**It was great to chat with you and share your child's progress. Thanks much for your continued support. The students surely do shine!!
**Our Valentine Sharing and Caring Party was so special! The students made special Valentine card holders and had special treat bags. It was so much fun to see their treasures and read their Valentines!
**Please don't forget to send the dollar amount of your class basket donation to Ben's mom. (Michelle Ahring) I hear the basket is looking pretty great! Thanks for your donations!!
**The FUN FAIR IS SATURDAY!!! Come one, Come all to the Annual Irving Fun Fair, February 25th from 11-3 pm all over the school. Pre sale tickets will be sold on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday at lunchtime and after school in front of the office. They will also be sold the day of the fair. Who will get the PIE IN THE FACE?? Students can bring in their coins to vote beginning Thursday and up until 1:00 pm on Saturday. There is an online silent auction as well as a special teacher donation auction the day of the fair. (BID! BID!--bedtime story at your home and lunch at Junction Diner with me!!!! ) Games, prizes, bouncy house, raffles, bingo, face painting, tattoos, food, dancing for desserts and much more. Come and play the spinning game with me in the gym!! All proceeds from the day will go to Irving School.
**Hearing Screening for Irving students is Friday, February 24th at 10:05 am.
**Declan and Naomi D., our new Student Council reps will attend their first meeting on Tuesday, February 28th.
**Our class continues to participate in the African American Read In. This week, we read and discussed the story, "Ron's Big Mission." It is the story of Astronaut Ron McNair and an event he experienced as a 9 year old going to his neighborhood library. Ask your child about it.
**Permission slip and information about our FIELD TRIP to the FIELD MUSEUM is in your child's backpack. It is Tuesday, March 7th from 9:30-1:30 pm. The cost is $6.00. Please send a BAG LUNCH with NAME on it. It must be NUT FREE. No glass bottles or lunch boxes. I will need 5 chaperones to help out. I have 1 volunteer so far. Email me if interested. The focus of our trip will be for the students to select something interesting to write about. The chaperone can take pictures and email them to me!
**I will begin testing Route to Reading skill levels next week.
**Future Event--Bag Piper- Patrick Lynch will visit the Kindergarten classes on Thursday, March 16th in the afternoon to share and speak about all things bag pipe. He will be giving a concert on the blacktop at dismissal. Let's welcome spring!!
**Future Event--"Super Tuber" Activity (all things potato) on Friday, March 17th during Station Day. I will need 3 volunteers from 1:30-2:00 pm. Email me if interested.
**Future Event--The PTO Cultural Enrichment Committee has scheduled a assembly on March 23rd at 9:15 am called, "Justin and Liam." It teaches character education through music and song writing. **Trimester 2 ends on March 10th. Report Cards go home on Friday, March 24th.
**Spring Break is 3/27-2/31.
**NO SCHOOL--Tuesday, April 4th-Teacher's Institute Day.
**Keep savings those GIANT BOXES and other COOL STUFF for our engineering project in April.
**In Friendship Club this week, Dr. Bell Bey continued lessons on self regulation and managing feelings.
**In Mr. Packer Thinking Skills this week, Mr. Packer began a project with the students centering on positional concepts and colored dots. Listen to the script-----move the dots to correct place.
**Our Second Step lesson this week focused on a review of hall way behavior. The students of Ms. Gullo and Ms. Grogan's classes created a poster of what "kindness" looks like in the hallway.
**The students had their final meeting with guest artist, Jonathan Franklin. Their final project was about using negative space and shapes. We have had a great time with Mr. Franklin! Good News!! The Oak Park Education Foundation would like to exhibit our class Symmetry Butterflies at the Village Hall in April. I will be sending more info on this next month. So cool!!
This week:
It was all about our Valentine's Caring and Sharing, beginning our author study on Mo Willems and continuing our science investigation on paper. We took a look at the contributions of Abraham Lincoln and George Washington thru stories and videos and pondered what makes a great leader.
