Sunday, April 30, 2017

UPDATES for 4/24-4/28 2017

**Our Habitats are amazing!  The students put their finishing touches on their habitats and are now using them for a quiet reading spot and for dramatic play.  We continue to edit our iMovie and hopefully it will be ready for release in the next couple of weeks.
**The Irving Book Fair was a smash!  Lots of browsers and buyers!  Thanks to all who stopped by for "Campfire Stories."  It was lots of fun.
**KEEP PRACTICING YOUR POEM for the Traveling Poets Project!!  The students will begin traveling on May 10th and May 17th.
**We have finished all the lessons for Module 4 in math.  I am sending home the workbook.  Please feel free to work on the remaining problem sets with your child.
**We had some words of wisdom from our Principals of the Day-Principal Egan and Principal Foreman!  They came by our classroom to tell us we were doing a good job!
**FITNESS WEEK begins MONDAY.    Monday-Ball and Jump Rope Day.  Tuesday-Healthy Heart Day-wear red and bring a healthy snack.  Wednesday--ACES-everyone will exercise simultaneously.  Thursday--Sports Hat Day  Friday--School Spirit Day-wear Irving colors.
**Let's COUNTDOWN to the end of the year......the ABC way!!  The students will decide weekly what we will do.  I will be emailing you a copy and also sending a hard copy.  It begins TUESDAY, MAY 2nd!!!
**COME RUN WITH ME!  Come out for District 97's Fun Run on Saturday, May 6th.  K-2 students will run at 8:00 am at Lindberg Park.  Information is in your child's homework folder.
**The Ethnic Festival/World Language Day is also Saturday, May 6th at Julian Middle School.  The parade begins at Julian at 9:30 am.
**The Irving Sleepover is Friday, May 5th.  Info and sign up are on the Irving website.
**Information and sign up for Irving's Annual Art Fest/Poetry Slam is in your child's homework folder.  It is Thursday, May 18th from 6-8 pm all over the school.  Sign up to say a poem, rap, sing, work with your family, a friend, siblings--open mike under the direction of our own Mr. Williams. There will also be "Poetry Breaks," Art displayed, Chorus performance, a play by Mr. Packer's students, Spanish games and much more.  Come on out!!!!  Let's have some "little slammers" perform!!
**New Kindergarten Student Orientation is Wednesday, May 3rd from 2:30-4:00 pm in all the kindergarten rooms.
**FUTURE Walking Field trips--May 25th-Maze Library, May 31st-Pizza and Play End of the Year Family Picnic and June 6th-Oak Park Conservatory.  Information on all trips will come out soon.
**In our Second Step Lesson this week, the lesson focused on fair ways to play---sharing, trading and taking turns.
**In Friendship Club this week, Dr. Bell Bey introduced the "thinkable" called Rex Flexinator.  He works with Superflex against Rock Brain, Glassman and Space Invader.
**In Mr. Packer's Thinking Skills this week, Mr. Packer worked with the students on how to be a good detective and looking for clues to solve the mystery of the cards.  Cool!
This week:
It was all about trying out our habitats and also trying out other teams habitats.  The students collaborated in writing a set of rules for their habitat and giving their habitat a name.  Then the fun began!  Students used them for "chillin," reading and for just playing around!  Yes!  We have worm eggs and some baby worms!  The students were thrilled and excited to view them.  The students also planted the seed they are going to observe grow.  Station day activities included raindrop addition, teen number tally, planting marigold, nasturtium, morning glory or sunflower seeds and observing our worm egg and baby worm.
Reading/Language Arts:       The students completed Unit 8 Plants in our Treasures Reading series. They took a look at different types of seeds observing texture, shape, size.  The students also completed a Blueprint on text detail and main topic using the text, "The Sunflower House. "  They reviewed all sight words taught thus far.  We also used this week to review all consonant sounds, short and long vowel sounds, blends and digraphs, syllables and adding and deleting sounds to make new words.  We are nearing the end of our Haggery Blue Book exercises.  The students also worked on "word work" exercises---listening to nonsense words to spell, changing vowel sounds in words to create a new word and reviewing what nouns, verbs and adjectives do for a sentence.  Workstations this week included leveled readers discussion about word choice and meaning, comparing texts and characters actions, fluency checks, elbow chats about main topic, drawing your idea of a garden and writing about what you would grow, writing and diagraming a favorite insect and writing about what you know about them, pronoun worksheet, unscrambling a sentence, what punctuation do you need? activity, word work with short and long vowels and writing about a seed and what it can grow into.
Math:      The students began work in Module 5 of the Eureka Math series.  You can check out the Tips for Parents sheet in your child's homework folder.  The students worked on grouping by 10 ones and then some more to create teen numbers.  We will begin work on "hide zero" the idea being that in numbers larger than 10, the 10 is still there and always part of the number.   We can start with the number for 10 and cover or hide the zero to make a new number---10 and 3 ones.  (hide the zero for 13)  Workstations this week included writing numbers to 120, number bond cards to 10, solving story problems using drawings, equations and number bonds and counting on from a random number and decomposing teen numbers.
Writing:      The students continue to work on lowercase letter formation.  Next week, they will be completing their orange practice books.  We will continue to review upper and lowercase letter formation.  In Writer's Workshop this week,  the students continued to work on persuasive letter writing,  This week the students wrote to a friend at Irving School about a problem in the school and how they could fix it.  They needed to be convincing, give reasons why it is a problem, include important information, give a fix it idea and be polite.  The students chose friends or siblings to write to.  We also began to chat about problems we may have at home and how we might solve them.  The student brainstormed ideas and chose a person in their family to write to.  They are in the middle of that process.  They will be mailing the person of their choice this letter next week.  Stay tuned!
Science:     The students are finishing up their worm study.  They continue to observe and feed our red composting worms.  We have been finding worms egg sacks and even a few baby worms.  It has been quite thrilling!  The students recorded thoughts, facts and findings as well as drawing/diagrams of the worms in their science notebook.  Next week, we will begin preparing for our next live animal study--fish!  The student are also continuing to observe seeds types and what seeds need in order to grow.  The students have planted a special flower seed and will nurture it as it grows into a plant.  We will be observing the inside of a seed next week and prepare our classroom for guppies and goldfish!
Technology:      The students are continuing to explore iMovie.
Literature:     "The Sunflower House," "The Action of Subtraction," "How Does a Garden Grow?" "The Mission of Addition," "If You Were a Minus Sign," Grammar Tales--"Chicken in the City" (nouns) "A Verb for Herb" (verbs) "Silent Letters Loud and Clear." "What is a Seed?" "Compost Stew," "Heroes of the Vegetable Patch."

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