**What a fabulous week! The students were totally immersed in their habitat projects.
What a great salute to Earth Week. Lots of thought and great ideas along with a BIG dose of compromise when into the design, construction, painting and detailing of each habitat. Their projects also reflected "green ideas." The students will be adding some details to the inside and will begin using the habitats this week. I have been filming the whole process and will begin editing the video with the students and will put it on the blog in early May.
**Proofs for Sibling Pictures were given to the oldest child in the family. You may purchase them online or send the money with your child. Orders are due May 3rd.
**This is the FINAL WEEK of the Student Council sponsored Food/Coin Drive.
**The Irving Book Fair begins Monday, April 24th until April 27th. Come on out with your family and browse/buy. There are lots of great titles.
**Come to the Book Fair on Wednesday, April 26th for Family Reading Night. Come hear "camp fire stories" read by Ms. Noonan, Ms. Durham, Dr. Bell Bey and ME!
**The OPPL BOOK BIKE will be on the blacktop after school on Wednesday, April 26th at 2:00 pm. You can check out books and other resources right from the playground! They can also look up your card. Cool!
**Students have chosen their poem for the TRAVELING POETS PROJECT! Each pair of students is learning a poem that they have picked out. Part of their homework is to memorize their poem. On May 10th and May 17th, groups of my students will "travel" to other classrooms to recite their poem for a poetry break! A copy of the poem is in your child's homework folder. I also have a copy in the classroom so partners can practice.
**Come RUN WITH ME! Come out for District 97's Annual 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.
**Look for info on Irving's Annual ART FEST/POETRY SLAM to be held on Thursday, May 18th from 6-8 pm soon. I would love to have some little slammers recite a poem, rap, write their own poem, sing perform with family, partner, friends. It is super fun! There will an art piece displayed from every student at Irving, performance by the Irving Chorus, Spanish games, a play performance, random poetry breaks and the poetry slam.
**Our Second Step lesson this week continues to focus on steps for problem solving.
**In Friendship Club this week, Dr. Bell Bey reviewed tools for learning, being a social detective, the zones of regulation, being SUPERFLEX and not ROCK BRAIN, GLASSMAN or SPACE INVADER. She also introduced the Thinkable that helps SUPERFLEX called COOL Q. CUMBER. He invites us to stay calm--helps us to have small reactions and is the opposite of GLASSMAN.
**In Mr. Packer Thinking Skills this week, Mr. Packer worked with the students on graphing data on a bar graph using data based on stories that he read to the students.
This week:
Much of our week was spent in project mode. It was really a culmination of the each students ability to collaborate, share and compromise and work toward a common goal. The Eagle Essentials were a major part too. I was very proud of the class! They were able to were able to work out differences of opinion, varying ideas and keep the communication positive. Our station day time was spent on detailing the habitats. After reading texts and seeing a video on making the Earth a better place, the students discussed how to incorporate "green ideas " into their projects.
Reading/Language Arts: The students are working to complete Unit 8 Plants in our Treasures Reading series and became a preparation for a mini science unit on next week on planting seeds and beginning to plant seed in our indoor class garden. The students accessed prior knowledge about what plants need to grow. They completed an initial inquiry about what a seed was. The students used the rest of the week in small groups and with partners working on leveled readers receiving feedback on fluency from their group, responding in writing to questions about story elements and using their Writer's Checklist to see how they did, using context clues to determine the meaning of an unknown word and working to compare and contrast the experiences of characters in common texts. We began a Blueprint workmat on comparing the texts "Wonderful Worms" and "Earl the Earthworm Digs For His Life."
Math: The students have completed Module 4 in the Eureka Math series and will begin Module 5 next week. You will get an update on the skills we will be covering. The students enjoyed some "gamey" activities to review all the skills presented thus far. Activities included "Don't Spill the Beans," (building sums to 10) "Blast Off," (number comparison) "Addition and Subtraction Pails," (adding and decomposing numbers to 10) "What's My Shape?" (2D and 3D shape recognition) Partners took the "Subitize Challenge" on their iPads and also worked on the app "Number Bonds."
Writing: The students continue to work on lowercase letter formation. They reviewed all letters learned thus far. In Writer's Workshop this week, the students continued work on persuasive writing. The students discussed ways they can be convincing and write about a world problem. During Earth Week, the students read or listened to many texts and stories about problems our earth faces. We also used the mentor texts, "The Day the Crayons Quit" and "The Lorax. They decided to write a letter to Mr. Hodge stating a problem and writing about how they would solve it and what could happen if it was not solved. They kept their Writer's Checklist handy to proof their writing. The students had great fun sharing their letters with each other before "sending" them to Mr. Hodge. Watch out! Next week the students will write to a family member about a home problem and offer a solution and we will mail it!
Science: The students continue to study worms. This week they continued their investigation of redworms----feeding them, observing their behavior----looking for baby worms and worm eggs. The students also took a look at nightcrawler worms. How are redworms and nightcrawlers the same? How are they different? The students worked in their science notebooks on a Venn Diagram recording what they observed. Smaller/Bigger. Skinny/Fat. Shorter/Longer. Warm places/Cool places. Similar body types. (clitellum, segments, front, back, bristles)
Technology: The students are continuing to explore iMovie. No new apps this week.
Literature: "Pig the Pug," "Press Start," "Don't Be a Litterbug," "The Lorax," "What is Happening to the Rain forest?" "What is Global Warming?" "Let's Be Water Wise," "Let's Recycle,"
Sunday, April 23, 2017
Sunday, April 16, 2017
UPDATES for 4/10-4/13 2017
**REMINDER: SIBLING PICTURES will be taken on TUESDAY, APRIL 18th in the morning. This year is different from previous years. It is siblings only (not everyone.) The sibling(s) must attend Irving School. Please email me or sign up on the Irving website if your child is participating.
**On MONDAY, the students will begin their engineering project. The design challenge for the student groups is to design, construct, paint and detail a structure/habitat that will be used for reading and dramatic play in the classroom. We will form 3 student groups, select a project manager and chat about ground rules in order to complete the project. We have begun some conversations about the art of compromise. The students will be using all recyclable materials. The student groups will discuss and sketch prototype drawings to document what they think their structure might look like. We will be using iMovie to document from start to finish. The students are super excited! Please do not send your child in their finest clothing. We will be using tempera paint and will be wearing extra long paint shirts......but......it can still get messy! The paint is washable. The projects will take about a week. We will construct 3 structures. Please mote that we may deviate from our normal subject areas and workstation time.
**A BIG SHOUT OUT to our Spelling Bee participants JACKSON and LILY and our ever ready alternate, LILAH! They were awesome! They received a really cool ribbon. I was so proud of their perseverance. Our class made a special poster to cheer them on.
**Our Student Council Reps, Declan and Naomi D. want you to continue to send in food and money for the Student Council sponsored FOOD DRIVE. The drive will continue this week.
