills and literature from Treasures Units 9 and 10. Sight words for this week are with and my. Target sounds are Jj and Qu along with long vowels. The students reviewed all their Kindergarten sight words and some First Grade words!
Students continue to review all skills on the Phonemic Awareness Continuum as per our route to Reading format. They used their dry erase boards to practice blending and segmenting 3-4-5 and even some 6 sound words. We are using many words from the First Grade list. The students listened to the Big Book story, "Fish Faces." They were so interested in the world of fish and sea creatures. They elbow chatted about what their favorite fish was in the book and why it was their favorite. The students worked on a summative blueprint about comparing illustrations in a text and writing a summative narrative about what kind of garden they would grow. Robust Vocabulary included CONFUSED, DESCRIBE, INSIST, TEXTURE, UNDERSTAND. Workstations this week included leveled reader self read, partner read and elbow chatting about story elements, comparing and contrasting stories, vocabulary and word choices, drawing a picture of your favorite sea creature and telling why you like it, sorting fish pictures and explaining in writing how you sorted them and using 5 of your sight words--write a sentence using each word. In week two----the students chose their own reading material from an approved list and came up with their own activities to do to connect their reading and writing. They also chose an iPad activity that best enhanced what they were studying in their workstation. I loved hearing group, partner and individual reading as I made my way from small group to small group. The great discussions and elbow chats the students had with one another were great! There was also time set up for literacy bag reading. They worked together with partners to create sentences using their sight words and pictures. Another focus was on punctuation marks used at the end of their sentences. Workstations included level reader group discussions and collaboration on story elements and completing an story elements butterfly, discussing and writing about fantasy vs reality in a particular subject, working on blends and digraphs, discussing the author's purpose in writing particular story and creating ccvc and cvcc words.
Math: The students work to complete the study of teen numbers in Module 5 of the Eureka Math series. They had some practice using their own rekenrek moving the beads to indicate one group of tens and some more to create the teen numbers called out. The students also worked on counting on and writing on from a random number. They continue to work on reading a story problem, deciding on the process, illustrating, writing the equation and showing it in a number bond. Workstations for the past two weeks included working independently in their mini math journal, finding the missing addend, counting on from a random number, playing "Pop for Numbers" and "Addition and Subtraction Sort."
Writing: The students continue to work on punctuation, spacing and use of adjectives in their sentences. We are currently writing "Thank You " notes to our grandmas.
Science: Thanks to Petco and Ms. Trudell, we have goldfish and a heater for our guppies! The students are fascinated by these creatures and spend time observing their movements. They delight in helping to feed them. I set both tanks under my iPad and we had live feed in order to really observe the behaviors. Focus questions included: What are the parts of goldfish and guppies? What do goldfish and guppies need to live? What do gold fish and guppies do? The students learned many facts about goldfish like they can't close their eyes because they have no lids so they rest with their eyes open. In the wild, goldfish eat small crustaceans, insect and plants. They also learned some guppy facts like guppies are named after the man who discovered them. (Robert Guppy!) Guppies are sometimes called million fish because of how quickly they can have babies and sometime they are called rainbow fish because they come in so many colors. Guppies are omnivores. The students drew diagrams and labeled parts in their science notebooks. They also wrote a fact and wrote about what they observed. Target words included GOLDFISH, GUPPY, POND, FRESH WATER, SALT WATER, AQUARIUM, GILLS, EYES, SCALES, MOUTH. Next week--comparing goldfish and guppies--How are they alike? How are they different?
Technology: New iMovie in the works. Small groups in Reading used the apps Rocketspeller, Montessori Crosswords, Oz Phonics and the Blends Train to enhance their word study. In Math small groups used the apps Subitize Tree, Number Find, Ten Frame Game, Number Rack and Animal Math to enhance their study of addition and subtraction, teen numbers, number order, visualizing number, finding the missing addends and solving story problems.
Literature: "Memories of a Goldfish," "Out in the Ocean," "Coral Reefs," "Rainbow Fish Lost at Sea," "Tropical Fish," "Swimmy," "World's Weirdest Sea Creatures," "Sea Shapes,""There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Shell," "Fishy Faces," "Exploring the Beach."
**The ABC Countdown continues! King and Queen Day were lots of fun! The King's Decree---extra recess, extra choice time, extra reading time and feed the fish. Queen's Decree---feed the fish, extra recess, water the plants.
**Next weeks Countdown activities are in your child's homework folder
**The Poetry Slam was the bomb! Our "Lil Slammers" Lilah, Alec, Camille, Jeanette and Lily, Zoey, Nyah and guest little sister, Nora did such a good job! So proud!!! They represented our class well. Start planning for next year!
**I was not able to make the Dance Party, but heard all who attended had a blast!
**Pacers Walking/Running Club will have its final run/walk on Friday, June 2nd. The students will bring home their feet necklace that they have been working on.
**Our walking trip to Maze Library was awesome! We had a beautiful afternoon walk. Maze librarian, Ms. Sarah had a special reading/movement session and provided a tour of the library. The students then got to read, work a puzzle, build and color in the Children's Section. Several students got their LIBRARY CARDS. They are in a white envelope in their backpacks. Our hope is that they will be using them from now on to take out books. There is a SUMMER READING CHALLENGE at all Oak Park Libraries that starts when school is out. We will have an assembly on June 1st at Irving and Ms. Sarah will come to explain the challenge. Thanks to K. James, Judea's Grandpa, J. Flannery, M. Maldonado, RD Danley and S. Raphael for their help.
**Olympic Day was so fun! Team Gullo showed great teamwork and sportsmanship during all activities. Hula Hoops, Basketball Shoot, Nerf Ball Battle, Yoga, 50 Yard Dash, Scooter Relay, Team Skiing and Parachute were just some of our activities. The students watch a video on why Olympic Day is important produced by 3 students from the Julian Middle School--2 are former Irving students from my class. The boys helped out during our parachute activity.
**Our siblings are the coolest! A BIG SHOUT OUT to Rylee, Emmett, Bobby, Jasmyn, Sophie, AJ and Cora who joined our class and had a ball!
**Information and permission slip for Pizza and Play End of the Year Family Picnic went home last week. The cost is $4.00 which includes pizza and a drink. There is a Sign Up Genius online that I sent last week for sign up to provide veggies and fruit along with set up, clean up, blankets, card tables, vans for transport, napkins, plates and cups. I have 2 large thermos containers for water and fruit punch. You can drop off all items at the patio door that morning or send them with your child. If your child does not want pizza or cannot have pizza, please send a lunch. We have a permit for 9:30-noon on Wednesday, May 31st at Rehm Park. Come join us! I will resend the the Sign Up Genius.
**Permission slip and info on our last WALKING FIELD TRIP to the OAK PARK CONSERVATORY is in your child's backpack. We will need 3 volunteers.
**Students will continue to bring home portfolios of work from Writer's Workshop and their Science Notebooks. WOW! It's amazing!
**Homework has ended but.......keep reading every night!
**ALL LIBRARY BOOKS ARE NOW DUE TO MS. NOONAN!
**ALL BUSY READERS ARE DUE TO MS. GULLO!
**The students said goodbye to Mrs. D and Reading Grandma Mary. We are so grateful for their help. Volunteers are so very important! We love our GRANDMAS!!!!
**Please continue to send your child's backpack. Writing portfolios, calendar books, science notebooks and math journals will be coming home.
**Our Final Second Step lesson is next Tuesday, We will be inviting Ms. Grogan's class to help us demonstrate Fair Play/Sharing/Positive Interactions by sharing our choice time with them so they can have dramatic play with us in our design challenge structures.
**Friendship Club has concluded for the year.
**Mr Packer will have his final Thinking Skills session next Tuesday.
**NO SCHOOL--May 29th--Memorial Day observance.
**The LAST DAY of SCHOOL is Wednesday, June 7th. We will have a regular morning session. In the afternoon, we will have our gym class and then beginning at 1:00 pm families can join us for autograph signing, light refreshments, report cards and summer packets to wrap up this awesome year.
The past two weeks:
The students continue to observe our goldfish and guppies. They also are monitoring what is growing in our inside box gardens. The zucchini and milkweed along with pumpkins, cucumbers and carrots are growing. We will be planting these items in our outdoor garden bed next week. The students are examining their work portfolios from this trimester and really realizing how much they have learned. Next week, they will look at their writing portfolio and draw a current picture of themselves and compare it with their drawing from the first day of school. Amazing!!! The students began work on an iMovie about the Best Part of Kindergarten. They chose a subject and wrote a script and I began filming. We will finish edit it and post it before school ends.
Reading/Language Arts: Students continue to work on skills and literature from Treasures Units 9 and 10. Sight words for this week are with and my. Target sounds are Jj and Qu along with long vowels. The students reviewed all their Kindergarten sight words and some First Grade words!
Students continue to review all skills on the Phonemic Awareness Continuum as per our route to Reading format. They used their dry erase boards to practice blending and segmenting 3-4-5 and even some 6 sound words. We are using many words from the First Grade list. The students listened to the Big Book story, "Fish Faces." They were so interested in the world of fish and sea creatures. They elbow chatted about what their favorite fish was in the book and why it was their favorite. The students worked on a summative blueprint about comparing illustrations in a text and writing a summative narrative about what kind of garden they would grow. Robust Vocabulary included CONFUSED, DESCRIBE, INSIST, TEXTURE, UNDERSTAND. Workstations this week included leveled reader self read, partner read and elbow chatting about story elements, comparing and contrasting stories, vocabulary and word choices, drawing a picture of your favorite sea creature and telling why you like it, sorting fish pictures and explaining in writing how you sorted them and using 5 of your sight words--write a sentence using each word. In week two----the students chose their own reading material from an approved list and came up with their own activities to do to connect their reading and writing. They also chose an iPad activity that best enhanced what they were studying in their workstation. I loved hearing group, partner and individual reading as I made my way from small group to small group. The great discussions and elbow chats the students had with one another were great! There was also time set up for literacy bag reading. They worked together with partners to create sentences using their sight words and pictures. Another focus was on punctuation marks used at the end of their sentences. Workstations included level reader group discussions and collaboration on story elements and completing an story elements butterfly, discussing and writing about fantasy vs reality in a particular subject, working on blends and digraphs, discussing the author's purpose in writing particular story and creating ccvc and cvcc words.
Math: The students work to complete the study of teen numbers in Module 5 of the Eureka Math series. They had some practice using their own rekenrek moving the beads to indicate one group of tens and some more to create the teen numbers called out. The students also worked on counting on and writing on from a random number. They continue to work on reading a story problem, deciding on the process, illustrating, writing the equation and showing it in a number bond. Workstations for the past two weeks included working independently in their mini math journal, finding the missing addend, counting on from a random number, playing "Pop for Numbers" and "Addition and Subtraction Sort."
Writing: The students continue to work on punctuation, spacing and use of adjectives in their sentences. We are currently writing "Thank You " notes to our grandmas.
Science: Thanks to Petco and Ms. Trudell, we have goldfish and a heater for our guppies! The students are fascinated by these creatures and spend time observing their movements. They delight in helping to feed them. I set both tanks under my iPad and we had live feed in order to really observe the behaviors. Focus questions included: What are the parts of goldfish and guppies? What do goldfish and guppies need to live? What do gold fish and guppies do? The students learned many facts about goldfish like they can't close their eyes because they have no lids so they rest with their eyes open. In the wild, goldfish eat small crustaceans, insect and plants. They also learned some guppy facts like guppies are named after the man who discovered them. (Robert Guppy!) Guppies are sometimes called million fish because of how quickly they can have babies and sometime they are called rainbow fish because they come in so many colors. Guppies are omnivores. The students drew diagrams and labeled parts in their science notebooks. They also wrote a fact and wrote about what they observed. Target words included GOLDFISH, GUPPY, POND, FRESH WATER, SALT WATER, AQUARIUM, GILLS, EYES, SCALES, MOUTH. Next week--comparing goldfish and guppies--How are they alike? How are they different?
Technology: New iMovie in the works. Small groups in Reading used the apps Rocketspeller, Montessori Crosswords, Oz Phonics and the Blends Train to enhance their word study. In Math small groups used the apps Subitize Tree, Number Find, Ten Frame Game, Number Rack and Animal Math to enhance their study of addition and subtraction, teen numbers, number order, visualizing number, finding the missing addends and solving story problems.
Literature: "Memories of a Goldfish," "Out in the Ocean," "Coral Reefs," "Rainbow Fish Lost at Sea," "Tropical Fish," "Swimmy," "World's Weirdest Sea Creatures," "Sea Shapes,""There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Shell," "Fishy Faces," "Exploring the Beach."
Tuesday, May 16, 2017
UPDATES for 5/8-5/12 2017
**The students are having a great time with the ABC Countdown! The students enjoyed their visit to First Grade. They met the teachers and toured the classrooms. In Ms. Solomon's First Grade, the students asked thoughtful questions about types of classwork, snack, homework, choice time and Eagle Essentials expectations. First Grade students happily answered their questions. First Grade is becoming very real!!!
**The students will start bringing home their work portfolios from Trimesters 1 and 2 next week. They will have a chance to look back and see how far they have come!
**Public Service Announcement---With the warm weather approaching, many students will want to wear sandals. I am asking that all students wear gym shoes or closed toe shoes. Sandals are okay for the classroom but when we are outside on the playground......let's protect our feet!!!!
**The ABC COUNTDOWN continues!! Next week: Monday-Joke Day-bring in your favorite joke to share, Tuesday-King Day-boys rule and will set the tone of the day. Wednesday-Lunch Outside Day-instead of the lunchroom, we will eat outside on our picnic blankets, Thursday-Music Day-students can bring in CD's with appropriate music to listen to while they work. Students suggested Kidz Bop, Italian music, opera and music from a movie. Friday-Name Day-Write your name in bubble letters and decorate it. There is a hard copy in your child's homework folder.
**The students will do their last "traveling" for the Traveling Poets project on Wednesday, May 17th. They have done such a great job! We are also enjoying the students who travel to our classroom.
**Next week will be the last LAST LIBRARY BOOK CHECK OUT. All student books will be due on Friday, May 26th.
**The ART FEST/POETRY SLAM is this THURSDAY, May 18th from 6-8 pm all around the school. COME ON OUT to see student art work, a play, the Irving chorus, play Spanish games and hear and see the POETRY SLAM. We now have 6 "little slammers!" Our own Mr. Williams will be the "MC." There is still time to sign up. It is great fun!
**DANCE PARTY sponsored by the 5th Grade is Friday, May 18th from 5-7 pm in the gym. The cost is $1.00. The money raised will help fund their send off and future outdoor ed scholarships.
**I am continuing with final assessments for the last report card. They will be completed in the next few weeks.
**Keep sending in FIELD TRIP slips and LIBRARY CARD APPLICATIONS for our Maze Library Walking Field Trip on Thursday, May 25th leaving at 12:40 and returning to school at 2:15. I need to turn in all applications to the library by Thursday, May 18th so they can be processed. We have lots of volunteers! Let's hope for great weather!
**OLYMPIC DAY is Friday, May 26th from 8:30-11:00 am. Come on out and see Team Gullo demonstrate strength, endurance and teamwork. This year, we will be joined by two former Irving students who are now 8th graders. They will be helping out as part of their service project.
**Look for information and permission slip for PIZZA and PLAY End of the Year Family Picnic at Rehm Park next week. I will be sending you a link to a Sign Up Genius for supplies, fruits and veggies.
**Future Field Trip-Oak Park Conservatory on Tuesday, June 6th-9:30-10:30 am.
**No School-May 29th-Memorial Day Observance.
**Our Reading Grandma Mary and Ms. D will finish out their year with us next week. What valuable volunteers they have been! We love our grandmas!!
**In our Second Step lesson this week, the focus continued to be on ways to play fair and problem solving.
**In Friendship Club this week, Dr. Bell Bey began wrap up for the year reviewing the behavior "Thinkables" and "Unthinkables."
**In Mr. Packer's thinking Skills this week, Mr. Packer continued work on looking for details and visualization.
This week:
The students finished helping me edit their iMovie of the Design Challenge. Hope you enjoy it! The students are sensing that the end of kindergarten is near. There is excitement in the air and perhaps for some.... a little anxiety. We will be working through it in our classroom chats. Students are asking questions about new teachers, new friendships and expectations. They are also thinking about friends who may be moving away or going to another school next year. Turning into a First Grader is BIG!! Station day activities this week included creating a pattern block fish, sight word search, simple sentence--read it and draw it, seed sequence and ladybug addition/equation writing.
