Friday, January 6, 2017

UPDATES for 12/19-12/23 2016

**Our Winter Concert was fabulous!  Our get together afterwards gave the students a chance to chill, be with their families and enjoy some treats!  The students were delighted to see parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and sibs at their concert!  A SHOUT OUT to Julianna's family for sending all the cool crafts!
**Our End of the Year Book Buddy get together was awesome!  The students shared treats and worked on a cool movie trailer featuring themselves using iMovie.  I will eventually share them with you.  I am still looking at them myself.
**Naomi D. and her mom did a presentation about Kwanzaa.  Thanks so much!
**Stop in and see our COMPLIMEN-TREE.  The students worked on writing a compliment to another student in the class.  It was heart felt!  We love and respect each other.
**Classes resume on Monday, January 9th.  Please come dressed for the weather.  Mr. Hodge makes the decision on going out each day.......so we want all students to be prepared!!
**Reading Grandma Mary will be returning for her 10th year of hearing our budding readers.  She will join us on Tuesday afternoons and will work one on one with each student on fluency and comprehension.  
**Our wonderful grandma, Ms. D. will be also be returning on Tuesday mornings to volunteer at literacy workstations.
**Ms. Gullo's Kindergarten class will take part in a special program called ART START funded through the Oak Park Art Foundation beginning on Thursday, January 12th and running for 5 consecutive Thursdays for one hour.   We are so pleased to be working with local artist and illustrator, JONATHAN FRANKLIN.  He lives in Oak Park and his children all went to Irving School.  I was lucky enough to have 3 of his 4 children in my kindergarten!  The focus of our sessions will be related to Modules 2 and 3 in our Eureka Math program.  Jonathan will be working with the students on projects that use vertical and horizontal lines, shapes, negative space and concepts of taller/shorter, more than/less than, enough/not enough and length and height.  I will be sending you an update each week.   It is a great opportunity for creativity and expression as well as continued work on our core standards in math.
**Our Secret Snowflakes were the students for Ms. Sakamoto's class.  The class enjoyed their little clues and goodies each day.
**Student Council will be looking for 2 NEW Reps for this trimester.  I will be sending out info on this when we get back from break.  
**Mid Year DIDELS screening for phonemic awareness and Mid Year screening for AIMSWEB math will begin the week of January 19th.
**Vision Screening for Kindergarten will be held on Friday, January 20th in the morning.
**NO SCHOOL on Monday, January 16th--ML King Day.
**NO SCHOOL on Friday, January 27th--Teacher's Institute Day.
**The 100th Day of School is FEBRUARY 6th.  I need lots of parent help for the activities and festivities.  Stay tuned.
**Mid Year Parent/Teacher Conferences will be held Monday, February 13th, Tuesday, February 14th and Wednesday, February 15th.  Thursday and Friday (February 16th and 17th) dismissal will be at 11:00 am.  There is no afternoon session.
**The FUN FAIR is COMING!!!  It's Saturday, February 25th from 11-3 pm.  Stay tuned.
**Start saving those GIANT BOXES (the kind you can climb in) and other cool stuff for our space station engineering project that will be done in APRIL.  I cannot keep anything in the room now.  Please keep it at home until after spring break.
**We will begin our next cross/curricular theme-WINTER when we get back from break.
Coming Up in 2017--In reading/language arts/literacy--we will continue to focus on sound foundation, sound blending, deleting/adding/segmenting sounds in 3,4,5 sound words and even 6 sound words, long and short vowel sounds, some beginning phonics with silent e and vowel teams.  We will continue to work on our Blueprint Workmats in the areas of written comprehension, sequencing events in a story, gathering supporting details in a text, stating an opinion with supporting reasons, naming the main topic and using text features like photos/illustrations to help understand the author's message.  Our BUSY READER CLUB will continue and the students begin to read for meaning in a story.  In writing--The students will continue work on lowercase letter formation, sentence structure, inventive spelling, grammar and punctuation and expanding sentence length.  In Writer's Workshop the students will work on writing how to books to teach others.  In math--the students will continue work on rote to 100 by 1's, 10's, 5's and 2's, writing 2 and 3 digit numbers, work on teen numbers, demonstrating knowledge of numbers greater and less than, representing addition and subtraction with objects and mental images, using number sentences, solving story problems using drawings and numbers work, finding hidden partners (number bonding) to 10, fluent addition and subtraction to 5, comparing length, weight and capacity and comparing 2 objects with a measurable attribute.   In science--the students will begin their next module-Materials and Motion. They will working on investigations dealing with the study of natural resources and the properties of-wood, paper and fabric and the effects of pushes and pulls.   Socially--the students will continue work on becoming more responsible and independent learners and thinkers, continue work on showing empathy, kindness and respect toward their peers and teachers and take a more active role in shaping their own behavior.  In technology--the students will continue to use the iPad and internet resources to enhance areas of the curriculum.  WOW!  We will be very busy!


No comments:

Post a Comment