**CLASSROOM COIN CHALLENGE! Bring in your loose change to class the week of April 24th-28th. All money collected will benefit the Irving Library. This event coincides with the Irving Book Fair that same week. We will be visiting the fair as a class but encourage families to attend to browse or buy. Come join guest readers myself, Ms. Noonan, Ms. Durham and Ms. Grogan for our Family Reading Night on Wednesday, April 26th from 6:30-7:30 pm featuring "camping" stories.
**Stay tuned for information next week on the TRAVELING POETS PROJECT under the direction on Ms. Noonan. Each student will be selecting a poem to learn.
**The GARDEN CLUB is back! Please join us on Friday, April 21st after school to wake up the worms, clear the beds and plant peas and greens.
**Come RUN WITH ME! Come out for District 97's Annual Fun Run on Saturday, May 6th beginning at 8:00 am with the K-2 run. The event is at Lindberg Park.
**The Ethnic Festival/World Language Day is also Saturday, May 6th at Julian Middle School. The parade begins at 9:30 from Julian.
** In our Second Step lesson this week our lesson focused on how to problem solve.
**No Friendship Club this week.
**In Mr. Packer Thinking Skills this week, Mr. Packer began prep for a new project on data collecting, organizing and analyzing.
This week:
It was all about worm facts and fiction and examining and labeling worms parts, continued work on number bonds and decomposing sets (subtraction) and prep for our engineering project. Also, the students began using about 8 minutes of their time when they come in the morning to listen to or read to someone their BUSY READER story or borrowing a story to read. The students continue to work on their reading fluency and reading to someone really helps! The students are enjoying our WORD PLAY exercises that began last Friday. It is a great visual for imprinting sound order by using physical movement. This is now part of their homework each week.
Reading/Language Arts: The students continue to work on Unit 8 Plants in our Treasures Reading series. They talked about seeds and the plants that grow from them. They accessed prior knowledge from our fall unit on apples. The students revisited our apple seed tray. They also discussed what they knew about types of seeds--blowing dandelion seeds, helping their family plant seeds in their backyard and naming seeds they knew. The students listened to the Big Book story, "Seed Secrets." The story was about the ways in which seeds travel. The students observed the illustrations and tracked the print as I read. They were able to verbally ask and answer questions about the text. The students examined an unknown word--sprout. How do you know what it means? Where can you look in the text to get the meaning? Can the illustrations help you? Can other words in the sentence help you find the meaning? Target words for this week were here and was. The students worked with partners to build sentences with their sight words and pictures. We reviewed noun, verbs and adjective use. The students also revisited short u, consonant blends and digraphs in words. We also took a look at long vowel/silent e words and vowels teams. They began work on a new Blueprint focusing on comparing two texts on the same topic. We used a Venn Diagram format to compare two of our science texts--"Wonderful Worms" and "Earl the Earthworm Digs for his Life." Questions discussed--How are these texts alike? (similarities) How are the text different? Robust vocabulary for this week included GRADUALLY, SEEDS, OBSERVE. The students read the decodable story, "The Bud Is Up." They made predictions about story content and discussed what the word bud might mean. They reread the story to a partner for fluency building. Workstations this week included leveled readers, fluency checks, discussion of characters in texts and comparing the actions of the characters looking for similarities and differences, main idea elbow chats, word building, defining an unknown word from their text, short and long u word work, playing the vowel game "Bug Jar," writing and drawing about your favorite vegetable, how to story about how to grow a seed, playing the sight word game, "Popcorn," retelling a story verbally and then creating retelling cards in their own words and sound substitution work with vowels.
Math: The students are working to complete Module 4 in our Eureka Math series. The lessons focus was on representing pictorial decomposition and composition (subtracting and adding) stories to 10 with 5 group drawings and equations and stating the sum at the beginning of the equation. Workstations this week included writing numbers to 120, telling time by the hour digitally and analogue, solving simple story problems by illustrating and writing the equation, decomposing teen numbers as a group of 10 and what is left over and counting on from a given number in sequence.
Writing: The students continue to work on lowercase letter formation. The letters q and x were introduced. The students practiced on their mini boards and applied what they learned in their orange books. In Writer's Workshop this week, the students took a look at persuasive writing in the form of writing a letter to someone. What is a problem you see? How can you fix it? Who can you tell about it? What are your feelings? Can you illustrate it and add labels? The students continue to work on their "When you are done, you have just begun" checklist which includes rereading writing, conferring with a partner, adding more--reasons, drawings, labels, speech bubbles etc. and fixing up parts that are not easy to read.
Science: The students continue to work on their investigation about worms. This week, the students worked in their science notebooks creating a diagram of a worm--drawing and labeling important parts. They defined vocabulary-segment, clitellum, front, back, compost, soil. The students continue to observe the redworms in their habitat. Students are bringing in "food" to feed the worms. We asked google some questions---How many eggs in the egg sack? When are worms grownups? Next week: Comparing redworms and nightcrawlers! Cool!
Technology: The students are learning about making an iMovie in preparation for documenting their projects. In reading, small group work focused on the app Montessori Crosswords for skill building on ccvc,cvcc, short u, silent e and ck words. In math, small groups and individuals used the apps Butterfly Math, Number Bonds to 10 and Animal Math for skill building in addition and subtraction and missing addends.
Literature: "Earl the Earthworm Dig for His Life," "Domino Addition," "The Cheerios Counting Book," "Animals Two By Two-Worms," "Over in the Garden," "Nouns," "Verbs," "Adjectives." "The Garden Detective," "Underground," "The Day the Crayons Quit," "The Great Fuzz Frenzy," "King Hugo's Huge Ego," "Bunches of Bunnies," "The Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Chick."
**On MONDAY, the students will begin their engineering project. The design challenge for the student groups is to design, construct, paint and detail a structure/habitat that will be used for reading and dramatic play in the classroom. We will form 3 student groups, select a project manager and chat about ground rules in order to complete the project. We have begun some conversations about the art of compromise. The students will be using all recyclable materials. The student groups will discuss and sketch prototype drawings to document what they think their structure might look like. We will be using iMovie to document from start to finish. The students are super excited! Please do not send your child in their finest clothing. We will be using tempera paint and will be wearing extra long paint shirts......but......it can still get messy! The paint is washable. The projects will take about a week. We will construct 3 structures. Please mote that we may deviate from our normal subject areas and workstation time.
**A BIG SHOUT OUT to our Spelling Bee participants JACKSON and LILY and our ever ready alternate, LILAH! They were awesome! They received a really cool ribbon. I was so proud of their perseverance. Our class made a special poster to cheer them on.
**Our Student Council Reps, Declan and Naomi D. want you to continue to send in food and money for the Student Council sponsored FOOD DRIVE. The drive will continue this week.
**CLASSROOM COIN CHALLENGE! Bring in your loose change to class the week of April 24th-28th. All money collected will benefit the Irving Library. This event coincides with the Irving Book Fair that same week. We will be visiting the fair as a class but encourage families to attend to browse or buy. Come join guest readers myself, Ms. Noonan, Ms. Durham and Ms. Grogan for our Family Reading Night on Wednesday, April 26th from 6:30-7:30 pm featuring "camping" stories.
