**The Academic Fair was amazing!!! Projects for all grade levels were informative and fun. My personal fav was the Beatles vs. Stones project. (Beatles rule!) I am particularly proud of our kindergarten students. They have inspired their classmates to think about next years fair. Let's give a shout out to Jack, Ariadne, McKenna, Aida, Rylee, Sammy, Hannah and Niko for their spectacular effort!
**It was damp and dreary but the Egg Drop Contest went on as planned. We saw some pretty interesting, creative and out of the ordinary vehicles. Future engineering students.....There were over 130 vehicles and we saw everyone of them dropped out of the third floor window. Once again, our kindergarten students, some along with a brother or sister, created their vehicles. We had parachutes, balloons, rocket structures, boxes, tubes, doll rods, plastic bags and more as the participating students showed and explained the design of their vehicle. Hats off to Ethan, Ariadne, Gabriela, Jack, Henry, Cole, Maggie, Evan, Peter, Neilo, Danny, Ceci and Niko for a job well done!
**I was unable to attend Family Math Night, but I heard that a good time was had by all. Thanks to those who participated.
**Our Eagle Wing Costume/Dance Party was a big hit! The students rocked out to the tunes of Kids Bop 19, Phantom of the Opera Soundtrack, Justin Beiber, Fresh Versions of Retro Pop for Kids, Hallelujah Hop, Jeff Kagan--Songs from the Trail and A T-Rex Named Sue. I learned some smooth moves from these enthusiastic dancers!
**Next week is Fitness Week (See info sheet in homework packet.) Monday--Ball and Rope Day. Please make sure anything you bring to school has your name on it. All events will culminate with the District 97 FUN RUN on Saturday, May 7th at 8:00 am at Lindberg Park. RUN WITH ME!!! K-2 will run at 8:00 am.
**Read this!!! The 4th Annual Irving Poetry Slam will be held on Thursday, May 19th at 6:30 pm in the Irving Auditorium. Join us for a night of music, self-expression, laughter and creativity. Read a poem or write your own. Rap, sing or say it! I have been a part of the slam since its beginning and I can tell you --it is really fun! I will be talking it up to the students. We will have a poetry unit this month. I have many poetry books, so I can help guide students to an appropriate poem that they can read or memorize. Students can work solo, partner or group. Parents can slam too!!! I have had students in the past write their own rap. Think about it and join in the fun.
**Future Field Trip--Oak Park Conservatory, Tuesday, May 31st--1-2:30 pm. More info later.
**Our final DIBELS testing will take place next week.
**Route to Reading skills groups have concluded for this school year. I will continue to present skills material and evaluate students as part of our classroom workshop activities. The students have done an awesome job!
**The ULTIMATE VOCABULARY CHALLENGE continues----We have had REPUGNANT, EXEMPLARY and now OPTIMISTIC (having a positive outlook.) I am optimistic that I will learn more about break dancing from my students.
**Our SPACE STATIONS are completed! They are truly a collaborative effort. I will photograph the students next week in and around their projects. Stop by and see them before or after school! Check out the detailing.
**Irving Garage Sale--Saturday, May 14th from 8-1 pm. Come on out and help or donate to help our School Yard Project.
This week: Space stations are completed. We have concluded our science unit on Sunshine, Shadows and the Moon. We are diving right into our next and final unit--Seeds to Plants. We are monitoring growth of our grassy "G" from Earth Day. Nothing to report yet. Stay tuned. Peter, Ceci and Jack's potatoes are beginning to show root growth. We finally got to use our star gazers on a sunny Friday afternoon. The students planted their own flower seed.
Reading: We have finished Unit 6, Red, White and Blue. We started Unit 7, Teamwork. This unit explores ways to work together toward a common goal. The unit includes stories about conflict resolution, overcoming discrimination, working as part of a team and sharing and compromise. This week, the students worked on using a graphic organizer to sequence story events. We continue to work on oral and written comprehension skills, reading fluency, decoding, revisiting short vowel sounds, silent e, and blending 6-7 phoneme words. Don't forget WORD PLAY once a day!! Reading Grandma is delighted with students progress in reading. Since she began hearing readers in January, their growth in decoding, comprehension and fluency is wonderful. Keep reading at home!
