**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."
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