Reading/Language Arts: The students continue work on skills and literature from Treasures Unit 9 Amazing Creatures and Unit 10 We Know A Lot. Students took a look a the world of bugs and continued work on What is an insect? Can you name the similarities and difference between an insect and a spider? Sight words for this week were has and look. Target sounds were Jj and Yy. Students spent time with a partner using their word cards, pictures and punctuation creating sentences. Students continued to work on using and recognizing nouns, verbs, pronouns and adjectives. Each day this week, the students worked on group substitution activities to strengthen sound recognition and automatic recording of sounds to create words. We are on the last few exercises in our Haggerty Blue Book. Students are also continuing to work on formative and summative blueprints on word choice and how illustrations are important to the text. Robust Vocabulary for this week included GULP, FANTASY, INCREDIBLE, REALITY. Workstations for this week included leveled reader self read, partner read and elbow chat about story elements, comparing and contrasting stories, working with vocabulary and word choice, responding in writing to what insect do you like and why do you like it?--opinion writing, writing 4 facts about insects, word work on short and long e, writing sentences using your sight words, choosing an illustration from the text and telling in writing what information the picture gives you and why it is important and working with word families ut, et, and en.
Math: The students continue to study teen numbers in Module 5 of the their Eureka Math series. Lessons this week focused on counting on from a random teen number and showing, counting and writing the answer to a "how many" question in linear and array configurations. Students are working with counting different configurations of teen numbers and pulling them forward to group them by tens and some more. The students are also working on lessons that focus on counting up and down by tens to 100 with Say and Find Groups of ten. Workstations this week included finding the number that comes next, before or after the targeted number, playing make 5 Bingo, writing numbers 1-150, reading and solving a story problem by illustrating, writing the equation and number bond and building new shapes using existing pattern blocks.
Writing: The students do continue to review upper and lowercase letter number formation. You should receive a letter in the mail sometime this week with your students persuasive writing. In Writer's Workshop this week, the students wrote about topics that mean a lot to them---keeping the Earth clean, helping others, following the Eagle Essentials, being a good friend, preparing for First grade were some of the topics. The students are really working on using their writer's checklist to proof read, use punctuation and capital letter at the beginning and have their sentences have meaning and details.
Science: No goldfish or guppies in sight. Ms. Gullo will be going to the Pet Store this weekend to get some goldfish and guppies!! In the meantime, we began our prep on what is a fish? On the plant front----our baby plants are ready to go home! Happy Mother's Day! Please read the information sheet in your child's homework folder. We took a look at the root systems of our flower seedlings. The students also planted milkweed and zucchini seeds in our classroom garden. We will put these in our Irving Garden bed. Alice's giant sweet potato has MANY roots and big leaves!! The potatoes will also go into the Irving Garden. Stay tuned!!!
Technology: Our iMovie has been edited and is ready to be viewed! The students are really excited and proud to show you all the work that went into their Design Challenge! They want to do another movie!!!
Literature: "The Tiny Seed," "Eating the Alphabet," "Planting a Rainbow," "The Very Hungry Caterpillar," "What is a Fish?" "Swimmy," "A Fish is a Fish," "Under the Water," "Sea Life," "Oceans," "Fishes."
**The students will start bringing home their work portfolios from Trimesters 1 and 2 next week. They will have a chance to look back and see how far they have come!
**Public Service Announcement---With the warm weather approaching, many students will want to wear sandals. I am asking that all students wear gym shoes or closed toe shoes. Sandals are okay for the classroom but when we are outside on the playground......let's protect our feet!!!!
**The ABC COUNTDOWN continues!! Next week: Monday-Joke Day-bring in your favorite joke to share, Tuesday-King Day-boys rule and will set the tone of the day. Wednesday-Lunch Outside Day-instead of the lunchroom, we will eat outside on our picnic blankets, Thursday-Music Day-students can bring in CD's with appropriate music to listen to while they work. Students suggested Kidz Bop, Italian music, opera and music from a movie. Friday-Name Day-Write your name in bubble letters and decorate it. There is a hard copy in your child's homework folder.
**The students will do their last "traveling" for the Traveling Poets project on Wednesday, May 17th. They have done such a great job! We are also enjoying the students who travel to our classroom.
**Next week will be the last LAST LIBRARY BOOK CHECK OUT. All student books will be due on Friday, May 26th.
**The ART FEST/POETRY SLAM is this THURSDAY, May 18th from 6-8 pm all around the school. COME ON OUT to see student art work, a play, the Irving chorus, play Spanish games and hear and see the POETRY SLAM. We now have 6 "little slammers!" Our own Mr. Williams will be the "MC." There is still time to sign up. It is great fun!
**DANCE PARTY sponsored by the 5th Grade is Friday, May 18th from 5-7 pm in the gym. The cost is $1.00. The money raised will help fund their send off and future outdoor ed scholarships.
**I am continuing with final assessments for the last report card. They will be completed in the next few weeks.
**Keep sending in FIELD TRIP slips and LIBRARY CARD APPLICATIONS for our Maze Library Walking Field Trip on Thursday, May 25th leaving at 12:40 and returning to school at 2:15. I need to turn in all applications to the library by Thursday, May 18th so they can be processed. We have lots of volunteers! Let's hope for great weather!
**OLYMPIC DAY is Friday, May 26th from 8:30-11:00 am. Come on out and see Team Gullo demonstrate strength, endurance and teamwork. This year, we will be joined by two former Irving students who are now 8th graders. They will be helping out as part of their service project.
**Look for information and permission slip for PIZZA and PLAY End of the Year Family Picnic at Rehm Park next week. I will be sending you a link to a Sign Up Genius for supplies, fruits and veggies.
**Future Field Trip-Oak Park Conservatory on Tuesday, June 6th-9:30-10:30 am.
**No School-May 29th-Memorial Day Observance.
**Our Reading Grandma Mary and Ms. D will finish out their year with us next week. What valuable volunteers they have been! We love our grandmas!!
**In our Second Step lesson this week, the focus continued to be on ways to play fair and problem solving.
**In Friendship Club this week, Dr. Bell Bey began wrap up for the year reviewing the behavior "Thinkables" and "Unthinkables."
**In Mr. Packer's thinking Skills this week, Mr. Packer continued work on looking for details and visualization.
This week:
The students finished helping me edit their iMovie of the Design Challenge. Hope you enjoy it! The students are sensing that the end of kindergarten is near. There is excitement in the air and perhaps for some.... a little anxiety. We will be working through it in our classroom chats. Students are asking questions about new teachers, new friendships and expectations. They are also thinking about friends who may be moving away or going to another school next year. Turning into a First Grader is BIG!! Station day activities this week included creating a pattern block fish, sight word search, simple sentence--read it and draw it, seed sequence and ladybug addition/equation writing.
Reading/Language Arts: The students continue work on skills and literature from Treasures Unit 9 Amazing Creatures and Unit 10 We Know A Lot. Students took a look a the world of bugs and continued work on What is an insect? Can you name the similarities and difference between an insect and a spider? Sight words for this week were has and look. Target sounds were Jj and Yy. Students spent time with a partner using their word cards, pictures and punctuation creating sentences. Students continued to work on using and recognizing nouns, verbs, pronouns and adjectives. Each day this week, the students worked on group substitution activities to strengthen sound recognition and automatic recording of sounds to create words. We are on the last few exercises in our Haggerty Blue Book. Students are also continuing to work on formative and summative blueprints on word choice and how illustrations are important to the text. Robust Vocabulary for this week included GULP, FANTASY, INCREDIBLE, REALITY. Workstations for this week included leveled reader self read, partner read and elbow chat about story elements, comparing and contrasting stories, working with vocabulary and word choice, responding in writing to what insect do you like and why do you like it?--opinion writing, writing 4 facts about insects, word work on short and long e, writing sentences using your sight words, choosing an illustration from the text and telling in writing what information the picture gives you and why it is important and working with word families ut, et, and en.
Math: The students continue to study teen numbers in Module 5 of the their Eureka Math series. Lessons this week focused on counting on from a random teen number and showing, counting and writing the answer to a "how many" question in linear and array configurations. Students are working with counting different configurations of teen numbers and pulling them forward to group them by tens and some more. The students are also working on lessons that focus on counting up and down by tens to 100 with Say and Find Groups of ten. Workstations this week included finding the number that comes next, before or after the targeted number, playing make 5 Bingo, writing numbers 1-150, reading and solving a story problem by illustrating, writing the equation and number bond and building new shapes using existing pattern blocks.
Writing: The students do continue to review upper and lowercase letter number formation. You should receive a letter in the mail sometime this week with your students persuasive writing. In Writer's Workshop this week, the students wrote about topics that mean a lot to them---keeping the Earth clean, helping others, following the Eagle Essentials, being a good friend, preparing for First grade were some of the topics. The students are really working on using their writer's checklist to proof read, use punctuation and capital letter at the beginning and have their sentences have meaning and details.
Science: No goldfish or guppies in sight. Ms. Gullo will be going to the Pet Store this weekend to get some goldfish and guppies!! In the meantime, we began our prep on what is a fish? On the plant front----our baby plants are ready to go home! Happy Mother's Day! Please read the information sheet in your child's homework folder. We took a look at the root systems of our flower seedlings. The students also planted milkweed and zucchini seeds in our classroom garden. We will put these in our Irving Garden bed. Alice's giant sweet potato has MANY roots and big leaves!! The potatoes will also go into the Irving Garden. Stay tuned!!!
Technology: Our iMovie has been edited and is ready to be viewed! The students are really excited and proud to show you all the work that went into their Design Challenge! They want to do another movie!!!
Literature: "The Tiny Seed," "Eating the Alphabet," "Planting a Rainbow," "The Very Hungry Caterpillar," "What is a Fish?" "Swimmy," "A Fish is a Fish," "Under the Water," "Sea Life," "Oceans," "Fishes."
Monday, May 15, 2017
Sunday, May 7, 2017
UPDATES for 5/1-5/5 2017
**A very busy week in kindergarten! The students prepped for their next live animal study--guppies and goldfish. Our fish were supposed to arrive on Wednesday, but.......so far no fish. We used the time to continue seed exploration. Hopefully, we will have fish next week. The students are sensing change in the air! We will be visiting First Grade next week. First Grade students will speak about the world of First Grade and answer any questions our students have. We continue to edit our habitat iMovie. Should be ready soon!
**The students will begin "traveling" to recite their poems throughout the school on Wednesday, May 10th and again on May 17th. They sound really good!
**The students enjoyed their Fitness Week, especially the all school exercise time!
**The ABC COUNTDOWN continues! Check out this weeks activities chosen by the students. Please let me know if I need to get a dairy alternative ice cream for anyone.
**The ART FEST/POETRY SLAM is Thursday, May 18th from 6-8 pm al over the school. Come on out and see art on the walls from each Irving student, hear the chorus, see a play and play Spanish games with Senorita and take part or watch the Poetry Slam. We have 2 "little slammers" signed up so far. There is still time to get involved!! Share your creativity!! You can say any poem by yourself, with a sibling, a whole family or friends. You can sing, say, rap or write your own.
**DANCE PARTY sponsored by the 5th grade will be held on Friday, May 19th from 5-7 pm in the gym. The cost is $1.00. The money raised will help fund their send off and future outdoor ed scholarships.
**I have begun final assessments for the last report card period. Assessments for end of the year DIBELS, AIMSWEB Math, sight words, independent and instructional reading levels and social/emotional growth reflections will be done.
**Maze Library Field Trip permission slip and library card application is in your child's homework folder. Our walking field trip is Thursday, May 25th at 1:00 pm. I will need 2 volunteers.
**Get ready for Olympic Feats of strength, endurance and teamwork at Olympic Day on Friday, May 26th from 8:30-11:00 am.
**Future FIELD TRIP--Oak Park Conservatory on Tuesday, June 6th-9:30-10:30 am.
**Pizza and Play End of the Year Family Picnic-Wednesday, May 31st-9:30-noon.
**In our Second Step lesson this week, we took the time to review fair ways to play.
**In Friendship Club this week, Dr Bell Bey introduced the class to another behavior "thinkable" call "space inspector" who helps you pay attention and respect others personal space. The students viewed a webisode on the subject.
**In Mr. Packer's Thinking Skills this week, Mr. Packer continued his lesson on being a good detective and looking for clues and details.
This week:
The students enjoyed the first week of the ABC Countdown. They had a great afternoon to blow bubbles and chase them from my bubble machine on Bubble Day. There were knights, wizards, jesters, kings, princess and queens on Castle Day. We read about puppies and dogs and made dog masks for Dog Stories Day. Our station day activities included making dog masks, teen number count it, glue it, write it and tulip origami.
Reading/Language Arts: I am combining phonics skills, vocabulary, comprehension, literacy and the rest of our common core standards of our final Treasures Reading series Unit 9-Amazing Creatures and Unit 10-I Know A Lot. Woven into the units will be poetry to close out the year. This week, the students read stories about different kinds of insects. Target words were he and she. Target sounds were Gg and Ww and students reviewed all short and long vowel sounds. We continue to work on formative and summative blueprints comparing and contrasting two texts, opinion writing, word choice and defining an unknown word and a review of story elements. Students began incorporating some First Grade words into their sentences. A group lesson focused on the definition of the word pronoun and the use of I, you, he , she, it, we and they. The students worked in small groups with leveled readers reading for meaning and fluency, discussing story elements, cause and effect and making inferences. Word work centered on using context clues to figure out the meaning of an unknown word. They also continued to work on reviewing the use of nouns, verbs and adjectives. Robust Vocabulary this week included AMAZING, DEEP, INVITE, OCEAN, REASON, ANNOY, INSECT. The students continue to review sound blending strategies as well as recognizing consonant blends and digraphs and work with silent e. Workstations this week included writing questions and answers pertaining to a particular text, word families un and ut, writing a sentence about a insect you have seen, picking two insects and writing about how they are alike and different, writing an opinion piece about what insect you like the best.
Math: The students are working in their new calendar books. Some new features include number puzzles, writing 2 and 3 digit numbers, dice subtraction, number find 1-200 and nonstandard measurement using unifix cubes. The student started a new morning math journal. They are reading a story problem, deciding whether to add or subtract, illustrating the problem, showing it on a number line and writing the equation. Our Eureka Math lesson focused on teen numbers and the idea of "hiding zero" when showing teen numbers on a number bond as ten plus more. Workstations this week included using the "hide zero" way to write teen numbers in a number bond, counting on from a random number, reading and solving story problems, playing make 5 Bingo, building new shapes using existing pattern blocks.
Writing; The students completed their orange books for upper and lowercase letter formation. They will bring their books home next week. We will continue to review letter and number writing. The students have completed their persuasive letter to a family member. We will be addressing and mailing them next week. Students will continue to work on persuasive writing and use a piece as a forum for speaking in front of the class, a mini presentation if you will. Stay tuned!
Science: While waiting for our guppies and goldfish, the students observed the growth of their seedling. Each student took a look at the inside of a pinto bean seed. Using a water logged pinto bean, the students split it open----there they observed the outside coat and the baby plant (embryo) in the inside corner. Cool! The rest of the inside of the seed is the food where the seed gets its nourishment. The students are so excited about their growing seedlings. Key vocabulary--germinate, sprout, shoot, root, leaf. They are taking care to water them daily and observe shoots and leaves developing. Next week---examining roots systems.
Technology: The students continue to edit their Habitat iMovie.
Literature: "How Do Seeds Grow?" "Beetles," "Insects," "The Tiny Seed," "Beautiful Bugs," "Spring Changes," "Dogzilla," "Puppies," "Clifford and His Family," "Space Dog, Jack," "Boomer goes To School," "Scooby Doo."
**The students will begin "traveling" to recite their poems throughout the school on Wednesday, May 10th and again on May 17th. They sound really good!
**The students enjoyed their Fitness Week, especially the all school exercise time!
**The ABC COUNTDOWN continues! Check out this weeks activities chosen by the students. Please let me know if I need to get a dairy alternative ice cream for anyone.
**The ART FEST/POETRY SLAM is Thursday, May 18th from 6-8 pm al over the school. Come on out and see art on the walls from each Irving student, hear the chorus, see a play and play Spanish games with Senorita and take part or watch the Poetry Slam. We have 2 "little slammers" signed up so far. There is still time to get involved!! Share your creativity!! You can say any poem by yourself, with a sibling, a whole family or friends. You can sing, say, rap or write your own.
**DANCE PARTY sponsored by the 5th grade will be held on Friday, May 19th from 5-7 pm in the gym. The cost is $1.00. The money raised will help fund their send off and future outdoor ed scholarships.
**I have begun final assessments for the last report card period. Assessments for end of the year DIBELS, AIMSWEB Math, sight words, independent and instructional reading levels and social/emotional growth reflections will be done.
**Maze Library Field Trip permission slip and library card application is in your child's homework folder. Our walking field trip is Thursday, May 25th at 1:00 pm. I will need 2 volunteers.