Math: We continue to work on addition and subtraction story problems. The students played a dice game called Lilly Pad Hoppers where they worked with partners rolling the dice, recording the numbers and adding the sums. We continue listening for key words in our story problems that clue us in on the operation. We are working on our number grids writing to 100. Next week, we will be writing to 125. The students continue to refine number forms. We are working on counting by 5's to 100. We have begun playing, "What's My Rule," where the students identify a function (ie-plus 1) and generate numbers that go with that rule. I will send home a function machine next week.
**Writing: We continue to work on reflecting in our journals on stories we have read. (written recall) The students continue to work on refining upper and lowercase letters, spacing of words in a sentence and position of words on a given line. The students are writing 3-5 sentences!
Science: We began our final science unit with our inquiry question--what are seeds? Each table of students examined a tray full of small objects. They talked about and sorted them into groups. They then divided them into 2 groups---seeds---not seeds. They had some lively discussions about some of the objects. " Is cotton a seed?" "I think it comes from a seed." We then looked at a variety of true seeds. The students were amazed at the shape and color of a marigold seed and the bumpy texture of the nasturtium seed. We used our magnifiers to check it out. The students selected flower seeds to plant. The choices were marigold, morning glory, sunflower and nasturtium. The students learned about soil content and how to start their seed in a cup of dirt. They wondered how much to water it. Where to put it so it will get sun. Does it need a lot of sun? They will find out. The students will observe their seed and take care to water it. In their science journal, they drew their seed and how it looks in their cups. They estimated how long it might take to grow. They will keep a growth chart. We planted our class garden. The students can continue to bring in seeds to place in our class garden. Next week, we will talk about what to plant in the planting bed outside. Calling all gardeners!!!!! We will need your help when we decide.
Literature: "Oh Say Can You Seed?" "Seed to Plant" Chapter 1, "Waiting for Wings," "A Seed is a Promise," "I'm Not sleepy," "Best Book of Spaceships," "I am a Seed," "Fix It."
Just a note---We will not be in the lab for LEXIA for 2 weeks due to MAP testing of older students. Feel free to keep working on it at home!
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Friday, April 22, 2011
UPDATES for 4/18-4/20 2011
**Can't wait to see all the projects for our Academic Fair and all the vehicles for the Egg Drop. Wednesday, April 27th is the day!!! Come join us out on the blacktop for the Egg Drop beginning at 12:15 pm. Join us once again to see our students present and talk about their Academic Fair projects from 6:30-8:00 that evening.
**Family Math Night is Thursday, April 28th from 6:30-8:00 pm. This years theme is "Who done it?" Let's collect, decipher and solve the math mystery!
**RUN WITH ME on Saturday, May 7th at 8:00 am in Lindberg Park at District 97's Annual Fun Run. See me for information sheet.
**The 31st Annual Ethnic Festival Saturday, May 7th from 10-3 pm at Julian Middle School.
**GOOD NEWS! Our class has earned 90 eagle wings and qualifies for another celebration. Last time, you remember, the students chose a game afternoon where they brought the games. This time, they have decided on a Costume/Dance Party (costumes are optional) on Tuesday, April 26th from 2-2:55pm. Students can bring their costumes in a bag to change into. Students may also bring appropriate cd's to play. We will have carrots, apples, popcorn and grapes (their choices) for snack.
**This weeks Ultimate Vocabulary Challenge word was EXEMPLARY--to use as a model.
(That student's work was exemplary!) The word was submitted by our own classmate, Hannah.
Congratulations, Hannah! We used the word 6 times (short week).
**In this short week, we talked about Earth Day. We discussed how we, as individuals, could help save the earth. We brainstormed a list of ideas of things we already do to to help out. We planted grass seed in the form of a G for GREEN and GULLO's class. We will watch it grow.
**We will begin prep for our 3rd and final science unit, From Seed to Plant. The students will be choosing a flower to grow from seed. We will also be starting a class garden and choosing a plant for our outside planting bed. It will be very exciting!
**No homework this weekend. Keep reading!! Enjoy the time with family.
This week: It was all about the SPACE STATIONS. The students formed groups and a group leader was chosen. We discussed the art of working with a group, the importance of communication, participation and compromise. The groups sketched various prototype drawings. On Monday, they selected their boxes and began the process of construction. Boxes were cut, taped and prepared for painting. Currently, the groups are working on painting their space stations. We should be finished with painting and on to detailing by early next week. I am pleased with each groups interactions and their commitment to the task. Stay tuned!