**Stay tuned for information next week on the TRAVELING POETS PROJECT under the direction on Ms. Noonan. Each student will be selecting a poem to learn.
**The GARDEN CLUB is back! Please join us on Friday, April 21st after school to wake up the worms, clear the beds and plant peas and greens.
**Come RUN WITH ME! Come out for District 97's Annual Fun Run on Saturday, May 6th beginning at 8:00 am with the K-2 run. The event is at Lindberg Park.
**The Ethnic Festival/World Language Day is also Saturday, May 6th at Julian Middle School. The parade begins at 9:30 from Julian.
** In our Second Step lesson this week our lesson focused on how to problem solve.
**No Friendship Club this week.
**In Mr. Packer Thinking Skills this week, Mr. Packer began prep for a new project on data collecting, organizing and analyzing.
This week:
It was all about worm facts and fiction and examining and labeling worms parts, continued work on number bonds and decomposing sets (subtraction) and prep for our engineering project. Also, the students began using about 8 minutes of their time when they come in the morning to listen to or read to someone their BUSY READER story or borrowing a story to read. The students continue to work on their reading fluency and reading to someone really helps! The students are enjoying our WORD PLAY exercises that began last Friday. It is a great visual for imprinting sound order by using physical movement. This is now part of their homework each week.
Reading/Language Arts: The students continue to work on Unit 8 Plants in our Treasures Reading series. They talked about seeds and the plants that grow from them. They accessed prior knowledge from our fall unit on apples. The students revisited our apple seed tray. They also discussed what they knew about types of seeds--blowing dandelion seeds, helping their family plant seeds in their backyard and naming seeds they knew. The students listened to the Big Book story, "Seed Secrets." The story was about the ways in which seeds travel. The students observed the illustrations and tracked the print as I read. They were able to verbally ask and answer questions about the text. The students examined an unknown word--sprout. How do you know what it means? Where can you look in the text to get the meaning? Can the illustrations help you? Can other words in the sentence help you find the meaning? Target words for this week were here and was. The students worked with partners to build sentences with their sight words and pictures. We reviewed noun, verbs and adjective use. The students also revisited short u, consonant blends and digraphs in words. We also took a look at long vowel/silent e words and vowels teams. They began work on a new Blueprint focusing on comparing two texts on the same topic. We used a Venn Diagram format to compare two of our science texts--"Wonderful Worms" and "Earl the Earthworm Digs for his Life." Questions discussed--How are these texts alike? (similarities) How are the text different? Robust vocabulary for this week included GRADUALLY, SEEDS, OBSERVE. The students read the decodable story, "The Bud Is Up." They made predictions about story content and discussed what the word bud might mean. They reread the story to a partner for fluency building. Workstations this week included leveled readers, fluency checks, discussion of characters in texts and comparing the actions of the characters looking for similarities and differences, main idea elbow chats, word building, defining an unknown word from their text, short and long u word work, playing the vowel game "Bug Jar," writing and drawing about your favorite vegetable, how to story about how to grow a seed, playing the sight word game, "Popcorn," retelling a story verbally and then creating retelling cards in their own words and sound substitution work with vowels.
Math: The students are working to complete Module 4 in our Eureka Math series. The lessons focus was on representing pictorial decomposition and composition (subtracting and adding) stories to 10 with 5 group drawings and equations and stating the sum at the beginning of the equation. Workstations this week included writing numbers to 120, telling time by the hour digitally and analogue, solving simple story problems by illustrating and writing the equation, decomposing teen numbers as a group of 10 and what is left over and counting on from a given number in sequence.
Writing: The students continue to work on lowercase letter formation. The letters q and x were introduced. The students practiced on their mini boards and applied what they learned in their orange books. In Writer's Workshop this week, the students took a look at persuasive writing in the form of writing a letter to someone. What is a problem you see? How can you fix it? Who can you tell about it? What are your feelings? Can you illustrate it and add labels? The students continue to work on their "When you are done, you have just begun" checklist which includes rereading writing, conferring with a partner, adding more--reasons, drawings, labels, speech bubbles etc. and fixing up parts that are not easy to read.
Science: The students continue to work on their investigation about worms. This week, the students worked in their science notebooks creating a diagram of a worm--drawing and labeling important parts. They defined vocabulary-segment, clitellum, front, back, compost, soil. The students continue to observe the redworms in their habitat. Students are bringing in "food" to feed the worms. We asked google some questions---How many eggs in the egg sack? When are worms grownups? Next week: Comparing redworms and nightcrawlers! Cool!
Technology: The students are learning about making an iMovie in preparation for documenting their projects. In reading, small group work focused on the app Montessori Crosswords for skill building on ccvc,cvcc, short u, silent e and ck words. In math, small groups and individuals used the apps Butterfly Math, Number Bonds to 10 and Animal Math for skill building in addition and subtraction and missing addends.
Literature: "Earl the Earthworm Dig for His Life," "Domino Addition," "The Cheerios Counting Book," "Animals Two By Two-Worms," "Over in the Garden," "Nouns," "Verbs," "Adjectives." "The Garden Detective," "Underground," "The Day the Crayons Quit," "The Great Fuzz Frenzy," "King Hugo's Huge Ego," "Bunches of Bunnies," "The Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Chick."
Monday, April 10, 2017
UPDATES for 4/3-4/7 2017
**The students returned from their spring break with lots of stories about their travels and time spent with family. Whether they remained in the area or traveled to another town or state, they had much to tell! We spent some time locating all the states and cities visited on our state map.
**Keep sending in those GIANT BOXES and other boxes and cool stuff for our engineering project. The students will be designing, constructing and detailing a cozy habitat for reading and dramatic play in our classroom. I would like to have everything in by Friday. We could still use boxes the kids can climb into. We will work on the project the week of April 17th -21st. We will need some hot glue volunteers during our detailing stage. Stay tuned!
**Our SPELLING BEE REPS, JACKSON and LILY and our alternate, LILAH are really excited to participate in the Irving K-2 Spelling Bee on Wednesday, April 12th during our lunch hour beginning at 11:15 am. We will be cheering them on. Feel free to come and join us in the Irving auditorium.
**Thanks for sending in your report card envelopes. If you haven't done so....please do. Thanks! Our last report card will go home in June.
**Our Student Council reps, Declan and Naomi D. spoke to the students about the Food Drive that Student Council is sponsoring. Please read the yellow info sheet in your child's homework folder for food ideas. They are also accepting money too!
**EAGLE EXTRA classes begin on Monday, April 10th. I will be getting a list of participants with days and times. The students will be picked up from the classroom by an adult supervisor.
**Representatives from the Special Olympics Young Athletes spoke to the students on their theme for this year which is "Respect is my super power." Students spoke about ways to encourage respect for all. Some great conversations between the students on ways to be helpful.
**Spring Pictures will be taken on Tuesday, April 18th in the morning.
**Irving Book Fair is the week of April 24th-28th. Please join us on Wednesday, April 26th from 6:30-7:30 pm for Family Reading Night featuring "camping" stories read by myself, Ms. Durham, Ms. Noonan and Ms. Grogan.