**Get ready for Olympic Feats of strength, endurance and teamwork at Olympic Day on Friday, May 26th from 8:30-11:00 am.
**Future FIELD TRIP--Oak Park Conservatory on Tuesday, June 6th-9:30-10:30 am.
**Pizza and Play End of the Year Family Picnic-Wednesday, May 31st-9:30-noon.
**In our Second Step lesson this week, we took the time to review fair ways to play.
**In Friendship Club this week, Dr Bell Bey introduced the class to another behavior "thinkable" call "space inspector" who helps you pay attention and respect others personal space. The students viewed a webisode on the subject.
**In Mr. Packer's Thinking Skills this week, Mr. Packer continued his lesson on being a good detective and looking for clues and details.
This week:
The students enjoyed the first week of the ABC Countdown. They had a great afternoon to blow bubbles and chase them from my bubble machine on Bubble Day. There were knights, wizards, jesters, kings, princess and queens on Castle Day. We read about puppies and dogs and made dog masks for Dog Stories Day. Our station day activities included making dog masks, teen number count it, glue it, write it and tulip origami.
Reading/Language Arts: I am combining phonics skills, vocabulary, comprehension, literacy and the rest of our common core standards of our final Treasures Reading series Unit 9-Amazing Creatures and Unit 10-I Know A Lot. Woven into the units will be poetry to close out the year. This week, the students read stories about different kinds of insects. Target words were he and she. Target sounds were Gg and Ww and students reviewed all short and long vowel sounds. We continue to work on formative and summative blueprints comparing and contrasting two texts, opinion writing, word choice and defining an unknown word and a review of story elements. Students began incorporating some First Grade words into their sentences. A group lesson focused on the definition of the word pronoun and the use of I, you, he , she, it, we and they. The students worked in small groups with leveled readers reading for meaning and fluency, discussing story elements, cause and effect and making inferences. Word work centered on using context clues to figure out the meaning of an unknown word. They also continued to work on reviewing the use of nouns, verbs and adjectives. Robust Vocabulary this week included AMAZING, DEEP, INVITE, OCEAN, REASON, ANNOY, INSECT. The students continue to review sound blending strategies as well as recognizing consonant blends and digraphs and work with silent e. Workstations this week included writing questions and answers pertaining to a particular text, word families un and ut, writing a sentence about a insect you have seen, picking two insects and writing about how they are alike and different, writing an opinion piece about what insect you like the best.
Math: The students are working in their new calendar books. Some new features include number puzzles, writing 2 and 3 digit numbers, dice subtraction, number find 1-200 and nonstandard measurement using unifix cubes. The student started a new morning math journal. They are reading a story problem, deciding whether to add or subtract, illustrating the problem, showing it on a number line and writing the equation. Our Eureka Math lesson focused on teen numbers and the idea of "hiding zero" when showing teen numbers on a number bond as ten plus more. Workstations this week included using the "hide zero" way to write teen numbers in a number bond, counting on from a random number, reading and solving story problems, playing make 5 Bingo, building new shapes using existing pattern blocks.
Writing; The students completed their orange books for upper and lowercase letter formation. They will bring their books home next week. We will continue to review letter and number writing. The students have completed their persuasive letter to a family member. We will be addressing and mailing them next week. Students will continue to work on persuasive writing and use a piece as a forum for speaking in front of the class, a mini presentation if you will. Stay tuned!
Science: While waiting for our guppies and goldfish, the students observed the growth of their seedling. Each student took a look at the inside of a pinto bean seed. Using a water logged pinto bean, the students split it open----there they observed the outside coat and the baby plant (embryo) in the inside corner. Cool! The rest of the inside of the seed is the food where the seed gets its nourishment. The students are so excited about their growing seedlings. Key vocabulary--germinate, sprout, shoot, root, leaf. They are taking care to water them daily and observe shoots and leaves developing. Next week---examining roots systems.
Technology: The students continue to edit their Habitat iMovie.
Literature: "How Do Seeds Grow?" "Beetles," "Insects," "The Tiny Seed," "Beautiful Bugs," "Spring Changes," "Dogzilla," "Puppies," "Clifford and His Family," "Space Dog, Jack," "Boomer goes To School," "Scooby Doo."
Sunday, April 30, 2017
UPDATES for 4/24-4/28 2017
**Our Habitats are amazing! The students put their finishing touches on their habitats and are now using them for a quiet reading spot and for dramatic play. We continue to edit our iMovie and hopefully it will be ready for release in the next couple of weeks.
**The Irving Book Fair was a smash! Lots of browsers and buyers! Thanks to all who stopped by for "Campfire Stories." It was lots of fun.
**KEEP PRACTICING YOUR POEM for the Traveling Poets Project!! The students will begin traveling on May 10th and May 17th.
**We have finished all the lessons for Module 4 in math. I am sending home the workbook. Please feel free to work on the remaining problem sets with your child.
**We had some words of wisdom from our Principals of the Day-Principal Egan and Principal Foreman! They came by our classroom to tell us we were doing a good job!
**FITNESS WEEK begins MONDAY. Monday-Ball and Jump Rope Day. Tuesday-Healthy Heart Day-wear red and bring a healthy snack. Wednesday--ACES-everyone will exercise simultaneously. Thursday--Sports Hat Day Friday--School Spirit Day-wear Irving colors.
**Let's COUNTDOWN to the end of the year......the ABC way!! The students will decide weekly what we will do. I will be emailing you a copy and also sending a hard copy. It begins TUESDAY, MAY 2nd!!!
**COME RUN WITH ME! Come out for District 97's Fun Run on Saturday, May 6th. K-2 students will run at 8:00 am at Lindberg Park. Information is in your child's homework folder.
**The Ethnic Festival/World Language Day is also Saturday, May 6th at Julian Middle School. The parade begins at Julian at 9:30 am.
**The Irving Sleepover is Friday, May 5th. Info and sign up are on the Irving website.
**Information and sign up for Irving's Annual Art Fest/Poetry Slam is in your child's homework folder. It is Thursday, May 18th from 6-8 pm all over the school. Sign up to say a poem, rap, sing, work with your family, a friend, siblings--open mike under the direction of our own Mr. Williams. There will also be "Poetry Breaks," Art displayed, Chorus performance, a play by Mr. Packer's students, Spanish games and much more. Come on out!!!! Let's have some "little slammers" perform!!
**New Kindergarten Student Orientation is Wednesday, May 3rd from 2:30-4:00 pm in all the kindergarten rooms.
**FUTURE Walking Field trips--May 25th-Maze Library, May 31st-Pizza and Play End of the Year Family Picnic and June 6th-Oak Park Conservatory. Information on all trips will come out soon.
**In our Second Step Lesson this week, the lesson focused on fair ways to play---sharing, trading and taking turns.
**In Friendship Club this week, Dr. Bell Bey introduced the "thinkable" called Rex Flexinator. He works with Superflex against Rock Brain, Glassman and Space Invader.
**In Mr. Packer's Thinking Skills this week, Mr. Packer worked with the students on how to be a good detective and looking for clues to solve the mystery of the cards. Cool!
This week:
It was all about trying out our habitats and also trying out other teams habitats. The students collaborated in writing a set of rules for their habitat and giving their habitat a name. Then the fun began! Students used them for "chillin," reading and for just playing around! Yes! We have worm eggs and some baby worms! The students were thrilled and excited to view them. The students also planted the seed they are going to observe grow. Station day activities included raindrop addition, teen number tally, planting marigold, nasturtium, morning glory or sunflower seeds and observing our worm egg and baby worm.
Reading/Language Arts: The students completed Unit 8 Plants in our Treasures Reading series. They took a look at different types of seeds observing texture, shape, size. The students also completed a Blueprint on text detail and main topic using the text, "The Sunflower House. " They reviewed all sight words taught thus far. We also used this week to review all consonant sounds, short and long vowel sounds, blends and digraphs, syllables and adding and deleting sounds to make new words. We are nearing the end of our Haggery Blue Book exercises. The students also worked on "word work" exercises---listening to nonsense words to spell, changing vowel sounds in words to create a new word and reviewing what nouns, verbs and adjectives do for a sentence. Workstations this week included leveled readers discussion about word choice and meaning, comparing texts and characters actions, fluency checks, elbow chats about main topic, drawing your idea of a garden and writing about what you would grow, writing and diagraming a favorite insect and writing about what you know about them, pronoun worksheet, unscrambling a sentence, what punctuation do you need? activity, word work with short and long vowels and writing about a seed and what it can grow into.
Math: The students began work in Module 5 of the Eureka Math series. You can check out the Tips for Parents sheet in your child's homework folder. The students worked on grouping by 10 ones and then some more to create teen numbers. We will begin work on "hide zero" the idea being that in numbers larger than 10, the 10 is still there and always part of the number. We can start with the number for 10 and cover or hide the zero to make a new number---10 and 3 ones. (hide the zero for 13) Workstations this week included writing numbers to 120, number bond cards to 10, solving story problems using drawings, equations and number bonds and counting on from a random number and decomposing teen numbers.
Writing: The students continue to work on lowercase letter formation. Next week, they will be completing their orange practice books. We will continue to review upper and lowercase letter formation. In Writer's Workshop this week, the students continued to work on persuasive letter writing, This week the students wrote to a friend at Irving School about a problem in the school and how they could fix it. They needed to be convincing, give reasons why it is a problem, include important information, give a fix it idea and be polite. The students chose friends or siblings to write to. We also began to chat about problems we may have at home and how we might solve them. The student brainstormed ideas and chose a person in their family to write to. They are in the middle of that process. They will be mailing the person of their choice this letter next week. Stay tuned!
Science: The students are finishing up their worm study. They continue to observe and feed our red composting worms. We have been finding worms egg sacks and even a few baby worms. It has been quite thrilling! The students recorded thoughts, facts and findings as well as drawing/diagrams of the worms in their science notebook. Next week, we will begin preparing for our next live animal study--fish! The student are also continuing to observe seeds types and what seeds need in order to grow. The students have planted a special flower seed and will nurture it as it grows into a plant. We will be observing the inside of a seed next week and prepare our classroom for guppies and goldfish!
Technology: The students are continuing to explore iMovie.
Literature: "The Sunflower House," "The Action of Subtraction," "How Does a Garden Grow?" "The Mission of Addition," "If You Were a Minus Sign," Grammar Tales--"Chicken in the City" (nouns) "A Verb for Herb" (verbs) "Silent Letters Loud and Clear." "What is a Seed?" "Compost Stew," "Heroes of the Vegetable Patch."
**The Irving Book Fair was a smash! Lots of browsers and buyers! Thanks to all who stopped by for "Campfire Stories." It was lots of fun.
**KEEP PRACTICING YOUR POEM for the Traveling Poets Project!! The students will begin traveling on May 10th and May 17th.
**We have finished all the lessons for Module 4 in math. I am sending home the workbook. Please feel free to work on the remaining problem sets with your child.
**We had some words of wisdom from our Principals of the Day-Principal Egan and Principal Foreman! They came by our classroom to tell us we were doing a good job!
**FITNESS WEEK begins MONDAY. Monday-Ball and Jump Rope Day. Tuesday-Healthy Heart Day-wear red and bring a healthy snack. Wednesday--ACES-everyone will exercise simultaneously. Thursday--Sports Hat Day Friday--School Spirit Day-wear Irving colors.
**Let's COUNTDOWN to the end of the year......the ABC way!! The students will decide weekly what we will do. I will be emailing you a copy and also sending a hard copy. It begins TUESDAY, MAY 2nd!!!
**COME RUN WITH ME! Come out for District 97's Fun Run on Saturday, May 6th. K-2 students will run at 8:00 am at Lindberg Park. Information is in your child's homework folder.
**The Ethnic Festival/World Language Day is also Saturday, May 6th at Julian Middle School. The parade begins at Julian at 9:30 am.
**The Irving Sleepover is Friday, May 5th. Info and sign up are on the Irving website.
**Information and sign up for Irving's Annual Art Fest/Poetry Slam is in your child's homework folder. It is Thursday, May 18th from 6-8 pm all over the school. Sign up to say a poem, rap, sing, work with your family, a friend, siblings--open mike under the direction of our own Mr. Williams. There will also be "Poetry Breaks," Art displayed, Chorus performance, a play by Mr. Packer's students, Spanish games and much more. Come on out!!!! Let's have some "little slammers" perform!!
**New Kindergarten Student Orientation is Wednesday, May 3rd from 2:30-4:00 pm in all the kindergarten rooms.
**FUTURE Walking Field trips--May 25th-Maze Library, May 31st-Pizza and Play End of the Year Family Picnic and June 6th-Oak Park Conservatory. Information on all trips will come out soon.
**In our Second Step Lesson this week, the lesson focused on fair ways to play---sharing, trading and taking turns.
**In Friendship Club this week, Dr. Bell Bey introduced the "thinkable" called Rex Flexinator. He works with Superflex against Rock Brain, Glassman and Space Invader.
**In Mr. Packer's Thinking Skills this week, Mr. Packer worked with the students on how to be a good detective and looking for clues to solve the mystery of the cards. Cool!
This week:
It was all about trying out our habitats and also trying out other teams habitats. The students collaborated in writing a set of rules for their habitat and giving their habitat a name. Then the fun began! Students used them for "chillin," reading and for just playing around! Yes! We have worm eggs and some baby worms! The students were thrilled and excited to view them. The students also planted the seed they are going to observe grow. Station day activities included raindrop addition, teen number tally, planting marigold, nasturtium, morning glory or sunflower seeds and observing our worm egg and baby worm.
Reading/Language Arts: The students completed Unit 8 Plants in our Treasures Reading series. They took a look at different types of seeds observing texture, shape, size. The students also completed a Blueprint on text detail and main topic using the text, "The Sunflower House. " They reviewed all sight words taught thus far. We also used this week to review all consonant sounds, short and long vowel sounds, blends and digraphs, syllables and adding and deleting sounds to make new words. We are nearing the end of our Haggery Blue Book exercises. The students also worked on "word work" exercises---listening to nonsense words to spell, changing vowel sounds in words to create a new word and reviewing what nouns, verbs and adjectives do for a sentence. Workstations this week included leveled readers discussion about word choice and meaning, comparing texts and characters actions, fluency checks, elbow chats about main topic, drawing your idea of a garden and writing about what you would grow, writing and diagraming a favorite insect and writing about what you know about them, pronoun worksheet, unscrambling a sentence, what punctuation do you need? activity, word work with short and long vowels and writing about a seed and what it can grow into.
Math: The students began work in Module 5 of the Eureka Math series. You can check out the Tips for Parents sheet in your child's homework folder. The students worked on grouping by 10 ones and then some more to create teen numbers. We will begin work on "hide zero" the idea being that in numbers larger than 10, the 10 is still there and always part of the number. We can start with the number for 10 and cover or hide the zero to make a new number---10 and 3 ones. (hide the zero for 13) Workstations this week included writing numbers to 120, number bond cards to 10, solving story problems using drawings, equations and number bonds and counting on from a random number and decomposing teen numbers.
Writing: The students continue to work on lowercase letter formation. Next week, they will be completing their orange practice books. We will continue to review upper and lowercase letter formation. In Writer's Workshop this week, the students continued to work on persuasive letter writing, This week the students wrote to a friend at Irving School about a problem in the school and how they could fix it. They needed to be convincing, give reasons why it is a problem, include important information, give a fix it idea and be polite. The students chose friends or siblings to write to. We also began to chat about problems we may have at home and how we might solve them. The student brainstormed ideas and chose a person in their family to write to. They are in the middle of that process. They will be mailing the person of their choice this letter next week. Stay tuned!
Science: The students are finishing up their worm study. They continue to observe and feed our red composting worms. We have been finding worms egg sacks and even a few baby worms. It has been quite thrilling! The students recorded thoughts, facts and findings as well as drawing/diagrams of the worms in their science notebook. Next week, we will begin preparing for our next live animal study--fish! The student are also continuing to observe seeds types and what seeds need in order to grow. The students have planted a special flower seed and will nurture it as it grows into a plant. We will be observing the inside of a seed next week and prepare our classroom for guppies and goldfish!
Technology: The students are continuing to explore iMovie.
Literature: "The Sunflower House," "The Action of Subtraction," "How Does a Garden Grow?" "The Mission of Addition," "If You Were a Minus Sign," Grammar Tales--"Chicken in the City" (nouns) "A Verb for Herb" (verbs) "Silent Letters Loud and Clear." "What is a Seed?" "Compost Stew," "Heroes of the Vegetable Patch."
Sunday, April 23, 2017
UPDATES for 4/17-4/21 2017
**What a fabulous week! The students were totally immersed in their habitat projects.
What a great salute to Earth Week. Lots of thought and great ideas along with a BIG dose of compromise when into the design, construction, painting and detailing of each habitat. Their projects also reflected "green ideas." The students will be adding some details to the inside and will begin using the habitats this week. I have been filming the whole process and will begin editing the video with the students and will put it on the blog in early May.
**Proofs for Sibling Pictures were given to the oldest child in the family. You may purchase them online or send the money with your child. Orders are due May 3rd.
