**Thanks for your patience. I will be recapping the past 2 weeks. Time is really flying by in Kindergarten!! We are getting closer and closer to becoming First Graders!! The students are doing more independent work like a First Grader. My mantra--"Let's act like First Graders and........" So far......so good.
**The ABC Countdown continues! King and Queen Day were lots of fun! The King's Decree---extra recess, extra choice time, extra reading time and feed the fish. Queen's Decree---feed the fish, extra recess, water the plants.
**Next weeks Countdown activities are in your child's homework folder
**The Poetry Slam was the bomb! Our "Lil Slammers" Lilah, Alec, Camille, Jeanette and Lily, Zoey, Nyah and guest little sister, Nora did such a good job! So proud!!! They represented our class well. Start planning for next year!
**I was not able to make the Dance Party, but heard all who attended had a blast!
**Pacers Walking/Running Club will have its final run/walk on Friday, June 2nd. The students will bring home their feet necklace that they have been working on.
**Our walking trip to Maze Library was awesome! We had a beautiful afternoon walk. Maze librarian, Ms. Sarah had a special reading/movement session and provided a tour of the library. The students then got to read, work a puzzle, build and color in the Children's Section. Several students got their LIBRARY CARDS. They are in a white envelope in their backpacks. Our hope is that they will be using them from now on to take out books. There is a SUMMER READING CHALLENGE at all Oak Park Libraries that starts when school is out. We will have an assembly on June 1st at Irving and Ms. Sarah will come to explain the challenge. Thanks to K. James, Judea's Grandpa, J. Flannery, M. Maldonado, RD Danley and S. Raphael for their help.
**Olympic Day was so fun! Team Gullo showed great teamwork and sportsmanship during all activities. Hula Hoops, Basketball Shoot, Nerf Ball Battle, Yoga, 50 Yard Dash, Scooter Relay, Team Skiing and Parachute were just some of our activities. The students watch a video on why Olympic Day is important produced by 3 students from the Julian Middle School--2 are former Irving students from my class. The boys helped out during our parachute activity.
**Our siblings are the coolest! A BIG SHOUT OUT to Rylee, Emmett, Bobby, Jasmyn, Sophie, AJ and Cora who joined our class and had a ball!
**Information and permission slip for Pizza and Play End of the Year Family Picnic went home last week. The cost is $4.00 which includes pizza and a drink. There is a Sign Up Genius online that I sent last week for sign up to provide veggies and fruit along with set up, clean up, blankets, card tables, vans for transport, napkins, plates and cups. I have 2 large thermos containers for water and fruit punch. You can drop off all items at the patio door that morning or send them with your child. If your child does not want pizza or cannot have pizza, please send a lunch. We have a permit for 9:30-noon on Wednesday, May 31st at Rehm Park. Come join us! I will resend the the Sign Up Genius.
**Permission slip and info on our last WALKING FIELD TRIP to the OAK PARK CONSERVATORY is in your child's backpack. We will need 3 volunteers.
**Students will continue to bring home portfolios of work from Writer's Workshop and their Science Notebooks. WOW! It's amazing!
**Homework has ended but.......keep reading every night!
**ALL LIBRARY BOOKS ARE NOW DUE TO MS. NOONAN!
**ALL BUSY READERS ARE DUE TO MS. GULLO!
**The students said goodbye to Mrs. D and Reading Grandma Mary. We are so grateful for their help. Volunteers are so very important! We love our GRANDMAS!!!!
**Please continue to send your child's backpack. Writing portfolios, calendar books, science notebooks and math journals will be coming home.
**Our Final Second Step lesson is next Tuesday, We will be inviting Ms. Grogan's class to help us demonstrate Fair Play/Sharing/Positive Interactions by sharing our choice time with them so they can have dramatic play with us in our design challenge structures.
**Friendship Club has concluded for the year.
**Mr Packer will have his final Thinking Skills session next Tuesday.
**NO SCHOOL--May 29th--Memorial Day observance.
**The LAST DAY of SCHOOL is Wednesday, June 7th. We will have a regular morning session. In the afternoon, we will have our gym class and then beginning at 1:00 pm families can join us for autograph signing, light refreshments, report cards and summer packets to wrap up this awesome year.
The past two weeks:
The students continue to observe our goldfish and guppies. They also are monitoring what is growing in our inside box gardens. The zucchini and milkweed along with pumpkins, cucumbers and carrots are growing. We will be planting these items in our outdoor garden bed next week. The students are examining their work portfolios from this trimester and really realizing how much they have learned. Next week, they will look at their writing portfolio and draw a current picture of themselves and compare it with their drawing from the first day of school. Amazing!!! The students began work on an iMovie about the Best Part of Kindergarten. They chose a subject and wrote a script and I began filming. We will finish edit it and post it before school ends.