**NO SCHOOL on Friday, April 14th.
**Kindergarten New Student Open House is Wednesday, May3rd from 2:30-4:30 pm in the kindergarten rooms.
**No Second Step lesson this week.
**No Mr. Packer Thinking Skills this week.
** In Friendship Club this week, Dr. Bell Bey's lesson focused on a new unthinkable called "Worry Wall." Worry Wall makes people feel nervous or worry in social situations. The students had a heart to heart conversation about things that worry them. Dr. Bell Bey read the story, "Wemberly Worried."
This week:
It was all about signs of spring, sharing stories about spring break and beginning our new science unit. The students were super excited to begin a unit on worms in our Animals Two by Two unit. There was also lots of discussion about our upcoming engineering project. Stay tuned. Station day activities included creating a worm (cut and paste,) making a clock clown, creating a number sentence after reading a story problem and putting the words of a sentence in the correct order
Reading/Language Arts: The students began Unit 8 Plants in our Treasures Reading series. They began building background knowledge about how a tree grows. It was great to observe how much the students remembered from their science unit on trees. The students chatted about Oak Park and the types of trees in the area. We used our Tree Finder book to find information on Oak, Maple and Gingko trees. Trees are plants that take a long time to grow! Students listened to the Big Book story, " Oak Trees." They noted that the story was nonfiction containing information. The students responded that they had seen acorns, some students collected them. They discussed how an acorn seed sprouts and grows. Sight words for this week are said and little. Our target sounds are short u and ck. We took a look at quotation marks to tell us who is talking in the story. Students retold the big book story and sequenced the events in their own words. Students reviewed the question words who, what, where, when, why and how. They took turns verbally asking a question about the story and having their partner answer the question. They practiced reading the story, "The Little Acorn" aloud to a partner to practice fluency building and getting feedback from their partner. Robust Vocabulary this week included GROW, CONCEITED, EQUAL, CHARMING. We have begun work on core standards of word choice, describing a characters experience and comparing characters from two different texts. Students continue to work on word work--cvc, ccvc and cvcc spellings and short and long vowels. Workstations this week included leveled reader fluency checks, discussion on characters in the texts and comparing the actions of the characters looking for similarities and differences, writing an information piece on what you know about trees, word family spin and color, activities on ck words, sentence building and writing, writing an opinion piece on why we need trees, short and long vowel work and works with digraphs and blends and playing "Web of Words."
Math: The students continue to work on Module 4 in our Eureka Math series. The focus of the lessons this week was decomposing the number 10 using fingers, sets, cubes and number bonds. Students also worked on solving story problems involving numbers 9 and 10 and finding the missing addend in a number bond. Workstations this week included writing 2 and 3 digit numbers, telling time by the hour both analogue and digitally, solving simple story problems and describing teen numbers as a group of 10 and what is left over.
Writing: The students continue to work on lowercase letter formation. The letters h, n and f were introduced, The students practiced on their mini boards and applied what they learned in their orange books. In Writer's Workshop this week, the student continue to work on opinion writing. The teaching point for students--writers state how they feel and say why. They write at least two reasons to support what they thought. They use the words because in their sentences. They also continue to illustrate and label and begin to think about adding an ending sentence. The students wrote on a variety of topics and shared their writing with their partner and the entire class. Next week--how to write a letter to someone.
Science: The students began their next science unit Animals Two by Two. This unit investigates the living animals--worms and fish. The students began prepping for the unit by looking for information in books and on the internet on worms. They helped create our worm habitat that now houses red wiggler compost worms. What are worms? What are the parts of a red worm? What do red worms need in order to live. The students observed a clear plastic structure with holes in the lid. They observed dirt with some bits of oatmeal and newspaper. Projected on the screen---I took some of the dirt out and put it on a tray. Many oohs and aahs as the students began to see movement in the dirt. We put the tray under the magnifier. Red worms began to inch along! The students observed their color, size and the spiral lines or segments in their body structure. Many commented on the front and back looking kind of the same. Stay tuned for more next week!!!!
Technology: The students viewed a few videos on compost worms. In our phonics work, students used the apps Montessori Crosswords to study ck ending words and short u words and Consonant Blend Sort to work on beginning and ending blends. In our math work this week, the students used the apps Animal Math and Butterfly Math to work on missing addends, addition and subtraction problems to 10 and the app Let's Do Math to work on number bonds to 10.
Literature: "Sorting Thru Spring," "Diary of a Worm," "Worms," "Clocks and Calendars," "What's in the Garden?" "The Ant Bully," "Yucky Worms." "Wonderful Worms."
**Keep sending in those GIANT BOXES and other boxes and cool stuff for our engineering project. The students will be designing, constructing and detailing a cozy habitat for reading and dramatic play in our classroom. I would like to have everything in by Friday. We could still use boxes the kids can climb into. We will work on the project the week of April 17th -21st. We will need some hot glue volunteers during our detailing stage. Stay tuned!
**Our SPELLING BEE REPS, JACKSON and LILY and our alternate, LILAH are really excited to participate in the Irving K-2 Spelling Bee on Wednesday, April 12th during our lunch hour beginning at 11:15 am. We will be cheering them on. Feel free to come and join us in the Irving auditorium.
**Thanks for sending in your report card envelopes. If you haven't done so....please do. Thanks! Our last report card will go home in June.
**Our Student Council reps, Declan and Naomi D. spoke to the students about the Food Drive that Student Council is sponsoring. Please read the yellow info sheet in your child's homework folder for food ideas. They are also accepting money too!
**EAGLE EXTRA classes begin on Monday, April 10th. I will be getting a list of participants with days and times. The students will be picked up from the classroom by an adult supervisor.
**Representatives from the Special Olympics Young Athletes spoke to the students on their theme for this year which is "Respect is my super power." Students spoke about ways to encourage respect for all. Some great conversations between the students on ways to be helpful.
**Spring Pictures will be taken on Tuesday, April 18th in the morning.
**Irving Book Fair is the week of April 24th-28th. Please join us on Wednesday, April 26th from 6:30-7:30 pm for Family Reading Night featuring "camping" stories read by myself, Ms. Durham, Ms. Noonan and Ms. Grogan.
**NO SCHOOL on Friday, April 14th.
**Kindergarten New Student Open House is Wednesday, May3rd from 2:30-4:30 pm in the kindergarten rooms.
**No Second Step lesson this week.
**No Mr. Packer Thinking Skills this week.
** In Friendship Club this week, Dr. Bell Bey's lesson focused on a new unthinkable called "Worry Wall." Worry Wall makes people feel nervous or worry in social situations. The students had a heart to heart conversation about things that worry them. Dr. Bell Bey read the story, "Wemberly Worried."