Reading: We continue to work on Unit 6. We are nearing its completion. In the story,"Hat's Off to the Fourth of July," the students listened to the story of a parade taking place on the 4th of July. They sequenced the order of events taking place in the parade, as well as looked for and orally labeled nouns, verbs and adjectives. We reviewed the use of comas. The students continue to work on building fluency, blending 4-5 phoneme words, adding and deleting word parts and reviewing blends and digraphs. No WORD PLAY this week.
Math: We continue to work on both addition and subtraction processes. Next week, the students will decide if the story problem for their math journal involves addition or subtraction . We will mix it up!
Writing: We continue to work on reflecting in our journal, refining upper and lowercase letters, spacing between words in a sentence and position of words on a given line.
Science: We read about and discussed the dwarf planet, Pluto and beyond. We took a look a maps and drawings of our current solar system. We also studied about the dwarf planets, Eres and Ceres. The students got to sample some freeze dried ice cream sandwiches and strawberries. Some real space food! Most thought it tasted crunchy and dry but good! Our main work centered around working on our space stations.
Literature: "First Graders from Mars" Episodes 1 and 2, "Beyond Pluto," "The Story of Passover," "This is the Matzoh," "Bad, Bad, Bunny Trouble," "The Statue of Liberty," "It's Spring," "Mars Needs Moms," "It's Easter."
**Family Math Night is Thursday, April 28th from 6:30-8:00 pm. This years theme is "Who done it?" Let's collect, decipher and solve the math mystery!
**RUN WITH ME on Saturday, May 7th at 8:00 am in Lindberg Park at District 97's Annual Fun Run. See me for information sheet.
**The 31st Annual Ethnic Festival Saturday, May 7th from 10-3 pm at Julian Middle School.
**GOOD NEWS! Our class has earned 90 eagle wings and qualifies for another celebration. Last time, you remember, the students chose a game afternoon where they brought the games. This time, they have decided on a Costume/Dance Party (costumes are optional) on Tuesday, April 26th from 2-2:55pm. Students can bring their costumes in a bag to change into. Students may also bring appropriate cd's to play. We will have carrots, apples, popcorn and grapes (their choices) for snack.
**This weeks Ultimate Vocabulary Challenge word was EXEMPLARY--to use as a model.
(That student's work was exemplary!) The word was submitted by our own classmate, Hannah.
Congratulations, Hannah! We used the word 6 times (short week).
**In this short week, we talked about Earth Day. We discussed how we, as individuals, could help save the earth. We brainstormed a list of ideas of things we already do to to help out. We planted grass seed in the form of a G for GREEN and GULLO's class. We will watch it grow.
**We will begin prep for our 3rd and final science unit, From Seed to Plant. The students will be choosing a flower to grow from seed. We will also be starting a class garden and choosing a plant for our outside planting bed. It will be very exciting!
**No homework this weekend. Keep reading!! Enjoy the time with family.
This week: It was all about the SPACE STATIONS. The students formed groups and a group leader was chosen. We discussed the art of working with a group, the importance of communication, participation and compromise. The groups sketched various prototype drawings. On Monday, they selected their boxes and began the process of construction. Boxes were cut, taped and prepared for painting. Currently, the groups are working on painting their space stations. We should be finished with painting and on to detailing by early next week. I am pleased with each groups interactions and their commitment to the task. Stay tuned!
Reading: We continue to work on Unit 6. We are nearing its completion. In the story,"Hat's Off to the Fourth of July," the students listened to the story of a parade taking place on the 4th of July. They sequenced the order of events taking place in the parade, as well as looked for and orally labeled nouns, verbs and adjectives. We reviewed the use of comas. The students continue to work on building fluency, blending 4-5 phoneme words, adding and deleting word parts and reviewing blends and digraphs. No WORD PLAY this week.
Math: We continue to work on both addition and subtraction processes. Next week, the students will decide if the story problem for their math journal involves addition or subtraction . We will mix it up!
Writing: We continue to work on reflecting in our journal, refining upper and lowercase letters, spacing between words in a sentence and position of words on a given line.
Science: We read about and discussed the dwarf planet, Pluto and beyond. We took a look a maps and drawings of our current solar system. We also studied about the dwarf planets, Eres and Ceres. The students got to sample some freeze dried ice cream sandwiches and strawberries. Some real space food! Most thought it tasted crunchy and dry but good! Our main work centered around working on our space stations.
