**Our 100th Day Celebration was a smash! 100 fruit loop necklaces, 100 stamps in a stamp book, writing 100 words, making 100 day crowns, creating and building using 100 cups, 100 legos, 100 craft sicks, 100 pattern blocks, graphing 100 items by tens and writing numbers from 1-100 were the activities. A BIG SHOUT OUT to our great volunteers D. Regan, C. Horwitz, B. Ahring, L. Dantzler and J. Flannery.
**Parent/Teacher Conferences begin on Monday, February 13th and continue Tuesday, February 14th and Wednesday, February 15th. Your family can attend if needed. I will be sharing all progress reports, work samples and assessments for midyear.
**Our Valentine Sharing and Caring Party is Tuesday, February 14th! Bring in your valentines and a treat (NUT FREE) if you wish. The students have made a special valentine card holder. All treats will be sent home.
**Don't forget to sign up to contribute to our class "Game Night" Basket. Michelle Ahring's mom has set up a Sign Up Genius. You can send your contribution game or money to school and I will deliver it to Michelle. Let's make our basket the COOLEST!
**The FUN FAIR is almost here! I believe the PTO will begin selling tickets this week. The FUN FAIR is Saturday, February 25th from 11-3 pm. There will also be a "sensory" time to go to the Fair from 10-11 am. The time is reserved for students and family who desire a less crowded, low stress and low sound time. There will be games prizes, food, dancing for desserts, raffles, a silent auction and much more! Come play a game with me! Silent Auction items--BID! BID! I will be taking 4 lucky winners to lunch at Junction Diner and will be reading a special bedtime story to 2 lucky winners in their home. Join in the fun!
**Congratulations to DECLAN and NAOMI D. our new Student Council Reps for this trimester. Their first meeting will be Tuesday, February 21st.
**Hearing Screening is Friday, February 24th in the morning for all Irving students.
**Our class has been participating in Irving School's African American Read In under the direction of Ms. Noonan. Our story this week was "The Story of Ruby Bridges." The story was followed by a discussion and reflection by the students of story content.
**Future Field Trip--Field Museum--Tuesday, March 7th from 9-2 pm. Look for field trip permission slips and info soon. I will need 5 volunteers for the trip. Email me is interested.
**Keep saving GIANT BOXES and other COOL STUFF for our engineering project in April.
**In Friendship Club this week, Dr. Bell Bey continued her lessons on self regulation using Superflex, Rock Brain and introducing Glassman who makes people have upsets over little things. The students viewed a webisode about a girl who broke her pencil and throws a fit. It's a Glassman moment. How can the girl calm down? The students discussed how to fix the situation--get a new pencil, ask the teacher to sharpen her pencil, use self talk, belly breathe, count to get calm---great suggestions.
**In Mr. Packer Thinking Skills this week, Mr Packer worked with students on a project illustrating positional concepts with boxes and a black dot.
**In our Second Step lesson this week, the students continued work on how to calm strong feelings.
**In Art Start this week, Mr. Franklin worked with the students on shapes, paper folds and negative space to create a house. The students then made a neighborhood landscape out of blocks and placed their houses along the street.
This week:
It was all about our 100th day celebration. The students were counting up a storm by 10's, by 5's and by 1's to 100. The students also continued work on their science investigation about wood. We continue to explore the accomplishments of African Americans. Our favorite story and discussion was on "The Story of Ruby Bridges." The students were so proud to know that even a young child can effect change in our country. Lots of thoughtful insights by students. Station day activities included color by code horizontal addition, build and count 2 different ways and record the blocks that you used, let's make 10 and coloring/decorating their Valentine card holder.
Reading/Language Arts: The students are working to complete Unit 5 Animals in our Treasures Reading series. The students reviewed all the sight words learned thus far. We also reviewed parts of speech--noun and verb. In all of our reading, students have been looking for them. This week we took a look at how animals can change and grow. We discussed how an animal grows from a baby into an adult. The students listened to the Big Book story, "Baby Animals ABC." The word offspring appeared in our story about different animal babies and some facts about them. What does that word mean? Are there any clues or pictures in the book that could help you figure out what it means? The students also commented on how the book was set up. It was in ABC order with a baby animal with the same beginning letter on each page. During our reading, the students made predictions about what would come next, made inferences about what an animal could do and classified and categorized animals into certain groups. The students had a chance to elbow chat about their favorite animal baby and the fact they learned about it. The students continued work on the text "Animals in Winter" for their blueprint summative. This non fiction story focused on animals that migrated, hibernated or stayed put for the winter. The students acted out animals actions, did a group "we do" illustration of their favorite animal facts and completed a "you do" blueprint where they wrote about the main topic and cited 2 examples of how the animal of their choice spends the winter. Cool! Workstations this week included leveled readers with focus on fluency, naming main topic and looking for nouns and verbs, short vowel/long vowel word sort, writing about an animal from your reader and telling 2 facts, real/nonsense word sort, making ccvc and cvcc words, discussing and writing about the problem and solution in a story and substituting beginning sounds to form new words. Next week, we will begin an author study on children's author and illustrator Mo Willems.
Math: The students began Module 4 in our Eureka Math series. The lessons this week focused on composing (adding) and decomposing (subtracting) numbers to 5 using multiple representations--drawings, numbers and objects. As in our story problem books, the students were asked to look at a picture and tell a story about it to their partner and then fill in a parts and whole on the number bond. The students also did another math race called a sprint. Sprints are 1 minute tests that help build confidence strengthen number recall and focus.. This sprint was about filling the missing number on the number line using numbers 0-5. Workstations this week included writing the missing numbers from 1-100, review of 2D and 3D shapes, story problems writing a number bond to tell the parts and whole and number writing practice.
Writing: The students continue to work on lowercase letter formation. The letters e and l were worked on. The students practiced formation on their mini boards and applied what they learned in their orange books. In Writer's Workshop this week, the students continue to work on their "how to" story format to inform and teach. The teaching point was to write "how to" steps that a reader can easily follow, it's really important to remember yourself doing something and picture it, almost like you are watching a video in slow motion. The students worked with their writing partners to choose one of their stories and act out the parts. Did they have all the steps they needed? So fun to observe their interest and see them work everything out!
Science: Our next science question in our study of natural resources was on exploring parts of wood--sawdust and wood shavings. Vocabulary included sawdust, screen, shavings, waterlogged. The students worked with their tablemates to compare sawdust (the tiny pieces of wood they made using sandpaper) and wood shavings. Each student had a chance to look at the cup of sawdust and cup of wood shavings with their magnifying glass. How are sawdust and shavings the same? (they are both wood) How are sawdust and shavings different? (tinier vs. bigger) The students mixed the two with water. What did you observe? Students made entries in their science notebook about shavings floating and some sinking. Wood that is waterlogged sinks. We also talked about wood having tiny holes or spaces where the water can soak in. Who knew!!! Next week: paper!
Technology: In reading, group work was done with the app Oz Phonics on blends, digraphs, word order in sentences and cvc words. The app Rocket Speller was used in small group work to strengthen sound blending and segmenting. In math, the app Butterfly Math was used to work on horizontal addition problems with objects and numbers. The students watched a BrainPop video on the accomplishments of Abraham Lincoln and Rosa Parks and in science on Wood
Literature: "Animals in Winter," "The Story of Ruby Bridges," "Fluffy's 100 Days," "The 100th Day of School," "The Night Before the 100th Day of School," "100Ways to Celebrate the 100 Days," "A Picture Book of Rosa Parks," "Ms. Bindergarten Celebrates the 100th Day of Kindergarten," "Harlem," "Duke Ellington."
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