**Happy New Year and welcome back! The students appeared well rested and excited to be back to our routine. A word about CHAPSTICK! It is very dry in our classroom. The students may bring chapstick or lip balm to school and keep it in their backpacks. Also, water bottles can be brought in daily. Don't forget gym shoes on gym days (Mondays and Wednesdays) if your child is wearing boots.
**Eagle Extra and World Language Classes begin next week. I will be getting a list of participants from our class. Feel free to drop me an email if your child is part of these classes.
**Mid Year DIBELS and AIMSWEB Math assessments will begin on Tuesday along with Darrell Morris Sound Foundation assessments. I will be sharing all of these with you along with Common Core Blueprint assessments at our Mid Year Parent Conference in February.
**You will receive notification about Mid Year Parent/Teacher Conferences this coming Friday. They will be held on Monday, February 13th, Tuesday, February 14th and Wednesday, February 15th. Please note that on Thursday and Friday, February 16th and 17th. School will be in session in the MORNING ONLY. Dismissal will be at 11:00 am. Hephzibah, Magical Minds, ABC Toon Town and RFCC will also pick up at 11:00 am.
**Reading Grandma Mary will begin her 10th year of volunteering on Tuesday afternoon.
**Art Start Artist, Jonathan Franklin began working with the class this past Thursday. His first lesson was about: What is a fractal and how to use fractals in the arts. Great lesson! Check out our Gallery Wall to the right!!
**I will also be sending home info for students wishing to be a Student Council rep on Friday.
**Our 100th Day of School Celebration is Monday, February 6th from 9-11 am. Looking at my classroom sign up sheet, I have B. Zort and M. Ahring signed up so far. Please let me know if this has changed. I would love to have at least 6 more volunteers to help with all the activities. Please email me if you can help. The students will also be working on a special 100 item project. This will be sent home on January 25th.
**The students will see a special presentation on Dental Hygiene on Thursday, January 19th at 8:30.
**Vision Screening for Kindergarten will be held on Friday, January 20th in the morning.
**NO SCHOOL on Friday, January 27th--Teacher's Institute Day.
**The FUN FAIR is COMING! It is Saturday, February 25th from 11-3 pm. Stay tuned for more info.
**Start saving those GIANT BOXES (ones you can climb in) and other cool stuff for our engineering project in APRIL. I cannot store anything now. Please keep at home until after spring break.
**In Friendship Club this week, Dr. Bell Bey began a unit on self regulation introducing the super hero, Superflex who helps a citizen be a flexible thinker which allows the person to control his or her brain and change how he or she thinks. He helps a citizen think about how to act and behave to keep others and themselves feeling good and be a good problem solver.
**In Mr. Packer's Thinking Skills this week, students finished up their project on thinking in shapes and using shapes in relation to surface area.
**In Art Start this week, Mr. Franklin introduced himself and outlined the lessons to be covered in his artist in residency stay. He posed the statement--Artists are always asking questions and always thinking! He started this weeks activity by drawing a Y on the board asking the students what they thought it looked like. From there he spoke to them about repeating patterns in nature and in math. Students then took their paper, drew a Y and kept on repeating y's and keeping it connected to the first Y. The students thought--"That's looking like a tree with big branches and small branches. " So cool! He explained what a fractal was which was what they were creating. The students continued creating and adding details to their drawings. Stop in and view the Gullo Gallery on the wall in the hallway.
This week:
The students ere definitely getting back into the swing of things with all things related to learning. They shared their winter break stories of travel, presents and family fun. The students worked on a mini unit on the life and accomplishments of Martin Luther King Jr. The text, "Martin's Big Words" was used for our first Blueprint of the year on the use of illustrations to help us understand a story. The students watched a video of Martin Luther Kings life. They were very thankful for Dr. King's work to use nonviolence to promote change. We selected other texts to examine quotes, speeches and word choices. Thanks to Judea for bringing in the text, "Martin Luther King is a Hero." Station day activities included build and count pattern block ice cream cones, creating a snowman windsock, color by code and count the shapes on the snowflake, measure it using cube sticks and further experimentation with fractal designs.
Reading/Language Arts: The students continue to work on Unit 4 Food in our Treasures Reading series. The discussions focused on the steps in growing food, what is your favorite food and why and steps in following a recipe. The students accessed prior knowledge about a meal they helped to prepare. They shared information about special foods they ate during the holidays. The students read their predecodable story, "Can Nan?" They made predictions about story content. They elbow chatted with a partner about the characters, setting and main idea. They also read to their partner to practice their fluency. Students reviewed sound blending 3-4 sound words using their elkonin boxes. They also reviewed 2 and 3 part consonant blends and short vowel sounds. Students used their white boards to work on substituting sounds to create new words some of which were nonsense words. Workstations this week included leveled readers with focus on fluency and reading for meaning, real and nonsense word read and sort, writing about how to make a fruit salad, roll and read a word family list, creating a food web, adding and deleting sounds to create words and walking their words.
Math: The students continue to work in Module 3. They continue to experiment with nonstandard measuring using cube sticks, using the balance scales to measure weight and working with different containers to measure capacity or how much a container holds. Lessons this week focused on making informal comparison of area and comparing to find if there are enough. Students continue to work on finding hidden partners or number bonds using numbers 0-10. Students also listened to a story problem and determined if they had to add or take away to arrive at an answer. Workstations this week included writing 2 digit numbers, determining how many 10 frames and how many ones were needed to create a number, working with teen numbers, adding numbers to 10 and continued exploration of nonstandard measurement using cube sticks, balance scales/weight and containers/capacity.
Writing: The students continued work on lowercase letter formation. Letters o, c, s, v, w were introduced. The students practiced on their mini boards with chalk and applied what they learned in their orange practice books. In Writer's Workshop, the students looked through their true stories and choose one to put a cover on for publishing. The students began a new unit on the writing of "how to"or procedural stories. The students will choose a topic and "teach" others to do it. The writing involves a series of sequencing steps from beginning to end. We took a look at some "how to" texts and students chatted with their writing partner about a topic they could teach others to do. Very exciting! Stay tuned.
Science: The students are gearing up to begin their next unit of study called "Materials and Motion." We will begin our first investigation next week.
Technology: In reading small groups, the apps Rocket Speller and Spelling Bug were used to work on letter sequencing in a word. The students also used Oz Phonics to work on consonant blends and digraphs in words as well as short vowel sounds. In math small group, students used the apps Subitize Tree and Butterfly Math to work on number visualization and vertical and horizontally presented addition facts to 10. Partners used BrainPop Jr to view a video on Winter and take the quiz.
Literature: "Martin's Big Words," "Martin Luther King is a Hero," "A Picture Book of Martin Luther King," "Dream." "Martin's Dream," "It's Winter," How To Books--"My First Soccer Game," "Food for a Day," "Let's Make Pancakes," "The Sand Castle."
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