**This is the FINAL WEEK of the Student Council sponsored Food/Coin Drive.
**The Irving Book Fair begins Monday, April 24th until April 27th. Come on out with your family and browse/buy. There are lots of great titles.
**Come to the Book Fair on Wednesday, April 26th for Family Reading Night. Come hear "camp fire stories" read by Ms. Noonan, Ms. Durham, Dr. Bell Bey and ME!
**The OPPL BOOK BIKE will be on the blacktop after school on Wednesday, April 26th at 2:00 pm. You can check out books and other resources right from the playground! They can also look up your card. Cool!
**Students have chosen their poem for the TRAVELING POETS PROJECT! Each pair of students is learning a poem that they have picked out. Part of their homework is to memorize their poem. On May 10th and May 17th, groups of my students will "travel" to other classrooms to recite their poem for a poetry break! A copy of the poem is in your child's homework folder. I also have a copy in the classroom so partners can practice.
**Come RUN WITH ME! Come out for District 97's Annual Fun Run on Saturday, May 6th. K-2 students will run at 8:00 am at Lindberg Park. Information is in your child's homework folder.
**The Ethnic Festival/World Language Day is also Saturday, May 6th at Julian Middle School. The parade begins at Julian at 9:30 am.
**The Irving Sleepover is Friday, May 5th. Info and sign up are on the Irving website.
**Look for info on Irving's Annual ART FEST/POETRY SLAM to be held on Thursday, May 18th from 6-8 pm soon. I would love to have some little slammers recite a poem, rap, write their own poem, sing perform with family, partner, friends. It is super fun! There will an art piece displayed from every student at Irving, performance by the Irving Chorus, Spanish games, a play performance, random poetry breaks and the poetry slam.
**Our Second Step lesson this week continues to focus on steps for problem solving.
**In Friendship Club this week, Dr. Bell Bey reviewed tools for learning, being a social detective, the zones of regulation, being SUPERFLEX and not ROCK BRAIN, GLASSMAN or SPACE INVADER. She also introduced the Thinkable that helps SUPERFLEX called COOL Q. CUMBER. He invites us to stay calm--helps us to have small reactions and is the opposite of GLASSMAN.
**In Mr. Packer Thinking Skills this week, Mr. Packer worked with the students on graphing data on a bar graph using data based on stories that he read to the students.
This week:
Much of our week was spent in project mode. It was really a culmination of the each students ability to collaborate, share and compromise and work toward a common goal. The Eagle Essentials were a major part too. I was very proud of the class! They were able to were able to work out differences of opinion, varying ideas and keep the communication positive. Our station day time was spent on detailing the habitats. After reading texts and seeing a video on making the Earth a better place, the students discussed how to incorporate "green ideas " into their projects.
Reading/Language Arts: The students are working to complete Unit 8 Plants in our Treasures Reading series and became a preparation for a mini science unit on next week on planting seeds and beginning to plant seed in our indoor class garden. The students accessed prior knowledge about what plants need to grow. They completed an initial inquiry about what a seed was. The students used the rest of the week in small groups and with partners working on leveled readers receiving feedback on fluency from their group, responding in writing to questions about story elements and using their Writer's Checklist to see how they did, using context clues to determine the meaning of an unknown word and working to compare and contrast the experiences of characters in common texts. We began a Blueprint workmat on comparing the texts "Wonderful Worms" and "Earl the Earthworm Digs For His Life."
Math: The students have completed Module 4 in the Eureka Math series and will begin Module 5 next week. You will get an update on the skills we will be covering. The students enjoyed some "gamey" activities to review all the skills presented thus far. Activities included "Don't Spill the Beans," (building sums to 10) "Blast Off," (number comparison) "Addition and Subtraction Pails," (adding and decomposing numbers to 10) "What's My Shape?" (2D and 3D shape recognition) Partners took the "Subitize Challenge" on their iPads and also worked on the app "Number Bonds."
Writing: The students continue to work on lowercase letter formation. They reviewed all letters learned thus far. In Writer's Workshop this week, the students continued work on persuasive writing. The students discussed ways they can be convincing and write about a world problem. During Earth Week, the students read or listened to many texts and stories about problems our earth faces. We also used the mentor texts, "The Day the Crayons Quit" and "The Lorax. They decided to write a letter to Mr. Hodge stating a problem and writing about how they would solve it and what could happen if it was not solved. They kept their Writer's Checklist handy to proof their writing. The students had great fun sharing their letters with each other before "sending" them to Mr. Hodge. Watch out! Next week the students will write to a family member about a home problem and offer a solution and we will mail it!
Science: The students continue to study worms. This week they continued their investigation of redworms----feeding them, observing their behavior----looking for baby worms and worm eggs. The students also took a look at nightcrawler worms. How are redworms and nightcrawlers the same? How are they different? The students worked in their science notebooks on a Venn Diagram recording what they observed. Smaller/Bigger. Skinny/Fat. Shorter/Longer. Warm places/Cool places. Similar body types. (clitellum, segments, front, back, bristles)
Technology: The students are continuing to explore iMovie. No new apps this week.
Literature: "Pig the Pug," "Press Start," "Don't Be a Litterbug," "The Lorax," "What is Happening to the Rain forest?" "What is Global Warming?" "Let's Be Water Wise," "Let's Recycle,"
What a great salute to Earth Week. Lots of thought and great ideas along with a BIG dose of compromise when into the design, construction, painting and detailing of each habitat. Their projects also reflected "green ideas." The students will be adding some details to the inside and will begin using the habitats this week. I have been filming the whole process and will begin editing the video with the students and will put it on the blog in early May.
**Proofs for Sibling Pictures were given to the oldest child in the family. You may purchase them online or send the money with your child. Orders are due May 3rd.
**This is the FINAL WEEK of the Student Council sponsored Food/Coin Drive.
**The Irving Book Fair begins Monday, April 24th until April 27th. Come on out with your family and browse/buy. There are lots of great titles.
**Come to the Book Fair on Wednesday, April 26th for Family Reading Night. Come hear "camp fire stories" read by Ms. Noonan, Ms. Durham, Dr. Bell Bey and ME!
**The OPPL BOOK BIKE will be on the blacktop after school on Wednesday, April 26th at 2:00 pm. You can check out books and other resources right from the playground! They can also look up your card. Cool!
**Students have chosen their poem for the TRAVELING POETS PROJECT! Each pair of students is learning a poem that they have picked out. Part of their homework is to memorize their poem. On May 10th and May 17th, groups of my students will "travel" to other classrooms to recite their poem for a poetry break! A copy of the poem is in your child's homework folder. I also have a copy in the classroom so partners can practice.
**Come RUN WITH ME! Come out for District 97's Annual Fun Run on Saturday, May 6th. K-2 students will run at 8:00 am at Lindberg Park. Information is in your child's homework folder.
**The Ethnic Festival/World Language Day is also Saturday, May 6th at Julian Middle School. The parade begins at Julian at 9:30 am.
**The Irving Sleepover is Friday, May 5th. Info and sign up are on the Irving website.
**Look for info on Irving's Annual ART FEST/POETRY SLAM to be held on Thursday, May 18th from 6-8 pm soon. I would love to have some little slammers recite a poem, rap, write their own poem, sing perform with family, partner, friends. It is super fun! There will an art piece displayed from every student at Irving, performance by the Irving Chorus, Spanish games, a play performance, random poetry breaks and the poetry slam.
**Our Second Step lesson this week continues to focus on steps for problem solving.
**In Friendship Club this week, Dr. Bell Bey reviewed tools for learning, being a social detective, the zones of regulation, being SUPERFLEX and not ROCK BRAIN, GLASSMAN or SPACE INVADER. She also introduced the Thinkable that helps SUPERFLEX called COOL Q. CUMBER. He invites us to stay calm--helps us to have small reactions and is the opposite of GLASSMAN.
**In Mr. Packer Thinking Skills this week, Mr. Packer worked with the students on graphing data on a bar graph using data based on stories that he read to the students.
This week:
Much of our week was spent in project mode. It was really a culmination of the each students ability to collaborate, share and compromise and work toward a common goal. The Eagle Essentials were a major part too. I was very proud of the class! They were able to were able to work out differences of opinion, varying ideas and keep the communication positive. Our station day time was spent on detailing the habitats. After reading texts and seeing a video on making the Earth a better place, the students discussed how to incorporate "green ideas " into their projects.
Reading/Language Arts: The students are working to complete Unit 8 Plants in our Treasures Reading series and became a preparation for a mini science unit on next week on planting seeds and beginning to plant seed in our indoor class garden. The students accessed prior knowledge about what plants need to grow. They completed an initial inquiry about what a seed was. The students used the rest of the week in small groups and with partners working on leveled readers receiving feedback on fluency from their group, responding in writing to questions about story elements and using their Writer's Checklist to see how they did, using context clues to determine the meaning of an unknown word and working to compare and contrast the experiences of characters in common texts. We began a Blueprint workmat on comparing the texts "Wonderful Worms" and "Earl the Earthworm Digs For His Life."
Math: The students have completed Module 4 in the Eureka Math series and will begin Module 5 next week. You will get an update on the skills we will be covering. The students enjoyed some "gamey" activities to review all the skills presented thus far. Activities included "Don't Spill the Beans," (building sums to 10) "Blast Off," (number comparison) "Addition and Subtraction Pails," (adding and decomposing numbers to 10) "What's My Shape?" (2D and 3D shape recognition) Partners took the "Subitize Challenge" on their iPads and also worked on the app "Number Bonds."
Writing: The students continue to work on lowercase letter formation. They reviewed all letters learned thus far. In Writer's Workshop this week, the students continued work on persuasive writing. The students discussed ways they can be convincing and write about a world problem. During Earth Week, the students read or listened to many texts and stories about problems our earth faces. We also used the mentor texts, "The Day the Crayons Quit" and "The Lorax. They decided to write a letter to Mr. Hodge stating a problem and writing about how they would solve it and what could happen if it was not solved. They kept their Writer's Checklist handy to proof their writing. The students had great fun sharing their letters with each other before "sending" them to Mr. Hodge. Watch out! Next week the students will write to a family member about a home problem and offer a solution and we will mail it!
Science: The students continue to study worms. This week they continued their investigation of redworms----feeding them, observing their behavior----looking for baby worms and worm eggs. The students also took a look at nightcrawler worms. How are redworms and nightcrawlers the same? How are they different? The students worked in their science notebooks on a Venn Diagram recording what they observed. Smaller/Bigger. Skinny/Fat. Shorter/Longer. Warm places/Cool places. Similar body types. (clitellum, segments, front, back, bristles)
Technology: The students are continuing to explore iMovie. No new apps this week.
Literature: "Pig the Pug," "Press Start," "Don't Be a Litterbug," "The Lorax," "What is Happening to the Rain forest?" "What is Global Warming?" "Let's Be Water Wise," "Let's Recycle,"
Sunday, April 16, 2017
UPDATES for 4/10-4/13 2017
**REMINDER: SIBLING PICTURES will be taken on TUESDAY, APRIL 18th in the morning. This year is different from previous years. It is siblings only (not everyone.) The sibling(s) must attend Irving School. Please email me or sign up on the Irving website if your child is participating.
**On MONDAY, the students will begin their engineering project. The design challenge for the student groups is to design, construct, paint and detail a structure/habitat that will be used for reading and dramatic play in the classroom. We will form 3 student groups, select a project manager and chat about ground rules in order to complete the project. We have begun some conversations about the art of compromise. The students will be using all recyclable materials. The student groups will discuss and sketch prototype drawings to document what they think their structure might look like. We will be using iMovie to document from start to finish. The students are super excited! Please do not send your child in their finest clothing. We will be using tempera paint and will be wearing extra long paint shirts......but......it can still get messy! The paint is washable. The projects will take about a week. We will construct 3 structures. Please mote that we may deviate from our normal subject areas and workstation time.
**A BIG SHOUT OUT to our Spelling Bee participants JACKSON and LILY and our ever ready alternate, LILAH! They were awesome! They received a really cool ribbon. I was so proud of their perseverance. Our class made a special poster to cheer them on.
**Our Student Council Reps, Declan and Naomi D. want you to continue to send in food and money for the Student Council sponsored FOOD DRIVE. The drive will continue this week.
**CLASSROOM COIN CHALLENGE! Bring in your loose change to class the week of April 24th-28th. All money collected will benefit the Irving Library. This event coincides with the Irving Book Fair that same week. We will be visiting the fair as a class but encourage families to attend to browse or buy. Come join guest readers myself, Ms. Noonan, Ms. Durham and Ms. Grogan for our Family Reading Night on Wednesday, April 26th from 6:30-7:30 pm featuring "camping" stories.
**Stay tuned for information next week on the TRAVELING POETS PROJECT under the direction on Ms. Noonan. Each student will be selecting a poem to learn.
**The GARDEN CLUB is back! Please join us on Friday, April 21st after school to wake up the worms, clear the beds and plant peas and greens.
**Come RUN WITH ME! Come out for District 97's Annual Fun Run on Saturday, May 6th beginning at 8:00 am with the K-2 run. The event is at Lindberg Park.
**The Ethnic Festival/World Language Day is also Saturday, May 6th at Julian Middle School. The parade begins at 9:30 from Julian.
** In our Second Step lesson this week our lesson focused on how to problem solve.
**No Friendship Club this week.
**In Mr. Packer Thinking Skills this week, Mr. Packer began prep for a new project on data collecting, organizing and analyzing.
This week:
It was all about worm facts and fiction and examining and labeling worms parts, continued work on number bonds and decomposing sets (subtraction) and prep for our engineering project. Also, the students began using about 8 minutes of their time when they come in the morning to listen to or read to someone their BUSY READER story or borrowing a story to read. The students continue to work on their reading fluency and reading to someone really helps! The students are enjoying our WORD PLAY exercises that began last Friday. It is a great visual for imprinting sound order by using physical movement. This is now part of their homework each week.
Reading/Language Arts: The students continue to work on Unit 8 Plants in our Treasures Reading series. They talked about seeds and the plants that grow from them. They accessed prior knowledge from our fall unit on apples. The students revisited our apple seed tray. They also discussed what they knew about types of seeds--blowing dandelion seeds, helping their family plant seeds in their backyard and naming seeds they knew. The students listened to the Big Book story, "Seed Secrets." The story was about the ways in which seeds travel. The students observed the illustrations and tracked the print as I read. They were able to verbally ask and answer questions about the text. The students examined an unknown word--sprout. How do you know what it means? Where can you look in the text to get the meaning? Can the illustrations help you? Can other words in the sentence help you find the meaning? Target words for this week were here and was. The students worked with partners to build sentences with their sight words and pictures. We reviewed noun, verbs and adjective use. The students also revisited short u, consonant blends and digraphs in words. We also took a look at long vowel/silent e words and vowels teams. They began work on a new Blueprint focusing on comparing two texts on the same topic. We used a Venn Diagram format to compare two of our science texts--"Wonderful Worms" and "Earl the Earthworm Digs for his Life." Questions discussed--How are these texts alike? (similarities) How are the text different? Robust vocabulary for this week included GRADUALLY, SEEDS, OBSERVE. The students read the decodable story, "The Bud Is Up." They made predictions about story content and discussed what the word bud might mean. They reread the story to a partner for fluency building. Workstations this week included leveled readers, fluency checks, discussion of characters in texts and comparing the actions of the characters looking for similarities and differences, main idea elbow chats, word building, defining an unknown word from their text, short and long u word work, playing the vowel game "Bug Jar," writing and drawing about your favorite vegetable, how to story about how to grow a seed, playing the sight word game, "Popcorn," retelling a story verbally and then creating retelling cards in their own words and sound substitution work with vowels.
Math: The students are working to complete Module 4 in our Eureka Math series. The lessons focus was on representing pictorial decomposition and composition (subtracting and adding) stories to 10 with 5 group drawings and equations and stating the sum at the beginning of the equation. Workstations this week included writing numbers to 120, telling time by the hour digitally and analogue, solving simple story problems by illustrating and writing the equation, decomposing teen numbers as a group of 10 and what is left over and counting on from a given number in sequence.
Writing: The students continue to work on lowercase letter formation. The letters q and x were introduced. The students practiced on their mini boards and applied what they learned in their orange books. In Writer's Workshop this week, the students took a look at persuasive writing in the form of writing a letter to someone. What is a problem you see? How can you fix it? Who can you tell about it? What are your feelings? Can you illustrate it and add labels? The students continue to work on their "When you are done, you have just begun" checklist which includes rereading writing, conferring with a partner, adding more--reasons, drawings, labels, speech bubbles etc. and fixing up parts that are not easy to read.