This week:
It was all about signs of spring, sharing stories about spring break and beginning our new science unit. The students were super excited to begin a unit on worms in our Animals Two by Two unit. There was also lots of discussion about our upcoming engineering project. Stay tuned. Station day activities included creating a worm (cut and paste,) making a clock clown, creating a number sentence after reading a story problem and putting the words of a sentence in the correct order
Reading/Language Arts: The students began Unit 8 Plants in our Treasures Reading series. They began building background knowledge about how a tree grows. It was great to observe how much the students remembered from their science unit on trees. The students chatted about Oak Park and the types of trees in the area. We used our Tree Finder book to find information on Oak, Maple and Gingko trees. Trees are plants that take a long time to grow! Students listened to the Big Book story, " Oak Trees." They noted that the story was nonfiction containing information. The students responded that they had seen acorns, some students collected them. They discussed how an acorn seed sprouts and grows. Sight words for this week are said and little. Our target sounds are short u and ck. We took a look at quotation marks to tell us who is talking in the story. Students retold the big book story and sequenced the events in their own words. Students reviewed the question words who, what, where, when, why and how. They took turns verbally asking a question about the story and having their partner answer the question. They practiced reading the story, "The Little Acorn" aloud to a partner to practice fluency building and getting feedback from their partner. Robust Vocabulary this week included GROW, CONCEITED, EQUAL, CHARMING. We have begun work on core standards of word choice, describing a characters experience and comparing characters from two different texts. Students continue to work on word work--cvc, ccvc and cvcc spellings and short and long vowels. Workstations this week included leveled reader fluency checks, discussion on characters in the texts and comparing the actions of the characters looking for similarities and differences, writing an information piece on what you know about trees, word family spin and color, activities on ck words, sentence building and writing, writing an opinion piece on why we need trees, short and long vowel work and works with digraphs and blends and playing "Web of Words."
Math: The students continue to work on Module 4 in our Eureka Math series. The focus of the lessons this week was decomposing the number 10 using fingers, sets, cubes and number bonds. Students also worked on solving story problems involving numbers 9 and 10 and finding the missing addend in a number bond. Workstations this week included writing 2 and 3 digit numbers, telling time by the hour both analogue and digitally, solving simple story problems and describing teen numbers as a group of 10 and what is left over.
Writing: The students continue to work on lowercase letter formation. The letters h, n and f were introduced, The students practiced on their mini boards and applied what they learned in their orange books. In Writer's Workshop this week, the student continue to work on opinion writing. The teaching point for students--writers state how they feel and say why. They write at least two reasons to support what they thought. They use the words because in their sentences. They also continue to illustrate and label and begin to think about adding an ending sentence. The students wrote on a variety of topics and shared their writing with their partner and the entire class. Next week--how to write a letter to someone.
Science: The students began their next science unit Animals Two by Two. This unit investigates the living animals--worms and fish. The students began prepping for the unit by looking for information in books and on the internet on worms. They helped create our worm habitat that now houses red wiggler compost worms. What are worms? What are the parts of a red worm? What do red worms need in order to live. The students observed a clear plastic structure with holes in the lid. They observed dirt with some bits of oatmeal and newspaper. Projected on the screen---I took some of the dirt out and put it on a tray. Many oohs and aahs as the students began to see movement in the dirt. We put the tray under the magnifier. Red worms began to inch along! The students observed their color, size and the spiral lines or segments in their body structure. Many commented on the front and back looking kind of the same. Stay tuned for more next week!!!!
Technology: The students viewed a few videos on compost worms. In our phonics work, students used the apps Montessori Crosswords to study ck ending words and short u words and Consonant Blend Sort to work on beginning and ending blends. In our math work this week, the students used the apps Animal Math and Butterfly Math to work on missing addends, addition and subtraction problems to 10 and the app Let's Do Math to work on number bonds to 10.
Literature: "Sorting Thru Spring," "Diary of a Worm," "Worms," "Clocks and Calendars," "What's in the Garden?" "The Ant Bully," "Yucky Worms." "Wonderful Worms."
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."
**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."
Sunday, March 19, 2017
UPDATES for 3/13-3/17 2017
**The students enjoyed the Bagpipe presentation by Patrick Lynch. They had some great questions about where the sound comes from on a bagpipe and Mr. Lynch's traditional dress. It was very chilly and wet so our outside bagpipe concert was short to protect the instrument.
**Super Tuber Day was spectacular! Check out Alice's potato!!! The students learned some facts about Ireland and where it is on the map. They also learned about how potatoes came to Ireland and used their magnifiers to find the "eyes," used cubes to measure the length and sketched their potato. They had a blast weighing their potato using a scale and teddy bears counters. Alice had to estimate how many because even after 69 teddy bears, the scale did not budge! The students spent the rest of their station day choosing a variety of activities using thinking, writing, math, coloring. Thanks to S. Raphael for her help!
**Thanks to all who PACKed the rainbow of fruits, veggies and grains into their child's lunch for PACK Week. It really brought a greater awareness to eating healthier.
**Don't forget to stop by the Oak Park Village Hall to view the work of our Kindergarten student artists! Ms. Gullo's class is exhibiting their "Symmetry Butterflies" under the direction of guest artist, Jonathan Franklin. They will be on display until the end of April.
**We will have our classroom "spelling bee" on Monday. All the students will participate! Upon conclusion of the bee, we will have our 2 students and 1 alternate who will represent our room in the Irving Annual Spelling on Wednesday, April 12 during the lunch hour.
**NEXT WEEK IS SPIRIT WEEK!!! Student Council has decreed the following: Monday--Pajama and Stuffed Animal Day.....Tuesday--Twin Day (you can call a friend and dress alike or dress like a teacher)....Wednesday--Decade Day (dress like the 50's, 60's, 70's 80's etc.).....Thursday--Each grade level will dress in a different color! Kindergarten wears PURPLE......Friday--Show your Irving School Spirit by wearing red, black, white or any Irving wear.
**PTO Cultural Event--"Justin and Liam" is Thursday, March 23rd at 9:15 am.
**We will use the photos taken on our flied trip to the Field Museum in a writing project next week. I have most of them. If you were a chaperone and haven't sent them, please do. Thanks!
**We will also visit our Book Buddies next Friday for a project in their classroom.. The students are excited to see what it is like on the 3rd floor!
**After spring break---Send in all the giant boxes and cool stuff you have been saving for our engineering project! It will be exciting! Our engineering project is schedule for the week of April 17-21. Please send everything in by April 14th.
**Spring Break is 3/27-3/31. School resumes on Monday, April 3rd. Some of you have let me know but if your child is traveling email me so I can send along a travel journal.
**NO SCHOOL--April 4th--Teacher's Institute Day.
**No Friendship Club or Mr. Packer Thinking Skills this week due to their involvement in PARCC testing.
**In our Second Step lesson this week, we reviewed and revisited managing feelings and saw a Brain Pop video on Anger.
This week:
It was all about bagpipes, potatoes, weather. Science abounds in our classroom! Our unit on Weather in reading also included math and writing activities. Great fun! Very motivating! The students observed wind speeds, read and saw pictures of weather instruments and how meteorologists use data to make predictions about what kind of weather we will have in our area. Yes...it's true.....they do not get it right all the time! The United States has many different kinds of weather during each season depending upon where you live. Our tubers are in water and we will be watching them. Awesome fun investigating potatoes! Bagpiper, Patrick Lynch put together his bagpipes and played some cool tunes. Wow! It was loud! Station Day activities included Super tubers and activities containing reading, writing, math, following directions, what makes the colors of the rainbow and coloring by code.