Literature: "First Graders from Mars" Episodes 1 and 2, "Beyond Pluto," "The Story of Passover," "This is the Matzoh," "Bad, Bad, Bunny Trouble," "The Statue of Liberty," "It's Spring," "Mars Needs Moms," "It's Easter."
Friday, April 15, 2011
UPDATES for 4/11-4/15 2011
**The Centennial Celebration/Taste of Irving was loads of fun!! I learned so much more about Irving School from the alumi who came. It was so great talking with them. They shared many stories with me about the building, teachers, curriculum and antics of the 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's. They were very sad that we no longer have our loft and fish pond. I was thrilled to see many former students and especially elated to chat with a former student and his family. That student is now 27 years old!! What a great evening for all. Please stop by to see our NOW and THEN thoughts and read our If I Lived 100 Years ago sentences.
**NO SCHOOL--Thursday, April 21st, Teacher's Institute and Friday, April 22nd.
**RUN WITH ME on Saturday, May 7th at 8:00 am. See information in homework packet.
**THANK YOU to S. Oufkir, D. Donaldson, T. Zurawski and A. Baker for volunteering to help on our Planetarium field trip. We had an awesome experience and a great day.
**We have our boxes for our Space Station projects. Our groups are set and our prototypes are drawn. We will be working on construction, painting and detailing all next week and some of the following week. Any cool things for details, send in on Monday. It can get messy, so have your child wear clothing that is not special.
**CHANGE IN DATE: Please note that the Academic Fair and Egg Drop has been moved to the following week--Wednesday, April 27th. More time for ideas and research!
**SPELLING BEE NEWS--Congratulations to Rylee and Alistair!!!! They were the last kindergarten participants standing at the Spelling Bee!!! 2nd grader, Bodie, first grader, Andrew and 2nd grader, Robin received 1st, 2nd and 3rd place respectively. It was exciting to watch!!
**Author, Marc Brown was a smash hit at Irving on Wednesday. We learned about his life and how he comes up with ideas for his books. We learned how "Arthur" came to be. Marc read his newest "Arthur" story to the group. We had a very cool photo taken of Marc Brown with our class.
**The 31st Annual Ethnic Festival is Saturday, May 7th from 10-3 pm at Julian Middle School.
**Keep reading those Busy Readers and keeping your log. Our classroom goal is to have every child complete 1 log.
**Family Math Night is Thursday, April 28th from 6:30-8:00 pm. This years focus is called, "Who done It?" Let's collect, decipher and solve the mystery.
**We have started a school wide Ultimate Vocabulary Challenge. This weeks word was REPUGNANT--offensive, disgusting, awful. Our class used the word in sentences 20 times this week! (That smell was repugnant.) Wonder what next weeks word will be? If you have an interesting word--write it down and bring it in. I will submit it to Ms. Chinn.
**Homework packet is in their backpacks.
This week: It was about 2 things--Our field trip to the Planetarium and Preparation for the Centennial Celebration. We had a beautiful day for our trip. We saw a cool movie called, "One World, One Sky." Our friends, Big Bird and Elmo showed us the night sky, stars and constellations and pointed out how even across the world in China, what we see in the sky is the same. We enjoyed looking at the exhibits in the Solar System Room. The students loved making a crater and checking out the Mars and Adler Rovers. We looked at the chart with all the planets and learned that most of the planets had more that one moon and the moons were named. We saw part of a meteorite from the the Meteor Crater in Arizona. The Planet Explorers interactive
room was blast! The students tried on space gear, worked on the rocket, blasted off in a simulator, went to planet x and crawled through tunnels, drove a lunar rover and played with space rocks. We had a lovely lunch outside near the beach. We prepared for the Centennial. The students looked on the internet at the history of South Oak Park. A representative from the Oak Park Historical Society came to speak to classes about what it was like in Oak Park in 1910 and what Irving School looked liked. What, no playground! Look how small our school was. We did not see very many trees. What did kids do back then? What, no Nintendo!!! It was an eye opener for many. I photographed what our school looks like now. We all were amazed at the growth and size of the our building throughout the years.
Reading: We continue to work on Unit 6. We took our sequencing frames a step further. The students did not preview their decodable story this time. They did take it back to their seats and read it on their own and filled out the sequencing frame. All Independently!! We are really moving into the first grade mode. We continue to work on pointing out the beginning, middle and ending of a story as well as the main idea. We reviewed all of our sight vocabulary and used them in sentences. We worked on our fluency. We worked on blending 4-5 phoneme words, adding and deleting word parts, WORD PLAY activities and blends and digraphs.