Reading/Language Arts: Students continue to work on skills and literature from Treasures Units 9 and 10. Sight words for this week are with and my. Target sounds are Jj and Qu along with long vowels. The students reviewed all their Kindergarten sight words and some First Grade words!
Students continue to review all skills on the Phonemic Awareness Continuum as per our route to Reading format. They used their dry erase boards to practice blending and segmenting 3-4-5 and even some 6 sound words. We are using many words from the First Grade list. The students listened to the Big Book story, "Fish Faces." They were so interested in the world of fish and sea creatures. They elbow chatted about what their favorite fish was in the book and why it was their favorite. The students worked on a summative blueprint about comparing illustrations in a text and writing a summative narrative about what kind of garden they would grow. Robust Vocabulary included CONFUSED, DESCRIBE, INSIST, TEXTURE, UNDERSTAND. Workstations this week included leveled reader self read, partner read and elbow chatting about story elements, comparing and contrasting stories, vocabulary and word choices, drawing a picture of your favorite sea creature and telling why you like it, sorting fish pictures and explaining in writing how you sorted them and using 5 of your sight words--write a sentence using each word. In week two----the students chose their own reading material from an approved list and came up with their own activities to do to connect their reading and writing. They also chose an iPad activity that best enhanced what they were studying in their workstation. I loved hearing group, partner and individual reading as I made my way from small group to small group. The great discussions and elbow chats the students had with one another were great! There was also time set up for literacy bag reading. They worked together with partners to create sentences using their sight words and pictures. Another focus was on punctuation marks used at the end of their sentences. Workstations included level reader group discussions and collaboration on story elements and completing an story elements butterfly, discussing and writing about fantasy vs reality in a particular subject, working on blends and digraphs, discussing the author's purpose in writing particular story and creating ccvc and cvcc words.
Math: The students work to complete the study of teen numbers in Module 5 of the Eureka Math series. They had some practice using their own rekenrek moving the beads to indicate one group of tens and some more to create the teen numbers called out. The students also worked on counting on and writing on from a random number. They continue to work on reading a story problem, deciding on the process, illustrating, writing the equation and showing it in a number bond. Workstations for the past two weeks included working independently in their mini math journal, finding the missing addend, counting on from a random number, playing "Pop for Numbers" and "Addition and Subtraction Sort."
Writing: The students continue to work on punctuation, spacing and use of adjectives in their sentences. We are currently writing "Thank You " notes to our grandmas.
Science: Thanks to Petco and Ms. Trudell, we have goldfish and a heater for our guppies! The students are fascinated by these creatures and spend time observing their movements. They delight in helping to feed them. I set both tanks under my iPad and we had live feed in order to really observe the behaviors. Focus questions included: What are the parts of goldfish and guppies? What do goldfish and guppies need to live? What do gold fish and guppies do? The students learned many facts about goldfish like they can't close their eyes because they have no lids so they rest with their eyes open. In the wild, goldfish eat small crustaceans, insect and plants. They also learned some guppy facts like guppies are named after the man who discovered them. (Robert Guppy!) Guppies are sometimes called million fish because of how quickly they can have babies and sometime they are called rainbow fish because they come in so many colors. Guppies are omnivores. The students drew diagrams and labeled parts in their science notebooks. They also wrote a fact and wrote about what they observed. Target words included GOLDFISH, GUPPY, POND, FRESH WATER, SALT WATER, AQUARIUM, GILLS, EYES, SCALES, MOUTH. Next week--comparing goldfish and guppies--How are they alike? How are they different?
Technology: New iMovie in the works. Small groups in Reading used the apps Rocketspeller, Montessori Crosswords, Oz Phonics and the Blends Train to enhance their word study. In Math small groups used the apps Subitize Tree, Number Find, Ten Frame Game, Number Rack and Animal Math to enhance their study of addition and subtraction, teen numbers, number order, visualizing number, finding the missing addends and solving story problems.
Literature: "Memories of a Goldfish," "Out in the Ocean," "Coral Reefs," "Rainbow Fish Lost at Sea," "Tropical Fish," "Swimmy," "World's Weirdest Sea Creatures," "Sea Shapes,""There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed a Shell," "Fishy Faces," "Exploring the Beach."
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