Science: The students continue to work on their investigation about worms. This week, the students worked in their science notebooks creating a diagram of a worm--drawing and labeling important parts. They defined vocabulary-segment, clitellum, front, back, compost, soil. The students continue to observe the redworms in their habitat. Students are bringing in "food" to feed the worms. We asked google some questions---How many eggs in the egg sack? When are worms grownups? Next week: Comparing redworms and nightcrawlers! Cool!
Technology: The students are learning about making an iMovie in preparation for documenting their projects. In reading, small group work focused on the app Montessori Crosswords for skill building on ccvc,cvcc, short u, silent e and ck words. In math, small groups and individuals used the apps Butterfly Math, Number Bonds to 10 and Animal Math for skill building in addition and subtraction and missing addends.
Literature: "Earl the Earthworm Dig for His Life," "Domino Addition," "The Cheerios Counting Book," "Animals Two By Two-Worms," "Over in the Garden," "Nouns," "Verbs," "Adjectives." "The Garden Detective," "Underground," "The Day the Crayons Quit," "The Great Fuzz Frenzy," "King Hugo's Huge Ego," "Bunches of Bunnies," "The Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Chick."
**On MONDAY, the students will begin their engineering project. The design challenge for the student groups is to design, construct, paint and detail a structure/habitat that will be used for reading and dramatic play in the classroom. We will form 3 student groups, select a project manager and chat about ground rules in order to complete the project. We have begun some conversations about the art of compromise. The students will be using all recyclable materials. The student groups will discuss and sketch prototype drawings to document what they think their structure might look like. We will be using iMovie to document from start to finish. The students are super excited! Please do not send your child in their finest clothing. We will be using tempera paint and will be wearing extra long paint shirts......but......it can still get messy! The paint is washable. The projects will take about a week. We will construct 3 structures. Please mote that we may deviate from our normal subject areas and workstation time.
**A BIG SHOUT OUT to our Spelling Bee participants JACKSON and LILY and our ever ready alternate, LILAH! They were awesome! They received a really cool ribbon. I was so proud of their perseverance. Our class made a special poster to cheer them on.
**Our Student Council Reps, Declan and Naomi D. want you to continue to send in food and money for the Student Council sponsored FOOD DRIVE. The drive will continue this week.
**CLASSROOM COIN CHALLENGE! Bring in your loose change to class the week of April 24th-28th. All money collected will benefit the Irving Library. This event coincides with the Irving Book Fair that same week. We will be visiting the fair as a class but encourage families to attend to browse or buy. Come join guest readers myself, Ms. Noonan, Ms. Durham and Ms. Grogan for our Family Reading Night on Wednesday, April 26th from 6:30-7:30 pm featuring "camping" stories.
**Stay tuned for information next week on the TRAVELING POETS PROJECT under the direction on Ms. Noonan. Each student will be selecting a poem to learn.
**The GARDEN CLUB is back! Please join us on Friday, April 21st after school to wake up the worms, clear the beds and plant peas and greens.
**Come RUN WITH ME! Come out for District 97's Annual Fun Run on Saturday, May 6th beginning at 8:00 am with the K-2 run. The event is at Lindberg Park.
**The Ethnic Festival/World Language Day is also Saturday, May 6th at Julian Middle School. The parade begins at 9:30 from Julian.
** In our Second Step lesson this week our lesson focused on how to problem solve.
**No Friendship Club this week.
**In Mr. Packer Thinking Skills this week, Mr. Packer began prep for a new project on data collecting, organizing and analyzing.
This week:
It was all about worm facts and fiction and examining and labeling worms parts, continued work on number bonds and decomposing sets (subtraction) and prep for our engineering project. Also, the students began using about 8 minutes of their time when they come in the morning to listen to or read to someone their BUSY READER story or borrowing a story to read. The students continue to work on their reading fluency and reading to someone really helps! The students are enjoying our WORD PLAY exercises that began last Friday. It is a great visual for imprinting sound order by using physical movement. This is now part of their homework each week.
Reading/Language Arts: The students continue to work on Unit 8 Plants in our Treasures Reading series. They talked about seeds and the plants that grow from them. They accessed prior knowledge from our fall unit on apples. The students revisited our apple seed tray. They also discussed what they knew about types of seeds--blowing dandelion seeds, helping their family plant seeds in their backyard and naming seeds they knew. The students listened to the Big Book story, "Seed Secrets." The story was about the ways in which seeds travel. The students observed the illustrations and tracked the print as I read. They were able to verbally ask and answer questions about the text. The students examined an unknown word--sprout. How do you know what it means? Where can you look in the text to get the meaning? Can the illustrations help you? Can other words in the sentence help you find the meaning? Target words for this week were here and was. The students worked with partners to build sentences with their sight words and pictures. We reviewed noun, verbs and adjective use. The students also revisited short u, consonant blends and digraphs in words. We also took a look at long vowel/silent e words and vowels teams. They began work on a new Blueprint focusing on comparing two texts on the same topic. We used a Venn Diagram format to compare two of our science texts--"Wonderful Worms" and "Earl the Earthworm Digs for his Life." Questions discussed--How are these texts alike? (similarities) How are the text different? Robust vocabulary for this week included GRADUALLY, SEEDS, OBSERVE. The students read the decodable story, "The Bud Is Up." They made predictions about story content and discussed what the word bud might mean. They reread the story to a partner for fluency building. Workstations this week included leveled readers, fluency checks, discussion of characters in texts and comparing the actions of the characters looking for similarities and differences, main idea elbow chats, word building, defining an unknown word from their text, short and long u word work, playing the vowel game "Bug Jar," writing and drawing about your favorite vegetable, how to story about how to grow a seed, playing the sight word game, "Popcorn," retelling a story verbally and then creating retelling cards in their own words and sound substitution work with vowels.
Math: The students are working to complete Module 4 in our Eureka Math series. The lessons focus was on representing pictorial decomposition and composition (subtracting and adding) stories to 10 with 5 group drawings and equations and stating the sum at the beginning of the equation. Workstations this week included writing numbers to 120, telling time by the hour digitally and analogue, solving simple story problems by illustrating and writing the equation, decomposing teen numbers as a group of 10 and what is left over and counting on from a given number in sequence.
Writing: The students continue to work on lowercase letter formation. The letters q and x were introduced. The students practiced on their mini boards and applied what they learned in their orange books. In Writer's Workshop this week, the students took a look at persuasive writing in the form of writing a letter to someone. What is a problem you see? How can you fix it? Who can you tell about it? What are your feelings? Can you illustrate it and add labels? The students continue to work on their "When you are done, you have just begun" checklist which includes rereading writing, conferring with a partner, adding more--reasons, drawings, labels, speech bubbles etc. and fixing up parts that are not easy to read.
Science: The students continue to work on their investigation about worms. This week, the students worked in their science notebooks creating a diagram of a worm--drawing and labeling important parts. They defined vocabulary-segment, clitellum, front, back, compost, soil. The students continue to observe the redworms in their habitat. Students are bringing in "food" to feed the worms. We asked google some questions---How many eggs in the egg sack? When are worms grownups? Next week: Comparing redworms and nightcrawlers! Cool!
Technology: The students are learning about making an iMovie in preparation for documenting their projects. In reading, small group work focused on the app Montessori Crosswords for skill building on ccvc,cvcc, short u, silent e and ck words. In math, small groups and individuals used the apps Butterfly Math, Number Bonds to 10 and Animal Math for skill building in addition and subtraction and missing addends.
Literature: "Earl the Earthworm Dig for His Life," "Domino Addition," "The Cheerios Counting Book," "Animals Two By Two-Worms," "Over in the Garden," "Nouns," "Verbs," "Adjectives." "The Garden Detective," "Underground," "The Day the Crayons Quit," "The Great Fuzz Frenzy," "King Hugo's Huge Ego," "Bunches of Bunnies," "The Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Chick."
Monday, April 10, 2017
UPDATES for 4/3-4/7 2017
**The students returned from their spring break with lots of stories about their travels and time spent with family. Whether they remained in the area or traveled to another town or state, they had much to tell! We spent some time locating all the states and cities visited on our state map.
**Keep sending in those GIANT BOXES and other boxes and cool stuff for our engineering project. The students will be designing, constructing and detailing a cozy habitat for reading and dramatic play in our classroom. I would like to have everything in by Friday. We could still use boxes the kids can climb into. We will work on the project the week of April 17th -21st. We will need some hot glue volunteers during our detailing stage. Stay tuned!
**Our SPELLING BEE REPS, JACKSON and LILY and our alternate, LILAH are really excited to participate in the Irving K-2 Spelling Bee on Wednesday, April 12th during our lunch hour beginning at 11:15 am. We will be cheering them on. Feel free to come and join us in the Irving auditorium.
**Thanks for sending in your report card envelopes. If you haven't done so....please do. Thanks! Our last report card will go home in June.
**Our Student Council reps, Declan and Naomi D. spoke to the students about the Food Drive that Student Council is sponsoring. Please read the yellow info sheet in your child's homework folder for food ideas. They are also accepting money too!
**EAGLE EXTRA classes begin on Monday, April 10th. I will be getting a list of participants with days and times. The students will be picked up from the classroom by an adult supervisor.
**Representatives from the Special Olympics Young Athletes spoke to the students on their theme for this year which is "Respect is my super power." Students spoke about ways to encourage respect for all. Some great conversations between the students on ways to be helpful.
**Spring Pictures will be taken on Tuesday, April 18th in the morning.
**Irving Book Fair is the week of April 24th-28th. Please join us on Wednesday, April 26th from 6:30-7:30 pm for Family Reading Night featuring "camping" stories read by myself, Ms. Durham, Ms. Noonan and Ms. Grogan.
**NO SCHOOL on Friday, April 14th.
**Kindergarten New Student Open House is Wednesday, May3rd from 2:30-4:30 pm in the kindergarten rooms.
**No Second Step lesson this week.
**No Mr. Packer Thinking Skills this week.
** In Friendship Club this week, Dr. Bell Bey's lesson focused on a new unthinkable called "Worry Wall." Worry Wall makes people feel nervous or worry in social situations. The students had a heart to heart conversation about things that worry them. Dr. Bell Bey read the story, "Wemberly Worried."
This week:
It was all about signs of spring, sharing stories about spring break and beginning our new science unit. The students were super excited to begin a unit on worms in our Animals Two by Two unit. There was also lots of discussion about our upcoming engineering project. Stay tuned. Station day activities included creating a worm (cut and paste,) making a clock clown, creating a number sentence after reading a story problem and putting the words of a sentence in the correct order
Reading/Language Arts: The students began Unit 8 Plants in our Treasures Reading series. They began building background knowledge about how a tree grows. It was great to observe how much the students remembered from their science unit on trees. The students chatted about Oak Park and the types of trees in the area. We used our Tree Finder book to find information on Oak, Maple and Gingko trees. Trees are plants that take a long time to grow! Students listened to the Big Book story, " Oak Trees." They noted that the story was nonfiction containing information. The students responded that they had seen acorns, some students collected them. They discussed how an acorn seed sprouts and grows. Sight words for this week are said and little. Our target sounds are short u and ck. We took a look at quotation marks to tell us who is talking in the story. Students retold the big book story and sequenced the events in their own words. Students reviewed the question words who, what, where, when, why and how. They took turns verbally asking a question about the story and having their partner answer the question. They practiced reading the story, "The Little Acorn" aloud to a partner to practice fluency building and getting feedback from their partner. Robust Vocabulary this week included GROW, CONCEITED, EQUAL, CHARMING. We have begun work on core standards of word choice, describing a characters experience and comparing characters from two different texts. Students continue to work on word work--cvc, ccvc and cvcc spellings and short and long vowels. Workstations this week included leveled reader fluency checks, discussion on characters in the texts and comparing the actions of the characters looking for similarities and differences, writing an information piece on what you know about trees, word family spin and color, activities on ck words, sentence building and writing, writing an opinion piece on why we need trees, short and long vowel work and works with digraphs and blends and playing "Web of Words."
Math: The students continue to work on Module 4 in our Eureka Math series. The focus of the lessons this week was decomposing the number 10 using fingers, sets, cubes and number bonds. Students also worked on solving story problems involving numbers 9 and 10 and finding the missing addend in a number bond. Workstations this week included writing 2 and 3 digit numbers, telling time by the hour both analogue and digitally, solving simple story problems and describing teen numbers as a group of 10 and what is left over.
Writing: The students continue to work on lowercase letter formation. The letters h, n and f were introduced, The students practiced on their mini boards and applied what they learned in their orange books. In Writer's Workshop this week, the student continue to work on opinion writing. The teaching point for students--writers state how they feel and say why. They write at least two reasons to support what they thought. They use the words because in their sentences. They also continue to illustrate and label and begin to think about adding an ending sentence. The students wrote on a variety of topics and shared their writing with their partner and the entire class. Next week--how to write a letter to someone.
Science: The students began their next science unit Animals Two by Two. This unit investigates the living animals--worms and fish. The students began prepping for the unit by looking for information in books and on the internet on worms. They helped create our worm habitat that now houses red wiggler compost worms. What are worms? What are the parts of a red worm? What do red worms need in order to live. The students observed a clear plastic structure with holes in the lid. They observed dirt with some bits of oatmeal and newspaper. Projected on the screen---I took some of the dirt out and put it on a tray. Many oohs and aahs as the students began to see movement in the dirt. We put the tray under the magnifier. Red worms began to inch along! The students observed their color, size and the spiral lines or segments in their body structure. Many commented on the front and back looking kind of the same. Stay tuned for more next week!!!!
Technology: The students viewed a few videos on compost worms. In our phonics work, students used the apps Montessori Crosswords to study ck ending words and short u words and Consonant Blend Sort to work on beginning and ending blends. In our math work this week, the students used the apps Animal Math and Butterfly Math to work on missing addends, addition and subtraction problems to 10 and the app Let's Do Math to work on number bonds to 10.
Literature: "Sorting Thru Spring," "Diary of a Worm," "Worms," "Clocks and Calendars," "What's in the Garden?" "The Ant Bully," "Yucky Worms." "Wonderful Worms."
**Keep sending in those GIANT BOXES and other boxes and cool stuff for our engineering project. The students will be designing, constructing and detailing a cozy habitat for reading and dramatic play in our classroom. I would like to have everything in by Friday. We could still use boxes the kids can climb into. We will work on the project the week of April 17th -21st. We will need some hot glue volunteers during our detailing stage. Stay tuned!
**Our SPELLING BEE REPS, JACKSON and LILY and our alternate, LILAH are really excited to participate in the Irving K-2 Spelling Bee on Wednesday, April 12th during our lunch hour beginning at 11:15 am. We will be cheering them on. Feel free to come and join us in the Irving auditorium.
**Thanks for sending in your report card envelopes. If you haven't done so....please do. Thanks! Our last report card will go home in June.
**Our Student Council reps, Declan and Naomi D. spoke to the students about the Food Drive that Student Council is sponsoring. Please read the yellow info sheet in your child's homework folder for food ideas. They are also accepting money too!
**EAGLE EXTRA classes begin on Monday, April 10th. I will be getting a list of participants with days and times. The students will be picked up from the classroom by an adult supervisor.
**Representatives from the Special Olympics Young Athletes spoke to the students on their theme for this year which is "Respect is my super power." Students spoke about ways to encourage respect for all. Some great conversations between the students on ways to be helpful.
**Spring Pictures will be taken on Tuesday, April 18th in the morning.
**Irving Book Fair is the week of April 24th-28th. Please join us on Wednesday, April 26th from 6:30-7:30 pm for Family Reading Night featuring "camping" stories read by myself, Ms. Durham, Ms. Noonan and Ms. Grogan.
**NO SCHOOL on Friday, April 14th.
**Kindergarten New Student Open House is Wednesday, May3rd from 2:30-4:30 pm in the kindergarten rooms.
**No Second Step lesson this week.
**No Mr. Packer Thinking Skills this week.
** In Friendship Club this week, Dr. Bell Bey's lesson focused on a new unthinkable called "Worry Wall." Worry Wall makes people feel nervous or worry in social situations. The students had a heart to heart conversation about things that worry them. Dr. Bell Bey read the story, "Wemberly Worried."