Reading/Language Arts: The students continue to work on Unit 7 Weather in our Treasures Reading series. The students built background knowledge about how weather affects animal and people. Students came to board to write what they experience in snowy, rainy and cold weather. They also discussed how animals react to those conditions. The students reviewed all sight vocabulary learned thus far and reviewed target sounds Bb, Ll, short Ee and words that describe--adjectives!
The students continued to work on segmenting, sound blending 4-5 sound words on their white boards along with addition, deletion and substitution activities. Robust vocabulary this week included CLEAR, EXPERIENCE, HIBERNATE, RETREAT. The students worked on a blueprint about how the actions of a character affect the story (author's words and message) and sequencing those actions using the text "Sheila Rae, the Brave." Students worked on story vocabulary, sequencing the order of events and the story elements of character, setting and locating key details. In preparation for our blueprint, students elbow chatted about the events and characters and acted out key events that showed the characters actions. Workstations this week included leveled readers with fluency building and comprehension check/discussion, vocabulary development, writing and illustrating about your favorite season and what activities you can do, read and rhyme cut and paste word families, roll, say and read blend and digraph words, read and spell cvc words, writing about a favorite picture in the text and telling what information the picture gives you, playing words games "Chomp,"(substituting sounds) "Humpty Dumpty (short vowels) "Word Construction," (word families) and "Build a Word."
Math: The students continue work on Module 4 in our Eureka Math series. Lessons are shifting focus now to work on finding how many are left in a story problem. (subtraction/decomposing numbers) Students are illustrating their thinking by beginning with a picture of a group of objects--listening to the story--and crossing out what is going away. The students are taking a look at the horizontal presentation of the subtraction number sentence using the minus sign. Students used a variety of objects when practicing with partners and telling a take away story.
Writing: The students continue to work on lowercase letter formation. They worked on lowercase j and p. They practiced on their mini boards and applied what they learned in their orange books. In Writer's Workshop this week, the students began a new unit on persuasive writing. The unit includes opinion writing, persuasive writing and writing to create change. We began with chatting about a problem that occurs in school (the topic) and thinking of a way to fix the problem. The students had many ideas including--running in the hall, not finishing their food at lunch, not following the Eagle Essential....... Starting very simply, the students--see a problem--think--write what they might do to fix it. Stay tuned!!!
Science: The weather was not very conducive for our next investigation, so we kept it inside of our classroom. Students created slopes of all magnitudes! They used many items from our classroom. They also used objects from the classroom they thought would hold off a collision or make a big collision. A variety of ball types were used--soccer, whiffle, tennis, mini super. It was collision mania!!! So much fun! Lots of great conversation about slope, speed, direction, size of the ball, size of the barrier. Wow--when objects collide they push one another which can change the motion. The students sketched and wrote their reflections in their science notebook. Next week will be our final investigation for our study on Materials and Motion---using air to propel a balloon rocket. How can we manage how far a balloon rocket will travel? We will be making one!!! Stay tuned!!
Technology: The students used the same apps as last week to continue to enhance the skills of segmenting/blending, adding/deleting sounds, cvc, ccvc, cvcc words, sentence word order, addition and subtraction problems to 10, finding the missing addends.
Literature: "Sheila Rae, the Brave," "It's St. Patrick's Day," "Snow Dude," "The Leprechaun who Lost His Rainbow," "The Enormous Potato," "Jamie O'Rourke and the Big Potato," "Weather Instruments," "What Makes the Wind?" "The Cloud Book," "Clifford's Story Day Rescue."
**Super Tuber Day was spectacular! Check out Alice's potato!!! The students learned some facts about Ireland and where it is on the map. They also learned about how potatoes came to Ireland and used their magnifiers to find the "eyes," used cubes to measure the length and sketched their potato. They had a blast weighing their potato using a scale and teddy bears counters. Alice had to estimate how many because even after 69 teddy bears, the scale did not budge! The students spent the rest of their station day choosing a variety of activities using thinking, writing, math, coloring. Thanks to S. Raphael for her help!
**Thanks to all who PACKed the rainbow of fruits, veggies and grains into their child's lunch for PACK Week. It really brought a greater awareness to eating healthier.
**Don't forget to stop by the Oak Park Village Hall to view the work of our Kindergarten student artists! Ms. Gullo's class is exhibiting their "Symmetry Butterflies" under the direction of guest artist, Jonathan Franklin. They will be on display until the end of April.
**We will have our classroom "spelling bee" on Monday. All the students will participate! Upon conclusion of the bee, we will have our 2 students and 1 alternate who will represent our room in the Irving Annual Spelling on Wednesday, April 12 during the lunch hour.
**NEXT WEEK IS SPIRIT WEEK!!! Student Council has decreed the following: Monday--Pajama and Stuffed Animal Day.....Tuesday--Twin Day (you can call a friend and dress alike or dress like a teacher)....Wednesday--Decade Day (dress like the 50's, 60's, 70's 80's etc.).....Thursday--Each grade level will dress in a different color! Kindergarten wears PURPLE......Friday--Show your Irving School Spirit by wearing red, black, white or any Irving wear.
**PTO Cultural Event--"Justin and Liam" is Thursday, March 23rd at 9:15 am.
**We will use the photos taken on our flied trip to the Field Museum in a writing project next week. I have most of them. If you were a chaperone and haven't sent them, please do. Thanks!
**We will also visit our Book Buddies next Friday for a project in their classroom.. The students are excited to see what it is like on the 3rd floor!
**After spring break---Send in all the giant boxes and cool stuff you have been saving for our engineering project! It will be exciting! Our engineering project is schedule for the week of April 17-21. Please send everything in by April 14th.
**Spring Break is 3/27-3/31. School resumes on Monday, April 3rd. Some of you have let me know but if your child is traveling email me so I can send along a travel journal.
**NO SCHOOL--April 4th--Teacher's Institute Day.
**No Friendship Club or Mr. Packer Thinking Skills this week due to their involvement in PARCC testing.
**In our Second Step lesson this week, we reviewed and revisited managing feelings and saw a Brain Pop video on Anger.
This week:
It was all about bagpipes, potatoes, weather. Science abounds in our classroom! Our unit on Weather in reading also included math and writing activities. Great fun! Very motivating! The students observed wind speeds, read and saw pictures of weather instruments and how meteorologists use data to make predictions about what kind of weather we will have in our area. Yes...it's true.....they do not get it right all the time! The United States has many different kinds of weather during each season depending upon where you live. Our tubers are in water and we will be watching them. Awesome fun investigating potatoes! Bagpiper, Patrick Lynch put together his bagpipes and played some cool tunes. Wow! It was loud! Station Day activities included Super tubers and activities containing reading, writing, math, following directions, what makes the colors of the rainbow and coloring by code.