Math: We continue to work on the process of subtraction. The students are really beginning to recognize the specific words in our story problems that indicate you are going to subtract. We continue to work on reading and writing 2-3 digit numbers, counting to 120 and reviewing geometric solids. The students brought in some really creative multi dimentional projects. Stop by and check our Structural Museum. We played the plus or minus game with pennies. It was interesting to observe students' counting strategies (one by one, grouping by 2's and 5's, visually performing the process.)
Writing: We continue to work on reflecting in our journals, refining our upper and lowercase letters, spacing between words in a sentence and position of words on a given line.
Science: We reflected on our field trip. We continue to discuss the phases of the moon. The students continue their fascination with the stories behind constellation names. We are loving those ancient Greeks and Romans! We made star gazers on station day and are waiting for a very sunny day to use them. The students read about and discussed the land planets and gas planets with accompanying facts about their moons and geography. The students have now formed their groups for their space station projects. They worked Friday morning discussing and sketching their space station prototype. Work will begin on Monday.
Literature: "D. W.'s Guide to Perfect Manners," "Billy Bean's Dream," "Asteroids, Comets and Meteors," "Sleepy time Olie," "Jupiter and Saturn," "Planets--True or False," "I Want to be an Astronaut," "Once Upon a Starry Night," "The Book of Planet Earth," "First on the Moon," "Stories of the Stars," " Uranus and Neptune."
**NO SCHOOL--Thursday, April 21st, Teacher's Institute and Friday, April 22nd.
**RUN WITH ME on Saturday, May 7th at 8:00 am. See information in homework packet.
**THANK YOU to S. Oufkir, D. Donaldson, T. Zurawski and A. Baker for volunteering to help on our Planetarium field trip. We had an awesome experience and a great day.
**We have our boxes for our Space Station projects. Our groups are set and our prototypes are drawn. We will be working on construction, painting and detailing all next week and some of the following week. Any cool things for details, send in on Monday. It can get messy, so have your child wear clothing that is not special.
**CHANGE IN DATE: Please note that the Academic Fair and Egg Drop has been moved to the following week--Wednesday, April 27th. More time for ideas and research!
**SPELLING BEE NEWS--Congratulations to Rylee and Alistair!!!! They were the last kindergarten participants standing at the Spelling Bee!!! 2nd grader, Bodie, first grader, Andrew and 2nd grader, Robin received 1st, 2nd and 3rd place respectively. It was exciting to watch!!
**Author, Marc Brown was a smash hit at Irving on Wednesday. We learned about his life and how he comes up with ideas for his books. We learned how "Arthur" came to be. Marc read his newest "Arthur" story to the group. We had a very cool photo taken of Marc Brown with our class.
**The 31st Annual Ethnic Festival is Saturday, May 7th from 10-3 pm at Julian Middle School.
**Keep reading those Busy Readers and keeping your log. Our classroom goal is to have every child complete 1 log.
**Family Math Night is Thursday, April 28th from 6:30-8:00 pm. This years focus is called, "Who done It?" Let's collect, decipher and solve the mystery.
**We have started a school wide Ultimate Vocabulary Challenge. This weeks word was REPUGNANT--offensive, disgusting, awful. Our class used the word in sentences 20 times this week! (That smell was repugnant.) Wonder what next weeks word will be? If you have an interesting word--write it down and bring it in. I will submit it to Ms. Chinn.
**Homework packet is in their backpacks.
This week: It was about 2 things--Our field trip to the Planetarium and Preparation for the Centennial Celebration. We had a beautiful day for our trip. We saw a cool movie called, "One World, One Sky." Our friends, Big Bird and Elmo showed us the night sky, stars and constellations and pointed out how even across the world in China, what we see in the sky is the same. We enjoyed looking at the exhibits in the Solar System Room. The students loved making a crater and checking out the Mars and Adler Rovers. We looked at the chart with all the planets and learned that most of the planets had more that one moon and the moons were named. We saw part of a meteorite from the the Meteor Crater in Arizona. The Planet Explorers interactive
room was blast! The students tried on space gear, worked on the rocket, blasted off in a simulator, went to planet x and crawled through tunnels, drove a lunar rover and played with space rocks. We had a lovely lunch outside near the beach. We prepared for the Centennial. The students looked on the internet at the history of South Oak Park. A representative from the Oak Park Historical Society came to speak to classes about what it was like in Oak Park in 1910 and what Irving School looked liked. What, no playground! Look how small our school was. We did not see very many trees. What did kids do back then? What, no Nintendo!!! It was an eye opener for many. I photographed what our school looks like now. We all were amazed at the growth and size of the our building throughout the years.