This week:
It was all about signs of spring, sharing stories about spring break and beginning our new science unit. The students were super excited to begin a unit on worms in our Animals Two by Two unit. There was also lots of discussion about our upcoming engineering project. Stay tuned. Station day activities included creating a worm (cut and paste,) making a clock clown, creating a number sentence after reading a story problem and putting the words of a sentence in the correct order
Reading/Language Arts: The students began Unit 8 Plants in our Treasures Reading series. They began building background knowledge about how a tree grows. It was great to observe how much the students remembered from their science unit on trees. The students chatted about Oak Park and the types of trees in the area. We used our Tree Finder book to find information on Oak, Maple and Gingko trees. Trees are plants that take a long time to grow! Students listened to the Big Book story, " Oak Trees." They noted that the story was nonfiction containing information. The students responded that they had seen acorns, some students collected them. They discussed how an acorn seed sprouts and grows. Sight words for this week are said and little. Our target sounds are short u and ck. We took a look at quotation marks to tell us who is talking in the story. Students retold the big book story and sequenced the events in their own words. Students reviewed the question words who, what, where, when, why and how. They took turns verbally asking a question about the story and having their partner answer the question. They practiced reading the story, "The Little Acorn" aloud to a partner to practice fluency building and getting feedback from their partner. Robust Vocabulary this week included GROW, CONCEITED, EQUAL, CHARMING. We have begun work on core standards of word choice, describing a characters experience and comparing characters from two different texts. Students continue to work on word work--cvc, ccvc and cvcc spellings and short and long vowels. Workstations this week included leveled reader fluency checks, discussion on characters in the texts and comparing the actions of the characters looking for similarities and differences, writing an information piece on what you know about trees, word family spin and color, activities on ck words, sentence building and writing, writing an opinion piece on why we need trees, short and long vowel work and works with digraphs and blends and playing "Web of Words."
Math: The students continue to work on Module 4 in our Eureka Math series. The focus of the lessons this week was decomposing the number 10 using fingers, sets, cubes and number bonds. Students also worked on solving story problems involving numbers 9 and 10 and finding the missing addend in a number bond. Workstations this week included writing 2 and 3 digit numbers, telling time by the hour both analogue and digitally, solving simple story problems and describing teen numbers as a group of 10 and what is left over.
Writing: The students continue to work on lowercase letter formation. The letters h, n and f were introduced, The students practiced on their mini boards and applied what they learned in their orange books. In Writer's Workshop this week, the student continue to work on opinion writing. The teaching point for students--writers state how they feel and say why. They write at least two reasons to support what they thought. They use the words because in their sentences. They also continue to illustrate and label and begin to think about adding an ending sentence. The students wrote on a variety of topics and shared their writing with their partner and the entire class. Next week--how to write a letter to someone.
Science: The students began their next science unit Animals Two by Two. This unit investigates the living animals--worms and fish. The students began prepping for the unit by looking for information in books and on the internet on worms. They helped create our worm habitat that now houses red wiggler compost worms. What are worms? What are the parts of a red worm? What do red worms need in order to live. The students observed a clear plastic structure with holes in the lid. They observed dirt with some bits of oatmeal and newspaper. Projected on the screen---I took some of the dirt out and put it on a tray. Many oohs and aahs as the students began to see movement in the dirt. We put the tray under the magnifier. Red worms began to inch along! The students observed their color, size and the spiral lines or segments in their body structure. Many commented on the front and back looking kind of the same. Stay tuned for more next week!!!!
Technology: The students viewed a few videos on compost worms. In our phonics work, students used the apps Montessori Crosswords to study ck ending words and short u words and Consonant Blend Sort to work on beginning and ending blends. In our math work this week, the students used the apps Animal Math and Butterfly Math to work on missing addends, addition and subtraction problems to 10 and the app Let's Do Math to work on number bonds to 10.
Literature: "Sorting Thru Spring," "Diary of a Worm," "Worms," "Clocks and Calendars," "What's in the Garden?" "The Ant Bully," "Yucky Worms." "Wonderful Worms."
Sunday, April 2, 2017
UPDATES for 3/20-3/24 2017
**Your child's report card in their backpack. Please sign and return the envelope. Also included is the Route to Reading skill that they mastered and the new skill your child will be working on beginning April 5th. There have been lots of changes in student achievement in the past few months. The flood gates of learning are opening wide! Many students have mastered skills to complete the kindergarten continuum and students have "jumped " skills to move on to the Grade 1 continuum. Students continue to build their reading fluency in the classroom and at home with their Busy Readers.
**The students are also getting excited and looking forward to planning, designing, constructing and detailing a special structure in April. YES! Start bringing in those GIANT boxes, other boxes and any other cool stuff for construction when we return to school on April 3rd. Our engineering project is scheduled for the week of April 17-21. Please send everything by April 14th.
**Congratulations to our SPELLING BEE participants--Jackson and Lily! Our alternate is Lilah. They will represent our class in the Irving Annual K-2 Spelling Bee on Wednesday, April 12th beginning at 11:15 am in the Irving Auditorium.
**School Spirit Week was the bomb! Pajamas, twins, decade dressing representing the 40's, 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's and 90's along with lots of purple and Irving colors really made our week special.
**Student Council reps, Naomi D. and Declan reported that Student Council will be planning a Food Drive next month. Stay tuned!
**The students enjoyed the presentation by Justin and Liam called Smart Parts. They sang and included the students in participation songs about building upon all the smart parts using their brain,
**Spring Pictures will be taken on Tuesday, April 18th in the morning. Look for more info soon.
**The Spring Irving Book Fair will be the week of April 24th-28th. Come on out for a special story hour during the book fair on Wednesday, April 26th from 6:30-7:30 pm. Ms. Grogan, Ms. Noonan, Ms Durham and myself will read some our favorite "camping" stories.
**NO SCHOOL--TUESDAY, APRIL 4th--Teacher's Institute Day.
**Our Second Step Lesson this week reviewed appropriate behavior on the playground, hallways and lunchroom.
**In Friendship Club, Dr. Bell Bey reviewed lesson on personal space, Superflex, Rock Brain and Glassman and introduced the character of Space Invader who gets into others personal space and can make them feel uncomfortable.
**In Mr. Packer Thinking Skills, Mr. Packer finished up his lesson on small group work with positional concepts.
This week:
We had some lovely weather and the students went out and visited our White Oak tree and observed any changes they saw since winter ended. The tree became our writing focus as the students wrote about their observations. The students enjoyed a fun Spirit Week. Lots of great participation. They were excited about spending time with their Book Buddies reading a story and writing about it. Big News! Alice's giant potato has sprouted roots!
Reading/Language Arts: The students completed Unit 7 Weather in our Treasures Reading series. This week, the students built background knowledge around the idea of the seasons or certain times of the year and different ways and activities people do at those times. The students listened to the Big Book story, "In the Yard." They made predictions about story content. After listening to the story, the students discussed what the main topic was. They made connections in the story about activities they do in their backyards or front yards at different times of the year. They also noted certain details in the story. Workstations this week included leveled readers with fluency building and comprehension check/discussion, filling out a story elements butterfly, walking all the words known thus far, short vowel sort, creating ccvc and cvcc words, sentence completion, working with word families, consonant blend and digraph review, playing the games, "Chomp" (substituting sounds) "Humpty Dumpty" (short vowels) "Word Construction," (word families.)
Math: The students continue to work on Module 4 in our Eureka Math series. The focus continues to be decomposing (subtracting) from the numbers 8 and 9 using drawings/illustrations, crossing out part, completing the number bond part. Students have been working on story problems in these lessons. Workstations included writing 2 and 3 digit numbers, finding the number before and after a random number, telling time by the hour, reading and solving simple addition and subtraction story problems illustrating and writing the equation and doing simple graphing.
Writing: The students continue to work on lowercase letter formation, spacing between words in a sentence and placement of letters on a given line. In Writer's Workshop this week, the students worked on opinion writing--that is stating what you think and backing it up with reasons why you think it. The students wrote about whether they liked big dogs or small dogs, what their favorite season is, what their favorite crayon color is and what their favorite science investigations was. The students also focused on using their spelling strategies when writing. Writer's don't say---how do you spell...? They can--check the word window......use their word chart.....look in the room.....stretch their sounds and record them....listen for words within a word.....don't forget the vowel.
Science: The students did their final investigation for our Materials and Motion Unit. They built and observed a balloon rocket system to find out how far the air in the balloon will propel the system along the flight line. They investigated how changing the strength of the push (number of pumps of air in the balloon) changes the speed of the balloon rocket and how far it travels. The students also observed what happens to the system when it collides with an object on the flight path. What fun! Each table of students built a balloon rocket and took turns pumping air in the balloon and setting it off. They had to work cooperatively to put everything together. They discovered that a small push (less air) made the balloon spin around and not move very far. The greater the push (more air) made the balloon move faster. The students reflected their findings in their science journals.
Technology: No new apps were introduced this week.
Literature: "The Reasons for Seasons," "Bark, George," "Superdog," "Click, Clack, Moo," "Thunder Storms," "Lightning," "Snow," "Blizzards," "It's Spring."
**The students are also getting excited and looking forward to planning, designing, constructing and detailing a special structure in April. YES! Start bringing in those GIANT boxes, other boxes and any other cool stuff for construction when we return to school on April 3rd. Our engineering project is scheduled for the week of April 17-21. Please send everything by April 14th.
**Congratulations to our SPELLING BEE participants--Jackson and Lily! Our alternate is Lilah. They will represent our class in the Irving Annual K-2 Spelling Bee on Wednesday, April 12th beginning at 11:15 am in the Irving Auditorium.
**School Spirit Week was the bomb! Pajamas, twins, decade dressing representing the 40's, 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's and 90's along with lots of purple and Irving colors really made our week special.
**Student Council reps, Naomi D. and Declan reported that Student Council will be planning a Food Drive next month. Stay tuned!
**The students enjoyed the presentation by Justin and Liam called Smart Parts. They sang and included the students in participation songs about building upon all the smart parts using their brain,
**Spring Pictures will be taken on Tuesday, April 18th in the morning. Look for more info soon.
**The Spring Irving Book Fair will be the week of April 24th-28th. Come on out for a special story hour during the book fair on Wednesday, April 26th from 6:30-7:30 pm. Ms. Grogan, Ms. Noonan, Ms Durham and myself will read some our favorite "camping" stories.
**NO SCHOOL--TUESDAY, APRIL 4th--Teacher's Institute Day.
**Our Second Step Lesson this week reviewed appropriate behavior on the playground, hallways and lunchroom.
**In Friendship Club, Dr. Bell Bey reviewed lesson on personal space, Superflex, Rock Brain and Glassman and introduced the character of Space Invader who gets into others personal space and can make them feel uncomfortable.
**In Mr. Packer Thinking Skills, Mr. Packer finished up his lesson on small group work with positional concepts.
This week:
We had some lovely weather and the students went out and visited our White Oak tree and observed any changes they saw since winter ended. The tree became our writing focus as the students wrote about their observations. The students enjoyed a fun Spirit Week. Lots of great participation. They were excited about spending time with their Book Buddies reading a story and writing about it. Big News! Alice's giant potato has sprouted roots!
Reading/Language Arts: The students completed Unit 7 Weather in our Treasures Reading series. This week, the students built background knowledge around the idea of the seasons or certain times of the year and different ways and activities people do at those times. The students listened to the Big Book story, "In the Yard." They made predictions about story content. After listening to the story, the students discussed what the main topic was. They made connections in the story about activities they do in their backyards or front yards at different times of the year. They also noted certain details in the story. Workstations this week included leveled readers with fluency building and comprehension check/discussion, filling out a story elements butterfly, walking all the words known thus far, short vowel sort, creating ccvc and cvcc words, sentence completion, working with word families, consonant blend and digraph review, playing the games, "Chomp" (substituting sounds) "Humpty Dumpty" (short vowels) "Word Construction," (word families.)
Math: The students continue to work on Module 4 in our Eureka Math series. The focus continues to be decomposing (subtracting) from the numbers 8 and 9 using drawings/illustrations, crossing out part, completing the number bond part. Students have been working on story problems in these lessons. Workstations included writing 2 and 3 digit numbers, finding the number before and after a random number, telling time by the hour, reading and solving simple addition and subtraction story problems illustrating and writing the equation and doing simple graphing.
Writing: The students continue to work on lowercase letter formation, spacing between words in a sentence and placement of letters on a given line. In Writer's Workshop this week, the students worked on opinion writing--that is stating what you think and backing it up with reasons why you think it. The students wrote about whether they liked big dogs or small dogs, what their favorite season is, what their favorite crayon color is and what their favorite science investigations was. The students also focused on using their spelling strategies when writing. Writer's don't say---how do you spell...? They can--check the word window......use their word chart.....look in the room.....stretch their sounds and record them....listen for words within a word.....don't forget the vowel.
Science: The students did their final investigation for our Materials and Motion Unit. They built and observed a balloon rocket system to find out how far the air in the balloon will propel the system along the flight line. They investigated how changing the strength of the push (number of pumps of air in the balloon) changes the speed of the balloon rocket and how far it travels. The students also observed what happens to the system when it collides with an object on the flight path. What fun! Each table of students built a balloon rocket and took turns pumping air in the balloon and setting it off. They had to work cooperatively to put everything together. They discovered that a small push (less air) made the balloon spin around and not move very far. The greater the push (more air) made the balloon move faster. The students reflected their findings in their science journals.
Technology: No new apps were introduced this week.
Literature: "The Reasons for Seasons," "Bark, George," "Superdog," "Click, Clack, Moo," "Thunder Storms," "Lightning," "Snow," "Blizzards," "It's Spring."
Sunday, March 19, 2017
UPDATES for 3/13-3/17 2017
**The students enjoyed the Bagpipe presentation by Patrick Lynch. They had some great questions about where the sound comes from on a bagpipe and Mr. Lynch's traditional dress. It was very chilly and wet so our outside bagpipe concert was short to protect the instrument.
**Super Tuber Day was spectacular! Check out Alice's potato!!! The students learned some facts about Ireland and where it is on the map. They also learned about how potatoes came to Ireland and used their magnifiers to find the "eyes," used cubes to measure the length and sketched their potato. They had a blast weighing their potato using a scale and teddy bears counters. Alice had to estimate how many because even after 69 teddy bears, the scale did not budge! The students spent the rest of their station day choosing a variety of activities using thinking, writing, math, coloring. Thanks to S. Raphael for her help!
**Thanks to all who PACKed the rainbow of fruits, veggies and grains into their child's lunch for PACK Week. It really brought a greater awareness to eating healthier.
**Don't forget to stop by the Oak Park Village Hall to view the work of our Kindergarten student artists! Ms. Gullo's class is exhibiting their "Symmetry Butterflies" under the direction of guest artist, Jonathan Franklin. They will be on display until the end of April.
**We will have our classroom "spelling bee" on Monday. All the students will participate! Upon conclusion of the bee, we will have our 2 students and 1 alternate who will represent our room in the Irving Annual Spelling on Wednesday, April 12 during the lunch hour.
**NEXT WEEK IS SPIRIT WEEK!!! Student Council has decreed the following: Monday--Pajama and Stuffed Animal Day.....Tuesday--Twin Day (you can call a friend and dress alike or dress like a teacher)....Wednesday--Decade Day (dress like the 50's, 60's, 70's 80's etc.).....Thursday--Each grade level will dress in a different color! Kindergarten wears PURPLE......Friday--Show your Irving School Spirit by wearing red, black, white or any Irving wear.
**PTO Cultural Event--"Justin and Liam" is Thursday, March 23rd at 9:15 am.
**We will use the photos taken on our flied trip to the Field Museum in a writing project next week. I have most of them. If you were a chaperone and haven't sent them, please do. Thanks!
**We will also visit our Book Buddies next Friday for a project in their classroom.. The students are excited to see what it is like on the 3rd floor!
**After spring break---Send in all the giant boxes and cool stuff you have been saving for our engineering project! It will be exciting! Our engineering project is schedule for the week of April 17-21. Please send everything in by April 14th.
**Spring Break is 3/27-3/31. School resumes on Monday, April 3rd. Some of you have let me know but if your child is traveling email me so I can send along a travel journal.
**NO SCHOOL--April 4th--Teacher's Institute Day.
**No Friendship Club or Mr. Packer Thinking Skills this week due to their involvement in PARCC testing.
**In our Second Step lesson this week, we reviewed and revisited managing feelings and saw a Brain Pop video on Anger.
This week:
It was all about bagpipes, potatoes, weather. Science abounds in our classroom! Our unit on Weather in reading also included math and writing activities. Great fun! Very motivating! The students observed wind speeds, read and saw pictures of weather instruments and how meteorologists use data to make predictions about what kind of weather we will have in our area. Yes...it's true.....they do not get it right all the time! The United States has many different kinds of weather during each season depending upon where you live. Our tubers are in water and we will be watching them. Awesome fun investigating potatoes! Bagpiper, Patrick Lynch put together his bagpipes and played some cool tunes. Wow! It was loud! Station Day activities included Super tubers and activities containing reading, writing, math, following directions, what makes the colors of the rainbow and coloring by code.
Reading/Language Arts: The students continue to work on Unit 7 Weather in our Treasures Reading series. The students built background knowledge about how weather affects animal and people. Students came to board to write what they experience in snowy, rainy and cold weather. They also discussed how animals react to those conditions. The students reviewed all sight vocabulary learned thus far and reviewed target sounds Bb, Ll, short Ee and words that describe--adjectives!