Reading/Language Arts: The students began Unit 6 Neighborhoods in our Treasures Reading series. They accessed prior knowledge about what a neighborhood is and what is included in a neighborhood. The students worked together to create a huge word web of places and things that describe a neighborhood. They listened to the Big Book story, "Russ and the Firehouse." They recognized the story as nonfiction. The students chatted about story elements--Who is Russ? Why is he in the firehouse? What does he do there? The students also retold the story in their own words sequencing events. Target words: what and that. Target sounds this week: Hh, short and long u.
Students worked with partners and practiced asking a WH question about the story and having their partner answer it. During group read aloud, the students read the decodable story, "Are Caps Hats?" The students made predictions about story content. Each student had an opportunity to read aloud. Some questions to pondered--Could the group hear you? Did you stop at the ending mark? Did you pause at the comma? Were you able to blend the sounds together to make a word you didn't know? Was your reading choppy or smooth? The students reading partner listened, discussed and critiqued using the Reader's Checklist. Peers evaluating peers! The students were excited to begin their author study on Mo Willems. His "Pigeon" and "Elephant and Piggy" stories are so cool! The students took a look at some information on how he got started writing and drawing. Speech bubbles--less words--facial and body expressions in drawings--bold letters--lots of feeling!!! We will be taking a look at some websites and interviews with Mo himself. Feel free to check out his website. "Do you think the Pigeon should drive the bus????? Our students said NO!!!! We discussed the WHY and your own thoughts to back it up. Workstations this week included leveled readers, asking and answering questions about a given text, opinion writing, short and long vowel sort, creating CVC words, adding and deleting sounds to create words, sentence completion and reading short sentences.
Math: The students continued work in Module 4 working on creating number bonds for a given illustration using numbers 1-10. They also worked on telling their partner a story about an illustration and seeing the number bond their partner came up with. The students worked on an app called Butterfly Math projected on the board. It was great practice in finding the sum and missing addend. Key concept words--plus, equal, addend, sum, horizontal addition and vertical addition. This week the students also worked on subtraction or taking away. We are using concrete counters and pictures in our learning. Workstations for this week included writing to 110, finding the missing addend, tally mark addition, roll and add, decomposing teen numbers as 10 and what is left over.
Writing: The students continue to work on lowercase letter formation. This week, they reviewed what they know so far and practiced on their mini boards. In Writer's Workshop this week, the students continue to work on their "how to" books. The teaching point this week was to elaborate or add tips and warnings. They do this by thinking about how the learner could go wrong and then adding advice to keep that from happening. We took a look at some mentor texts and read things like--"Don't forget to....." "Be sure to......." The students and their writing partners chose one of their stories and acted it out to see if it needed any warnings or tips. It is really so inspiring to see these students work with partners and hear their suggestions.
Science: Our investigations this week centered on the resource--paper. The students brainstormed and we created a chart about what we know about paper. It comes from wood--many objects are made out of paper--some paper looks different from other paper--paper can be useful--sometimes paper can change--paper can be reused and recycled. The students looks for paper samples throughout our classroom. They used different kinds of paper and experimented with markers, pens and pencils on types of paper. What makes paper good for writing? They also investigated what happens when certain kinds of paper get wet? Some paper adsorbs water, some does not. Some types of paper change what water gets on it. Some types of paper break down. The student recorded their findings in their science notebooks. Next week---fabric!
Technology: In reading whole group students used the app Oz Phonics to work on CVC words, consonant blends, word order and missing sounds. We used BrainPop to seek out information on Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, the Presidency and the African American author, Eloise Greenfield. We used the internet to gain more information on author and illustrator Mo Willems.
Literature: "Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus," "Abe Lincoln's Hat," "The Story of George Washington," "If You Lived in the Time of Abraham Lincoln," "Will You Be My Valentine," "Night on Neighborhood Street," "Ron's Big Mission," "Harriet Tubman," "A Train Without Tracks," "Author's great Big Valentine."
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