Reading/Language Arts: The students continue to work on Unit 7 Weather in our Treasures Reading series. The students built background knowledge about how weather affects animal and people. Students came to board to write what they experience in snowy, rainy and cold weather. They also discussed how animals react to those conditions. The students reviewed all sight vocabulary learned thus far and reviewed target sounds Bb, Ll, short Ee and words that describe--adjectives!
The students continued to work on segmenting, sound blending 4-5 sound words on their white boards along with addition, deletion and substitution activities. Robust vocabulary this week included CLEAR, EXPERIENCE, HIBERNATE, RETREAT. The students worked on a blueprint about how the actions of a character affect the story (author's words and message) and sequencing those actions using the text "Sheila Rae, the Brave." Students worked on story vocabulary, sequencing the order of events and the story elements of character, setting and locating key details. In preparation for our blueprint, students elbow chatted about the events and characters and acted out key events that showed the characters actions. Workstations this week included leveled readers with fluency building and comprehension check/discussion, vocabulary development, writing and illustrating about your favorite season and what activities you can do, read and rhyme cut and paste word families, roll, say and read blend and digraph words, read and spell cvc words, writing about a favorite picture in the text and telling what information the picture gives you, playing words games "Chomp,"(substituting sounds) "Humpty Dumpty (short vowels) "Word Construction," (word families) and "Build a Word."
Math: The students continue work on Module 4 in our Eureka Math series. Lessons are shifting focus now to work on finding how many are left in a story problem. (subtraction/decomposing numbers) Students are illustrating their thinking by beginning with a picture of a group of objects--listening to the story--and crossing out what is going away. The students are taking a look at the horizontal presentation of the subtraction number sentence using the minus sign. Students used a variety of objects when practicing with partners and telling a take away story.
Writing: The students continue to work on lowercase letter formation. They worked on lowercase j and p. They practiced on their mini boards and applied what they learned in their orange books. In Writer's Workshop this week, the students began a new unit on persuasive writing. The unit includes opinion writing, persuasive writing and writing to create change. We began with chatting about a problem that occurs in school (the topic) and thinking of a way to fix the problem. The students had many ideas including--running in the hall, not finishing their food at lunch, not following the Eagle Essential....... Starting very simply, the students--see a problem--think--write what they might do to fix it. Stay tuned!!!
Science: The weather was not very conducive for our next investigation, so we kept it inside of our classroom. Students created slopes of all magnitudes! They used many items from our classroom. They also used objects from the classroom they thought would hold off a collision or make a big collision. A variety of ball types were used--soccer, whiffle, tennis, mini super. It was collision mania!!! So much fun! Lots of great conversation about slope, speed, direction, size of the ball, size of the barrier. Wow--when objects collide they push one another which can change the motion. The students sketched and wrote their reflections in their science notebook. Next week will be our final investigation for our study on Materials and Motion---using air to propel a balloon rocket. How can we manage how far a balloon rocket will travel? We will be making one!!! Stay tuned!!
Technology: The students used the same apps as last week to continue to enhance the skills of segmenting/blending, adding/deleting sounds, cvc, ccvc, cvcc words, sentence word order, addition and subtraction problems to 10, finding the missing addends.
Literature: "Sheila Rae, the Brave," "It's St. Patrick's Day," "Snow Dude," "The Leprechaun who Lost His Rainbow," "The Enormous Potato," "Jamie O'Rourke and the Big Potato," "Weather Instruments," "What Makes the Wind?" "The Cloud Book," "Clifford's Story Day Rescue."
Monday, March 13, 2017
UPDATES for 3/6-3/10 2017
**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."
** 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."
Sunday, March 5, 2017
UPDATES for 2/27-3/3 2017
**Our Field Trip to the Field Museum is TUESDAY, MARCH 7th from 9:30-1:30 pm. I still need permission slips and money from some of you. If your child is not going on the field trip, please email me so I can make arrangements and assignments for their day at Irving while we are gone. PLEASE SEND A BAG LUNCH WITH NAME ON IT. The lunch must be NUT FREE. No glass bottles or lunch boxes please. Chaperones will be taking pictures of their groups favorite exhibits. We will be turning the photos into a writing project.
**In salute to all things Irish, bagpiper Patrick Lynch will be coming to Irving on Thursday, March 16th in the afternoon. He will present history behind bagpipe music and show the kids how he puts it all together. 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) We will learn a little history about Ireland and the potato, examine its surface, count the "eyes," measure its length and take a look a different varieties. I have S. Raphael signed up to help but could use 1 or 2 more volunteers. Please email me if you can help.
**Future Event--The PTO Cultural Enrichment Committee has scheduled an assembly on March 23rd at 9:15 am called "Justin and Liam." It teachers character education through music and song writing.
**Please let me know if your child is traveling for Spring Break. I will send a TRAVEL JOURNAL.
**Trimester 2 ends on March 10th.
**Report cards go home on March 24th.
**Spring Break is 3/27-3/31. School resumes on Monday, April 3rd.
**NO SCHOOL--April 4th--Teacher's Institute Day.
**In Friendship Club this week, Dr. Bell Bey lesson focused on being bossy. She read a story and the students reflected their thoughts in writing and drawing.
**In Mr. Packer Thinking Skills this week, Mr. Packer continued his small group work on positional concepts and following directions.
**Our Second Step lesson this week focused on how to manage when we are disappointed.
This week:
It was all about Pushes, Pulls and Ramps! More about that in the science section. The students concluded their author study on Mo Willems and celebrated Dr. Seuss's birthday with a mini author study and Brain Pop Jr. video on his life and work. We had a whole station day planned of Dr. Seuss activities relating to math, writing and phonics but.......the students were so very involved in ramp building and experimenting that we extended our science time. We will have our Dr. Seuss activities on Monday.
Reading/Language Arts: The students used this week to work on a variety of formative and summative assessments using texts from our author study of Mo Willems. The students responded verbally, thru illustration and thru writing. They worked to answer a variety of questions. Who are the characters in the story? How are they alike? Different? What is the problem in the story? What does the character do to solve the problem? What effect does a repeating phrase have on a text? How does the illustration help you to understand the setting? What important job does the author or illustrator have in telling the story? Can you identify the key details in the story? The students did some marvelous work on problem/solution using the text, "That is Not A Good Idea." Using the text, "Knuffle Bunny," the students worked with partners to sequence events in the story and worked on how the author's words and illustrations helped students to understand the story. Lots of great drawings were done during our "we do" of author's words in the text, "Knuffle Bunny." In the text, "Edwina, the Dinosaur That Didn't Know She Was Extinct," students participated in a word study to best describe the main character. Workstations this week included leveled readers comprehension check and fluency, word family sort, digraph work, rhyming cvc words, read and draw simple sentences, digraph game, Pot of Gold CVC game, substituting sounds activity.
Math: The students continue to work in Module 4 in our Eureka Math series. Lessons continue to focus on creating a number bond for a given illustration for numbers 6,7,8,9. The students continue to use pictures, cube sticks and other drawings as well as number sentences to show their work. They continue to work on math races or sprints to strengthen sequencing, subitizing and number order. Workstations this week included writing numbers from 1-120, even and odd number sort, reading and solving addition and subtraction story problems using ten frames and writing the equation and counting on from a given number.