The students continued to work on segmenting, sound blending 4-5 sound words on their white boards along with addition, deletion and substitution activities. Robust vocabulary this week included CLEAR, EXPERIENCE, HIBERNATE, RETREAT. The students worked on a blueprint about how the actions of a character affect the story (author's words and message) and sequencing those actions using the text "Sheila Rae, the Brave." Students worked on story vocabulary, sequencing the order of events and the story elements of character, setting and locating key details. In preparation for our blueprint, students elbow chatted about the events and characters and acted out key events that showed the characters actions. Workstations this week included leveled readers with fluency building and comprehension check/discussion, vocabulary development, writing and illustrating about your favorite season and what activities you can do, read and rhyme cut and paste word families, roll, say and read blend and digraph words, read and spell cvc words, writing about a favorite picture in the text and telling what information the picture gives you, playing words games "Chomp,"(substituting sounds) "Humpty Dumpty (short vowels) "Word Construction," (word families) and "Build a Word."
Math: The students continue work on Module 4 in our Eureka Math series. Lessons are shifting focus now to work on finding how many are left in a story problem. (subtraction/decomposing numbers) Students are illustrating their thinking by beginning with a picture of a group of objects--listening to the story--and crossing out what is going away. The students are taking a look at the horizontal presentation of the subtraction number sentence using the minus sign. Students used a variety of objects when practicing with partners and telling a take away story.
Writing: The students continue to work on lowercase letter formation. They worked on lowercase j and p. They practiced on their mini boards and applied what they learned in their orange books. In Writer's Workshop this week, the students began a new unit on persuasive writing. The unit includes opinion writing, persuasive writing and writing to create change. We began with chatting about a problem that occurs in school (the topic) and thinking of a way to fix the problem. The students had many ideas including--running in the hall, not finishing their food at lunch, not following the Eagle Essential....... Starting very simply, the students--see a problem--think--write what they might do to fix it. Stay tuned!!!
Science: The weather was not very conducive for our next investigation, so we kept it inside of our classroom. Students created slopes of all magnitudes! They used many items from our classroom. They also used objects from the classroom they thought would hold off a collision or make a big collision. A variety of ball types were used--soccer, whiffle, tennis, mini super. It was collision mania!!! So much fun! Lots of great conversation about slope, speed, direction, size of the ball, size of the barrier. Wow--when objects collide they push one another which can change the motion. The students sketched and wrote their reflections in their science notebook. Next week will be our final investigation for our study on Materials and Motion---using air to propel a balloon rocket. How can we manage how far a balloon rocket will travel? We will be making one!!! Stay tuned!!
Technology: The students used the same apps as last week to continue to enhance the skills of segmenting/blending, adding/deleting sounds, cvc, ccvc, cvcc words, sentence word order, addition and subtraction problems to 10, finding the missing addends.
Literature: "Sheila Rae, the Brave," "It's St. Patrick's Day," "Snow Dude," "The Leprechaun who Lost His Rainbow," "The Enormous Potato," "Jamie O'Rourke and the Big Potato," "Weather Instruments," "What Makes the Wind?" "The Cloud Book," "Clifford's Story Day Rescue."
**Super Tuber Day was spectacular! Check out Alice's potato!!! The students learned some facts about Ireland and where it is on the map. They also learned about how potatoes came to Ireland and used their magnifiers to find the "eyes," used cubes to measure the length and sketched their potato. They had a blast weighing their potato using a scale and teddy bears counters. Alice had to estimate how many because even after 69 teddy bears, the scale did not budge! The students spent the rest of their station day choosing a variety of activities using thinking, writing, math, coloring. Thanks to S. Raphael for her help!
**Thanks to all who PACKed the rainbow of fruits, veggies and grains into their child's lunch for PACK Week. It really brought a greater awareness to eating healthier.
**Don't forget to stop by the Oak Park Village Hall to view the work of our Kindergarten student artists! Ms. Gullo's class is exhibiting their "Symmetry Butterflies" under the direction of guest artist, Jonathan Franklin. They will be on display until the end of April.
**We will have our classroom "spelling bee" on Monday. All the students will participate! Upon conclusion of the bee, we will have our 2 students and 1 alternate who will represent our room in the Irving Annual Spelling on Wednesday, April 12 during the lunch hour.
**NEXT WEEK IS SPIRIT WEEK!!! Student Council has decreed the following: Monday--Pajama and Stuffed Animal Day.....Tuesday--Twin Day (you can call a friend and dress alike or dress like a teacher)....Wednesday--Decade Day (dress like the 50's, 60's, 70's 80's etc.).....Thursday--Each grade level will dress in a different color! Kindergarten wears PURPLE......Friday--Show your Irving School Spirit by wearing red, black, white or any Irving wear.
**PTO Cultural Event--"Justin and Liam" is Thursday, March 23rd at 9:15 am.
**We will use the photos taken on our flied trip to the Field Museum in a writing project next week. I have most of them. If you were a chaperone and haven't sent them, please do. Thanks!
**We will also visit our Book Buddies next Friday for a project in their classroom.. The students are excited to see what it is like on the 3rd floor!
**After spring break---Send in all the giant boxes and cool stuff you have been saving for our engineering project! It will be exciting! Our engineering project is schedule for the week of April 17-21. Please send everything in by April 14th.
**Spring Break is 3/27-3/31. School resumes on Monday, April 3rd. Some of you have let me know but if your child is traveling email me so I can send along a travel journal.
**NO SCHOOL--April 4th--Teacher's Institute Day.
**No Friendship Club or Mr. Packer Thinking Skills this week due to their involvement in PARCC testing.
**In our Second Step lesson this week, we reviewed and revisited managing feelings and saw a Brain Pop video on Anger.
This week:
It was all about bagpipes, potatoes, weather. Science abounds in our classroom! Our unit on Weather in reading also included math and writing activities. Great fun! Very motivating! The students observed wind speeds, read and saw pictures of weather instruments and how meteorologists use data to make predictions about what kind of weather we will have in our area. Yes...it's true.....they do not get it right all the time! The United States has many different kinds of weather during each season depending upon where you live. Our tubers are in water and we will be watching them. Awesome fun investigating potatoes! Bagpiper, Patrick Lynch put together his bagpipes and played some cool tunes. Wow! It was loud! Station Day activities included Super tubers and activities containing reading, writing, math, following directions, what makes the colors of the rainbow and coloring by code.
Reading/Language Arts: The students continue to work on Unit 7 Weather in our Treasures Reading series. The students built background knowledge about how weather affects animal and people. Students came to board to write what they experience in snowy, rainy and cold weather. They also discussed how animals react to those conditions. The students reviewed all sight vocabulary learned thus far and reviewed target sounds Bb, Ll, short Ee and words that describe--adjectives!
The students continued to work on segmenting, sound blending 4-5 sound words on their white boards along with addition, deletion and substitution activities. Robust vocabulary this week included CLEAR, EXPERIENCE, HIBERNATE, RETREAT. The students worked on a blueprint about how the actions of a character affect the story (author's words and message) and sequencing those actions using the text "Sheila Rae, the Brave." Students worked on story vocabulary, sequencing the order of events and the story elements of character, setting and locating key details. In preparation for our blueprint, students elbow chatted about the events and characters and acted out key events that showed the characters actions. Workstations this week included leveled readers with fluency building and comprehension check/discussion, vocabulary development, writing and illustrating about your favorite season and what activities you can do, read and rhyme cut and paste word families, roll, say and read blend and digraph words, read and spell cvc words, writing about a favorite picture in the text and telling what information the picture gives you, playing words games "Chomp,"(substituting sounds) "Humpty Dumpty (short vowels) "Word Construction," (word families) and "Build a Word."
Math: The students continue work on Module 4 in our Eureka Math series. Lessons are shifting focus now to work on finding how many are left in a story problem. (subtraction/decomposing numbers) Students are illustrating their thinking by beginning with a picture of a group of objects--listening to the story--and crossing out what is going away. The students are taking a look at the horizontal presentation of the subtraction number sentence using the minus sign. Students used a variety of objects when practicing with partners and telling a take away story.
Writing: The students continue to work on lowercase letter formation. They worked on lowercase j and p. They practiced on their mini boards and applied what they learned in their orange books. In Writer's Workshop this week, the students began a new unit on persuasive writing. The unit includes opinion writing, persuasive writing and writing to create change. We began with chatting about a problem that occurs in school (the topic) and thinking of a way to fix the problem. The students had many ideas including--running in the hall, not finishing their food at lunch, not following the Eagle Essential....... Starting very simply, the students--see a problem--think--write what they might do to fix it. Stay tuned!!!
Science: The weather was not very conducive for our next investigation, so we kept it inside of our classroom. Students created slopes of all magnitudes! They used many items from our classroom. They also used objects from the classroom they thought would hold off a collision or make a big collision. A variety of ball types were used--soccer, whiffle, tennis, mini super. It was collision mania!!! So much fun! Lots of great conversation about slope, speed, direction, size of the ball, size of the barrier. Wow--when objects collide they push one another which can change the motion. The students sketched and wrote their reflections in their science notebook. Next week will be our final investigation for our study on Materials and Motion---using air to propel a balloon rocket. How can we manage how far a balloon rocket will travel? We will be making one!!! Stay tuned!!
Technology: The students used the same apps as last week to continue to enhance the skills of segmenting/blending, adding/deleting sounds, cvc, ccvc, cvcc words, sentence word order, addition and subtraction problems to 10, finding the missing addends.
Literature: "Sheila Rae, the Brave," "It's St. Patrick's Day," "Snow Dude," "The Leprechaun who Lost His Rainbow," "The Enormous Potato," "Jamie O'Rourke and the Big Potato," "Weather Instruments," "What Makes the Wind?" "The Cloud Book," "Clifford's Story Day Rescue."
Monday, March 13, 2017
UPDATES for 3/6-3/10 2017
**Just when we are really thinking of Spring.......snow is on the radar! Please see that your child is dressed for the weather. Depending upon the amount...boots and snow pants. Thanks!
** Our Field Trip to the Field Museum was awesome! Students worked with their parent volunteers and discussed the exhibits they wanted to see. Sue, Ancient Egypt, Mummies, Animals, lots of Bones and Fossils were the top choices. Our photos are beginning to come in. Our writing project will be the week before spring break. A HUGE THANKS to L. Dantzler, D. Regan, T. Dixon and L. Danley for their help.
**In salute to all things Irish, bagpiper Patrick Lynch will be coming to Irving on Thursday, March 16th at 2:30 pm. He will present the history behind bagpipe music and show the students how he puts it all together. He will also be wearing a traditional Irish kilt. At dismissal, Mr. Lynch will give a concert on the black top for the school. Come join us!
**In keeping with the Irish theme, we will have SUPER TUBER DAY on Friday, March 17th during our station day time. PLEASE SEND A POTATO (any kind-not cooked) on Friday. We will learn a little history aboutIreland and the potato, examine its surface, count the "eyes," measure its length and take a look at different varieties. I have S. Raphael signed up to help but could use 1 or 2 more volunteers. Please email if you can help.
**It's PACK Week! Let's put the rainbow into our lunch! Pack a fruit or vegetable on the color of the day. Monday--pack PURPLE/BLUE, Tuesday--pack WHITE/TAN, Wednesday--pack RED, Thursday--packYELLOW/ORANGE, Friday--pack GREEN. All school lunches will have an appropriate color fruit or vegetable.
**The Irving Online Auction begins on March 12th and runs through March 16th. Log on to see what is being auctioned. Some really cool stuff and great parties.
**WE ARE ARTISTS!! The Oak Park Education Foundation and the Oak Park Area Arts Council are exhibiting the work of District 97 students. Our Symmetry Butterflies will be on display along with art projects from other schools at the Oak Park Village Hall from now through the end of April. Stop by and see them!!
**The Annual Irving School K-2 Spelling Bee will be held Wednesday, April 12th during the lunch hour. Our class will have a "classroom bee" to determine the 2 participants and 1 alternate that will represent our classroom. We will be having our "bee" next Monday. I will be speaking to the class about this event this week.
**PTO Cultural Event-"Justin and Liam," is Thursday, March 23rd at 9:15 am.
**Report cards go home on Friday, March 24th.
**Spring Break is 3/27-2/31. School resumes on Monday, April 3rd. Please let me know if your child is traveling and I will send a travel journal.
**NO SCHOOL--April 4th--Teacher's Institute Day.
**Bring in those giant boxes and other cool stuff for our engineering project after spring break. More information will follow soon.
**No Friendship Club or Mr. Packer Thinking Skills due to their involvement in PARCC Testing.
**Our Second Step lesson this week continued to focus on managing feelings.
This week:
The students prepared for their field trip to the Field Museum. They looked at reading material and videos on Ancient Egypt, dinosaurs, mummies, extinct and endangered animals and mammals. Pictures taken during our trip will become part of a writing research project. The students continue to investigate ramps, slopes and inclines. This week they constructed a double ramp and experimented with increasing the slope. More in the science section. They thoroughly enjoyed their Pajamas and Publishing culmination to our unit on "how to" writing. Station day activities included addition kites, writing about spring, pattern block building houses and finding the missing addends.
Reading/Language Arts: The students began Unit 7 Weather in our Treasures Reading series. We began with a question--"What's the weather like today?" Students accessed prior knowledge about what they understood about weather not only in their own area but all across the United States. The students listened to the Big Book story, "The Rainy Day." They thought about what the main idea might be. They made connections about rain in their daily lives. Sight words this, what were reviewed. The target sounds for the week were short and long e. They continue to work on recognizing nouns and verbs in their daily sentence work. In the second reading of the Big Book story, the students visualized what it looks like after it rains. They also learned some facts about rain. The students examined 2 more parts of a book--the glossary and index and what they are used for. The students used their elkonin boxes to segment and blend 4-5 sound words. Students read their paper stories to a partner and elbow chatted about the sequence of events and main idea. Our Robust Vocabulary included BLUSTERY, DRIZZLE, CHILLY, CLOUDY, WEATHER. The students listened to poems about the weather and did some comparing across weather related texts. The students used their white boards to work on a sound substitution activity. Workstations this week included leveled readers comprehension and fluency building, word work on beginning and ending sounds, short and long vowel sort, roll, say and color ccvc words, writing about the weather, rhyming word families activity and using words and pictures to create 3 sentences.
Math: The students continue work in Module 4 of our Eureka Math series. Lessons continue to focus on part/whole reasoning behind addition and that a number sentence can be presented with the sum first and then its parts or addends. Students worked on creating number bonds for sums 6,7,8,9. Our math races or sprints are becoming more challenging! Workstations this week included writing numbers 1-122, finding the missing addend, even and odd sort, telling time by the hour activity using digital and analog clocks, solving addition story problems using ten frames to show part and whole.
Writing: The students continue to work on lowercase letter formation. They had a review of the letters learned thus far. In Writer's Workshop this week, students completed their "how to" stories on school. They used their checklist to critique their own writing and then shared their writing with their partner. Our Friday Pajamas and Publishing was very cool! Students wore their pajamas, brought special stuffed animals or bedtime items. They went through their stories and shared them with others. They also acted out their books. They then chose a story they wanted to "publish." Our next unit is on persuasive or opinion writing and we will begin prep for it next week.
Science: Our investigations this week centered around what happens when objects collide? Each table built a ramp and experimented with putting objects at the end of it and discussed what happened when they rolled a ball down the ramp and had a collision. Super fun to watch the students faces! They also increased the slope by adding books to their base. Did it affect the collision? The students recorded their thoughts and drawings in their science notebook. Next each table build a double ramp testing to see if the ball rolled all the way across. Did the white small ball move faster or slower? Did the larger red ball move differently? Once again the students built up their ramps to increase the slope. They observed--bigger the slope....faster the ball traveled. Smaller the slope.....slower the ball traveled. They drew and reflected in their science journal. Next week (weather permitting) we taking our investigations outside.
Technology: Whole group work in reading centered around the apps Consonant Blend Sort and Montessori Crossword to reinforce recognition and sound blending. In whole group work in math, the apps Subitize Tree, Number Rack and Let's Do Math were used to reinforce visual counting, part/whole and number bonds to 10. The students viewed a Brain Pop video on nouns, verbs and sentence structure.
Literature: "Rain," "Weather," "Thunder Storms," "Weather Watching," "Green Eggs and Ham," "Snow," "The Things I am Scared Of," "Weather Words," "I Do Not Want To Get Up Today."
** Our Field Trip to the Field Museum was awesome! Students worked with their parent volunteers and discussed the exhibits they wanted to see. Sue, Ancient Egypt, Mummies, Animals, lots of Bones and Fossils were the top choices. Our photos are beginning to come in. Our writing project will be the week before spring break. A HUGE THANKS to L. Dantzler, D. Regan, T. Dixon and L. Danley for their help.
**In salute to all things Irish, bagpiper Patrick Lynch will be coming to Irving on Thursday, March 16th at 2:30 pm. He will present the history behind bagpipe music and show the students how he puts it all together. He will also be wearing a traditional Irish kilt. At dismissal, Mr. Lynch will give a concert on the black top for the school. Come join us!
