Sunday, April 2, 2017

UPDATES for 3/20-3/24 2017

**Your child's report card in their backpack.  Please sign and return the envelope.  Also included is the Route to Reading skill that they mastered and the new skill your child will be working on beginning April 5th.  There have been lots of changes in student achievement in the past few months. The flood gates of learning are opening wide!  Many students have mastered skills to complete the kindergarten continuum and students have "jumped " skills to move on to the Grade 1 continuum. Students continue to build their reading fluency in the classroom and at home with their Busy Readers.
**The students are also getting excited and looking forward to planning, designing, constructing and detailing a special structure in April.  YES!  Start bringing in those GIANT boxes, other boxes and any other cool stuff  for construction when we return to school on April 3rd.  Our engineering project is scheduled  for the week of April 17-21.  Please send everything by April 14th.
**Congratulations to our SPELLING BEE participants--Jackson and Lily!  Our alternate is Lilah.  They will represent our class in the Irving Annual K-2 Spelling Bee on Wednesday, April 12th beginning at 11:15 am in the Irving Auditorium. 
**School Spirit Week was the bomb!  Pajamas, twins, decade dressing representing the 40's, 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's and 90's along with lots of purple and Irving colors really made our week special.  
**Student Council reps, Naomi D. and Declan reported that Student Council will be planning a Food Drive next month.  Stay tuned!
**The students enjoyed the presentation by Justin and Liam called Smart Parts.  They sang and included the students in participation songs about building upon all the smart parts using their brain,
**Spring Pictures will be taken on Tuesday, April 18th in the morning.  Look for more info soon.
**The Spring Irving Book Fair will be the week of April 24th-28th.  Come on out for a special story hour during the book fair on Wednesday, April 26th from 6:30-7:30 pm.  Ms. Grogan, Ms. Noonan, Ms Durham and myself will read some our favorite "camping" stories.
**NO SCHOOL--TUESDAY, APRIL 4th--Teacher's Institute Day.
**Our Second Step Lesson this week reviewed appropriate behavior on the playground, hallways and lunchroom.
**In Friendship Club, Dr. Bell Bey reviewed lesson on personal space, Superflex, Rock Brain  and Glassman and introduced the character of Space Invader who gets into others personal space and can make them feel uncomfortable.
**In Mr. Packer Thinking Skills, Mr. Packer finished up his lesson on small group work with positional concepts.
This week:
We had some lovely weather and the students went out and visited our White Oak tree and observed any changes they saw since winter ended.  The tree became our writing focus as the students wrote about their observations.  The students enjoyed a fun Spirit Week.  Lots of great participation.  They were excited about spending time with their Book Buddies reading a story and writing about it.  Big News!  Alice's giant potato has sprouted roots!
Reading/Language Arts:      The students completed Unit 7 Weather in our Treasures Reading series.  This week, the students built background knowledge around the idea of the seasons or certain times of the year and different ways and activities people do at those times.  The students listened to the Big Book story, "In the Yard."  They made predictions about story content.  After listening to the story, the students discussed what the main topic was.  They made connections in the story about activities they do in their backyards or front yards at different times of the year.  They also noted certain details in the story.   Workstations this week included leveled readers with fluency building and comprehension check/discussion, filling out a story elements butterfly, walking all the words known thus far, short vowel sort, creating ccvc and cvcc words, sentence completion, working with word families, consonant blend and digraph review, playing the games, "Chomp" (substituting sounds) "Humpty Dumpty" (short vowels) "Word Construction," (word families.)
Math:     The students continue to work on Module 4 in our Eureka Math series.  The focus continues to be decomposing (subtracting) from the numbers 8 and 9 using drawings/illustrations, crossing out part, completing the number bond part.  Students have been working on story problems in these lessons.  Workstations included writing 2 and 3 digit numbers, finding the number before and after a random number,  telling time by the hour, reading and solving simple addition and subtraction story problems illustrating and writing the equation and doing simple graphing.
Writing:     The students continue to work on lowercase letter formation, spacing between words in a sentence and placement of letters on a given line.  In Writer's Workshop this week, the students worked on opinion writing--that is stating what you think and backing it up with reasons why you think it.   The students wrote about whether they liked big dogs or small dogs, what their favorite season is, what their favorite crayon color is and what their favorite science investigations was.   The students also focused on using their spelling strategies when writing.  Writer's don't say---how do you spell...?  They can--check the word window......use their word chart.....look in the room.....stretch their sounds and record them....listen for words within a word.....don't forget the vowel.
Science:      The students did their final investigation for our Materials and Motion Unit.  They built and observed a balloon rocket system to find out how far the air in the balloon will propel the system along the flight line.  They investigated how changing the strength of the push (number of pumps of air in the balloon) changes the speed of the balloon rocket and how far it travels.   The students also observed what happens to the system when it collides with an object on the flight path.  What fun! Each table of students built a balloon rocket and took turns pumping air in the balloon and setting it off.  They had to work cooperatively to put everything together.  They discovered that a small push (less air) made the balloon spin around and not move very far.  The greater the push (more air) made the balloon move faster.  The students reflected their findings in their science journals.
Technology:     No new apps were introduced this week.
Literature:      "The Reasons for Seasons," "Bark, George," "Superdog," "Click, Clack, Moo," "Thunder Storms," "Lightning," "Snow," "Blizzards," "It's Spring."

 

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