Writing: The students continue to work on lowercase letter formation. The letters k and y were introduced this week. In Writer's Workshop this week, the students were busy writing their "how to" stories on the topic of School. We will be completing our unit on "how to" writing next week with a publishing party.
Science: Our investigations this week centered on what causes objects to move? The students experimented with rolling balls at different speeds and determining the strength of the push require to achieve a certain speed. Pushes can move objects. Declan was our investigator for the use of pulls to move objects. He demonstrated using a string tied around a chair so he could pull it to a different spot. Pulls can move objects. People push. Wind can push. People pull. Gravity can pull! The pull of gravity can push and pull a person on swing. Key vocabulary this week---push, pull, gravity, direction, speed, motion, rolling, slope, collide. The students built a variety of ramps and rolled balls and cars down them to observe the pull of gravity. They had a complete blast working with their table mates on ramp construction. Question--What could we do to change the speed of the object rolling down a slope? Students experimented with raising the slope using book stacks. They found that the higher the slope, the faster the object moved. The activity Contraption and Marble Works and Legos were introduced as Choice time activities to continue experimentation. Students worked in their science notebooks to draw sketches of their ramps and record their thoughts and reflections. Next week--more on colliding objects.
Technology: Whole group in reading worked on the apps Learn Consonant Blends and Oz Phonics for cvc, ccvc, cvcc and short vowel recognition as well as consonant blends and word order. In whole group math, students worked on the apps Let's Do Math and Subitize Tree for providing the missing addend, number bonds to 10 and visual number recognition and number patterns.
Literature: "Knuffle Bunny," "Edwina the Dinosaur That Didn't Know She Was Extinct," "Leonardo," "That Big Guy Took My Ball," "Hop On Pop," "The Cat In The Hat," "Let's Find Out--Dr Seuss," "Telling Time," "Clocks and Calendars," "Roll, Slope and Slide," "Force and Motion," "Pushes and Pulls."
**In salute to all things Irish, bagpiper Patrick Lynch will be coming to Irving on Thursday, March 16th in the afternoon. He will present history behind bagpipe music and show the kids how he puts it all together. 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) We will learn a little history about Ireland and the potato, examine its surface, count the "eyes," measure its length and take a look a different varieties. I have S. Raphael signed up to help but could use 1 or 2 more volunteers. Please email me if you can help.
**Future Event--The PTO Cultural Enrichment Committee has scheduled an assembly on March 23rd at 9:15 am called "Justin and Liam." It teachers character education through music and song writing.
**Please let me know if your child is traveling for Spring Break. I will send a TRAVEL JOURNAL.
**Trimester 2 ends on March 10th.
**Report cards go home on March 24th.
**Spring Break is 3/27-3/31. School resumes on Monday, April 3rd.
**NO SCHOOL--April 4th--Teacher's Institute Day.
**In Friendship Club this week, Dr. Bell Bey lesson focused on being bossy. She read a story and the students reflected their thoughts in writing and drawing.
**In Mr. Packer Thinking Skills this week, Mr. Packer continued his small group work on positional concepts and following directions.
**Our Second Step lesson this week focused on how to manage when we are disappointed.
This week:
It was all about Pushes, Pulls and Ramps! More about that in the science section. The students concluded their author study on Mo Willems and celebrated Dr. Seuss's birthday with a mini author study and Brain Pop Jr. video on his life and work. We had a whole station day planned of Dr. Seuss activities relating to math, writing and phonics but.......the students were so very involved in ramp building and experimenting that we extended our science time. We will have our Dr. Seuss activities on Monday.
Reading/Language Arts: The students used this week to work on a variety of formative and summative assessments using texts from our author study of Mo Willems. The students responded verbally, thru illustration and thru writing. They worked to answer a variety of questions. Who are the characters in the story? How are they alike? Different? What is the problem in the story? What does the character do to solve the problem? What effect does a repeating phrase have on a text? How does the illustration help you to understand the setting? What important job does the author or illustrator have in telling the story? Can you identify the key details in the story? The students did some marvelous work on problem/solution using the text, "That is Not A Good Idea." Using the text, "Knuffle Bunny," the students worked with partners to sequence events in the story and worked on how the author's words and illustrations helped students to understand the story. Lots of great drawings were done during our "we do" of author's words in the text, "Knuffle Bunny." In the text, "Edwina, the Dinosaur That Didn't Know She Was Extinct," students participated in a word study to best describe the main character. Workstations this week included leveled readers comprehension check and fluency, word family sort, digraph work, rhyming cvc words, read and draw simple sentences, digraph game, Pot of Gold CVC game, substituting sounds activity.
Math: The students continue to work in Module 4 in our Eureka Math series. Lessons continue to focus on creating a number bond for a given illustration for numbers 6,7,8,9. The students continue to use pictures, cube sticks and other drawings as well as number sentences to show their work. They continue to work on math races or sprints to strengthen sequencing, subitizing and number order. Workstations this week included writing numbers from 1-120, even and odd number sort, reading and solving addition and subtraction story problems using ten frames and writing the equation and counting on from a given number.
Writing: The students continue to work on lowercase letter formation. The letters k and y were introduced this week. In Writer's Workshop this week, the students were busy writing their "how to" stories on the topic of School. We will be completing our unit on "how to" writing next week with a publishing party.
Science: Our investigations this week centered on what causes objects to move? The students experimented with rolling balls at different speeds and determining the strength of the push require to achieve a certain speed. Pushes can move objects. Declan was our investigator for the use of pulls to move objects. He demonstrated using a string tied around a chair so he could pull it to a different spot. Pulls can move objects. People push. Wind can push. People pull. Gravity can pull! The pull of gravity can push and pull a person on swing. Key vocabulary this week---push, pull, gravity, direction, speed, motion, rolling, slope, collide. The students built a variety of ramps and rolled balls and cars down them to observe the pull of gravity. They had a complete blast working with their table mates on ramp construction. Question--What could we do to change the speed of the object rolling down a slope? Students experimented with raising the slope using book stacks. They found that the higher the slope, the faster the object moved. The activity Contraption and Marble Works and Legos were introduced as Choice time activities to continue experimentation. Students worked in their science notebooks to draw sketches of their ramps and record their thoughts and reflections. Next week--more on colliding objects.
Technology: Whole group in reading worked on the apps Learn Consonant Blends and Oz Phonics for cvc, ccvc, cvcc and short vowel recognition as well as consonant blends and word order. In whole group math, students worked on the apps Let's Do Math and Subitize Tree for providing the missing addend, number bonds to 10 and visual number recognition and number patterns.
Literature: "Knuffle Bunny," "Edwina the Dinosaur That Didn't Know She Was Extinct," "Leonardo," "That Big Guy Took My Ball," "Hop On Pop," "The Cat In The Hat," "Let's Find Out--Dr Seuss," "Telling Time," "Clocks and Calendars," "Roll, Slope and Slide," "Force and Motion," "Pushes and Pulls."
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