**In keeping with the Irish theme, we will have SUPER TUBER DAY on Friday, March 17th during our station day time. PLEASE SEND A POTATO (any kind-not cooked) on Friday. We will learn a little history aboutIreland and the potato, examine its surface, count the "eyes," measure its length and take a look at different varieties. I have S. Raphael signed up to help but could use 1 or 2 more volunteers. Please email if you can help.
**It's PACK Week! Let's put the rainbow into our lunch! Pack a fruit or vegetable on the color of the day. Monday--pack PURPLE/BLUE, Tuesday--pack WHITE/TAN, Wednesday--pack RED, Thursday--packYELLOW/ORANGE, Friday--pack GREEN. All school lunches will have an appropriate color fruit or vegetable.
**The Irving Online Auction begins on March 12th and runs through March 16th. Log on to see what is being auctioned. Some really cool stuff and great parties.
**WE ARE ARTISTS!! The Oak Park Education Foundation and the Oak Park Area Arts Council are exhibiting the work of District 97 students. Our Symmetry Butterflies will be on display along with art projects from other schools at the Oak Park Village Hall from now through the end of April. Stop by and see them!!
**The Annual Irving School K-2 Spelling Bee will be held Wednesday, April 12th during the lunch hour. Our class will have a "classroom bee" to determine the 2 participants and 1 alternate that will represent our classroom. We will be having our "bee" next Monday. I will be speaking to the class about this event this week.
**PTO Cultural Event-"Justin and Liam," is Thursday, March 23rd at 9:15 am.
**Report cards go home on Friday, March 24th.
**Spring Break is 3/27-2/31. School resumes on Monday, April 3rd. Please let me know if your child is traveling and I will send a travel journal.
**NO SCHOOL--April 4th--Teacher's Institute Day.
**Bring in those giant boxes and other cool stuff for our engineering project after spring break. More information will follow soon.
**No Friendship Club or Mr. Packer Thinking Skills due to their involvement in PARCC Testing.
**Our Second Step lesson this week continued to focus on managing feelings.
This week:
The students prepared for their field trip to the Field Museum. They looked at reading material and videos on Ancient Egypt, dinosaurs, mummies, extinct and endangered animals and mammals. Pictures taken during our trip will become part of a writing research project. The students continue to investigate ramps, slopes and inclines. This week they constructed a double ramp and experimented with increasing the slope. More in the science section. They thoroughly enjoyed their Pajamas and Publishing culmination to our unit on "how to" writing. Station day activities included addition kites, writing about spring, pattern block building houses and finding the missing addends.
Reading/Language Arts: The students began Unit 7 Weather in our Treasures Reading series. We began with a question--"What's the weather like today?" Students accessed prior knowledge about what they understood about weather not only in their own area but all across the United States. The students listened to the Big Book story, "The Rainy Day." They thought about what the main idea might be. They made connections about rain in their daily lives. Sight words this, what were reviewed. The target sounds for the week were short and long e. They continue to work on recognizing nouns and verbs in their daily sentence work. In the second reading of the Big Book story, the students visualized what it looks like after it rains. They also learned some facts about rain. The students examined 2 more parts of a book--the glossary and index and what they are used for. The students used their elkonin boxes to segment and blend 4-5 sound words. Students read their paper stories to a partner and elbow chatted about the sequence of events and main idea. Our Robust Vocabulary included BLUSTERY, DRIZZLE, CHILLY, CLOUDY, WEATHER. The students listened to poems about the weather and did some comparing across weather related texts. The students used their white boards to work on a sound substitution activity. Workstations this week included leveled readers comprehension and fluency building, word work on beginning and ending sounds, short and long vowel sort, roll, say and color ccvc words, writing about the weather, rhyming word families activity and using words and pictures to create 3 sentences.
Math: The students continue work in Module 4 of our Eureka Math series. Lessons continue to focus on part/whole reasoning behind addition and that a number sentence can be presented with the sum first and then its parts or addends. Students worked on creating number bonds for sums 6,7,8,9. Our math races or sprints are becoming more challenging! Workstations this week included writing numbers 1-122, finding the missing addend, even and odd sort, telling time by the hour activity using digital and analog clocks, solving addition story problems using ten frames to show part and whole.
Writing: The students continue to work on lowercase letter formation. They had a review of the letters learned thus far. In Writer's Workshop this week, students completed their "how to" stories on school. They used their checklist to critique their own writing and then shared their writing with their partner. Our Friday Pajamas and Publishing was very cool! Students wore their pajamas, brought special stuffed animals or bedtime items. They went through their stories and shared them with others. They also acted out their books. They then chose a story they wanted to "publish." Our next unit is on persuasive or opinion writing and we will begin prep for it next week.
Science: Our investigations this week centered around what happens when objects collide? Each table built a ramp and experimented with putting objects at the end of it and discussed what happened when they rolled a ball down the ramp and had a collision. Super fun to watch the students faces! They also increased the slope by adding books to their base. Did it affect the collision? The students recorded their thoughts and drawings in their science notebook. Next each table build a double ramp testing to see if the ball rolled all the way across. Did the white small ball move faster or slower? Did the larger red ball move differently? Once again the students built up their ramps to increase the slope. They observed--bigger the slope....faster the ball traveled. Smaller the slope.....slower the ball traveled. They drew and reflected in their science journal. Next week (weather permitting) we taking our investigations outside.
Technology: Whole group work in reading centered around the apps Consonant Blend Sort and Montessori Crossword to reinforce recognition and sound blending. In whole group work in math, the apps Subitize Tree, Number Rack and Let's Do Math were used to reinforce visual counting, part/whole and number bonds to 10. The students viewed a Brain Pop video on nouns, verbs and sentence structure.
Literature: "Rain," "Weather," "Thunder Storms," "Weather Watching," "Green Eggs and Ham," "Snow," "The Things I am Scared Of," "Weather Words," "I Do Not Want To Get Up Today."
Sunday, March 5, 2017
UPDATES for 2/27-3/3 2017
**Our Field Trip to the Field Museum is TUESDAY, MARCH 7th from 9:30-1:30 pm. I still need permission slips and money from some of you. If your child is not going on the field trip, please email me so I can make arrangements and assignments for their day at Irving while we are gone. PLEASE SEND A BAG LUNCH WITH NAME ON IT. The lunch must be NUT FREE. No glass bottles or lunch boxes please. Chaperones will be taking pictures of their groups favorite exhibits. We will be turning the photos into a writing project.
**In salute to all things Irish, bagpiper Patrick Lynch will be coming to Irving on Thursday, March 16th in the afternoon. He will present history behind bagpipe music and show the kids how he puts it all together. At dismissal, Mr. Lynch will give a concert on the black top for the school. Come join us!
**In keeping with the Irish theme, we will have SUPER TUBER DAY on Friday, March 17th during our station day time. PLEASE SEND A POTATO (any kind, not cooked) We will learn a little history about Ireland and the potato, examine its surface, count the "eyes," measure its length and take a look a different varieties. I have S. Raphael signed up to help but could use 1 or 2 more volunteers. Please email me if you can help.
**Future Event--The PTO Cultural Enrichment Committee has scheduled an assembly on March 23rd at 9:15 am called "Justin and Liam." It teachers character education through music and song writing.
**Please let me know if your child is traveling for Spring Break. I will send a TRAVEL JOURNAL.
**Trimester 2 ends on March 10th.
**Report cards go home on March 24th.
**Spring Break is 3/27-3/31. School resumes on Monday, April 3rd.
**NO SCHOOL--April 4th--Teacher's Institute Day.
**In Friendship Club this week, Dr. Bell Bey lesson focused on being bossy. She read a story and the students reflected their thoughts in writing and drawing.
**In Mr. Packer Thinking Skills this week, Mr. Packer continued his small group work on positional concepts and following directions.
**Our Second Step lesson this week focused on how to manage when we are disappointed.
This week:
It was all about Pushes, Pulls and Ramps! More about that in the science section. The students concluded their author study on Mo Willems and celebrated Dr. Seuss's birthday with a mini author study and Brain Pop Jr. video on his life and work. We had a whole station day planned of Dr. Seuss activities relating to math, writing and phonics but.......the students were so very involved in ramp building and experimenting that we extended our science time. We will have our Dr. Seuss activities on Monday.
Reading/Language Arts: The students used this week to work on a variety of formative and summative assessments using texts from our author study of Mo Willems. The students responded verbally, thru illustration and thru writing. They worked to answer a variety of questions. Who are the characters in the story? How are they alike? Different? What is the problem in the story? What does the character do to solve the problem? What effect does a repeating phrase have on a text? How does the illustration help you to understand the setting? What important job does the author or illustrator have in telling the story? Can you identify the key details in the story? The students did some marvelous work on problem/solution using the text, "That is Not A Good Idea." Using the text, "Knuffle Bunny," the students worked with partners to sequence events in the story and worked on how the author's words and illustrations helped students to understand the story. Lots of great drawings were done during our "we do" of author's words in the text, "Knuffle Bunny." In the text, "Edwina, the Dinosaur That Didn't Know She Was Extinct," students participated in a word study to best describe the main character. Workstations this week included leveled readers comprehension check and fluency, word family sort, digraph work, rhyming cvc words, read and draw simple sentences, digraph game, Pot of Gold CVC game, substituting sounds activity.
Math: The students continue to work in Module 4 in our Eureka Math series. Lessons continue to focus on creating a number bond for a given illustration for numbers 6,7,8,9. The students continue to use pictures, cube sticks and other drawings as well as number sentences to show their work. They continue to work on math races or sprints to strengthen sequencing, subitizing and number order. Workstations this week included writing numbers from 1-120, even and odd number sort, reading and solving addition and subtraction story problems using ten frames and writing the equation and counting on from a given number.
Writing: The students continue to work on lowercase letter formation. The letters k and y were introduced this week. In Writer's Workshop this week, the students were busy writing their "how to" stories on the topic of School. We will be completing our unit on "how to" writing next week with a publishing party.
Science: Our investigations this week centered on what causes objects to move? The students experimented with rolling balls at different speeds and determining the strength of the push require to achieve a certain speed. Pushes can move objects. Declan was our investigator for the use of pulls to move objects. He demonstrated using a string tied around a chair so he could pull it to a different spot. Pulls can move objects. People push. Wind can push. People pull. Gravity can pull! The pull of gravity can push and pull a person on swing. Key vocabulary this week---push, pull, gravity, direction, speed, motion, rolling, slope, collide. The students built a variety of ramps and rolled balls and cars down them to observe the pull of gravity. They had a complete blast working with their table mates on ramp construction. Question--What could we do to change the speed of the object rolling down a slope? Students experimented with raising the slope using book stacks. They found that the higher the slope, the faster the object moved. The activity Contraption and Marble Works and Legos were introduced as Choice time activities to continue experimentation. Students worked in their science notebooks to draw sketches of their ramps and record their thoughts and reflections. Next week--more on colliding objects.
Technology: Whole group in reading worked on the apps Learn Consonant Blends and Oz Phonics for cvc, ccvc, cvcc and short vowel recognition as well as consonant blends and word order. In whole group math, students worked on the apps Let's Do Math and Subitize Tree for providing the missing addend, number bonds to 10 and visual number recognition and number patterns.
Literature: "Knuffle Bunny," "Edwina the Dinosaur That Didn't Know She Was Extinct," "Leonardo," "That Big Guy Took My Ball," "Hop On Pop," "The Cat In The Hat," "Let's Find Out--Dr Seuss," "Telling Time," "Clocks and Calendars," "Roll, Slope and Slide," "Force and Motion," "Pushes and Pulls."
**In salute to all things Irish, bagpiper Patrick Lynch will be coming to Irving on Thursday, March 16th in the afternoon. He will present history behind bagpipe music and show the kids how he puts it all together. At dismissal, Mr. Lynch will give a concert on the black top for the school. Come join us!
**In keeping with the Irish theme, we will have SUPER TUBER DAY on Friday, March 17th during our station day time. PLEASE SEND A POTATO (any kind, not cooked) We will learn a little history about Ireland and the potato, examine its surface, count the "eyes," measure its length and take a look a different varieties. I have S. Raphael signed up to help but could use 1 or 2 more volunteers. Please email me if you can help.
**Future Event--The PTO Cultural Enrichment Committee has scheduled an assembly on March 23rd at 9:15 am called "Justin and Liam." It teachers character education through music and song writing.
**Please let me know if your child is traveling for Spring Break. I will send a TRAVEL JOURNAL.
**Trimester 2 ends on March 10th.
**Report cards go home on March 24th.
**Spring Break is 3/27-3/31. School resumes on Monday, April 3rd.
**NO SCHOOL--April 4th--Teacher's Institute Day.
**In Friendship Club this week, Dr. Bell Bey lesson focused on being bossy. She read a story and the students reflected their thoughts in writing and drawing.
**In Mr. Packer Thinking Skills this week, Mr. Packer continued his small group work on positional concepts and following directions.
**Our Second Step lesson this week focused on how to manage when we are disappointed.
This week:
It was all about Pushes, Pulls and Ramps! More about that in the science section. The students concluded their author study on Mo Willems and celebrated Dr. Seuss's birthday with a mini author study and Brain Pop Jr. video on his life and work. We had a whole station day planned of Dr. Seuss activities relating to math, writing and phonics but.......the students were so very involved in ramp building and experimenting that we extended our science time. We will have our Dr. Seuss activities on Monday.
Reading/Language Arts: The students used this week to work on a variety of formative and summative assessments using texts from our author study of Mo Willems. The students responded verbally, thru illustration and thru writing. They worked to answer a variety of questions. Who are the characters in the story? How are they alike? Different? What is the problem in the story? What does the character do to solve the problem? What effect does a repeating phrase have on a text? How does the illustration help you to understand the setting? What important job does the author or illustrator have in telling the story? Can you identify the key details in the story? The students did some marvelous work on problem/solution using the text, "That is Not A Good Idea." Using the text, "Knuffle Bunny," the students worked with partners to sequence events in the story and worked on how the author's words and illustrations helped students to understand the story. Lots of great drawings were done during our "we do" of author's words in the text, "Knuffle Bunny." In the text, "Edwina, the Dinosaur That Didn't Know She Was Extinct," students participated in a word study to best describe the main character. Workstations this week included leveled readers comprehension check and fluency, word family sort, digraph work, rhyming cvc words, read and draw simple sentences, digraph game, Pot of Gold CVC game, substituting sounds activity.
Math: The students continue to work in Module 4 in our Eureka Math series. Lessons continue to focus on creating a number bond for a given illustration for numbers 6,7,8,9. The students continue to use pictures, cube sticks and other drawings as well as number sentences to show their work. They continue to work on math races or sprints to strengthen sequencing, subitizing and number order. Workstations this week included writing numbers from 1-120, even and odd number sort, reading and solving addition and subtraction story problems using ten frames and writing the equation and counting on from a given number.
Writing: The students continue to work on lowercase letter formation. The letters k and y were introduced this week. In Writer's Workshop this week, the students were busy writing their "how to" stories on the topic of School. We will be completing our unit on "how to" writing next week with a publishing party.
Science: Our investigations this week centered on what causes objects to move? The students experimented with rolling balls at different speeds and determining the strength of the push require to achieve a certain speed. Pushes can move objects. Declan was our investigator for the use of pulls to move objects. He demonstrated using a string tied around a chair so he could pull it to a different spot. Pulls can move objects. People push. Wind can push. People pull. Gravity can pull! The pull of gravity can push and pull a person on swing. Key vocabulary this week---push, pull, gravity, direction, speed, motion, rolling, slope, collide. The students built a variety of ramps and rolled balls and cars down them to observe the pull of gravity. They had a complete blast working with their table mates on ramp construction. Question--What could we do to change the speed of the object rolling down a slope? Students experimented with raising the slope using book stacks. They found that the higher the slope, the faster the object moved. The activity Contraption and Marble Works and Legos were introduced as Choice time activities to continue experimentation. Students worked in their science notebooks to draw sketches of their ramps and record their thoughts and reflections. Next week--more on colliding objects.
Technology: Whole group in reading worked on the apps Learn Consonant Blends and Oz Phonics for cvc, ccvc, cvcc and short vowel recognition as well as consonant blends and word order. In whole group math, students worked on the apps Let's Do Math and Subitize Tree for providing the missing addend, number bonds to 10 and visual number recognition and number patterns.
Literature: "Knuffle Bunny," "Edwina the Dinosaur That Didn't Know She Was Extinct," "Leonardo," "That Big Guy Took My Ball," "Hop On Pop," "The Cat In The Hat," "Let's Find Out--Dr Seuss," "Telling Time," "Clocks and Calendars," "Roll, Slope and Slide," "Force and Motion," "Pushes and Pulls."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)