Reading: We continue to work on Unit 6. We took our sequencing frames a step further. The students did not preview their decodable story this time. They did take it back to their seats and read it on their own and filled out the sequencing frame. All Independently!! We are really moving into the first grade mode. We continue to work on pointing out the beginning, middle and ending of a story as well as the main idea. We reviewed all of our sight vocabulary and used them in sentences. We worked on our fluency. We worked on blending 4-5 phoneme words, adding and deleting word parts, WORD PLAY activities and blends and digraphs.
Math: We continue to work on the process of subtraction. The students are really beginning to recognize the specific words in our story problems that indicate you are going to subtract. We continue to work on reading and writing 2-3 digit numbers, counting to 120 and reviewing geometric solids. The students brought in some really creative multi dimentional projects. Stop by and check our Structural Museum. We played the plus or minus game with pennies. It was interesting to observe students' counting strategies (one by one, grouping by 2's and 5's, visually performing the process.)
Writing: We continue to work on reflecting in our journals, refining our upper and lowercase letters, spacing between words in a sentence and position of words on a given line.
Science: We reflected on our field trip. We continue to discuss the phases of the moon. The students continue their fascination with the stories behind constellation names. We are loving those ancient Greeks and Romans! We made star gazers on station day and are waiting for a very sunny day to use them. The students read about and discussed the land planets and gas planets with accompanying facts about their moons and geography. The students have now formed their groups for their space station projects. They worked Friday morning discussing and sketching their space station prototype. Work will begin on Monday.
Literature: "D. W.'s Guide to Perfect Manners," "Billy Bean's Dream," "Asteroids, Comets and Meteors," "Sleepy time Olie," "Jupiter and Saturn," "Planets--True or False," "I Want to be an Astronaut," "Once Upon a Starry Night," "The Book of Planet Earth," "First on the Moon," "Stories of the Stars," " Uranus and Neptune."
Sunday, April 10, 2011
UPDATES for 4/4-4/8 2011
**REMINDER--FIELD TRIP to the Planetarium on Tuesday, April 12th.
**Centennial Celebration/Taste of Irving--Friday, April 15th 6-8 pm. Bring a dish to serve 10-12 people. Last name beginning with A-L Bring an appetizer. Last name beginning with J-R Bring an entre. Last name beginning with S-Z Bring a dessert. Great fun for all!!!
**To start off our celebration week, a presenter from the Oak Park Historical Society will come on Monday, April 11th at 8:30 am. to speak to the students on the history behind Irving School and the south end of our village. He will bring drawings and artifacts.
**District 97 FUN RUN! May 7th t 8:00 am. at Lindberg Park RUN WITH ME!!!!
**Keep sending those giant boxes and other cool stuff for our space station construction. We will begin construction on April 18th.
**What a great response to Irving's Annual Academic Fair and Egg Drop Contest. Our class has 8 participants in the academic fair and 10 participants in the egg drop. Stop by the afternoon of Wednesday, April 20th to see it all! Students will also be in the gym on Wednesday night to speak about their projects.
**The Irving Annual Spelling Bee is THIS Wednesday, April 13th at 11:00 am in the auditorium. Come cheer on our class representatives, Alistair, Rylee and alternate, McKenna. The schedule is as follows: The bee will begin at 11:00 am. K -2 students may come to watch the bee. At 11:25 am., those students will go to eat their lunch. The bee will continue. As student representatives finish their part of the bee, they will eat their lunches in the auditorium. It will be exciting!!!!!
**Children's author, Marc Brown, of "Arthur" fame will be here on Wednesday, April 13th from 12:45 until 1:30 pm. to read/draw to our K-2 students. Thanks to Ms. Noonan for arranging this.
**Check out the new Irving Parent Resource wiki (under great resources on this blog). This is a tremendous resource containing many helpful sites for parents and kids. Our esteemed 3rd grade teacher, Ms Homann, researched sites and put this together. A giant THANK YOU to her for all her hard work! Enjoy.
**Check out Book Order info.
**Spelling City has been updated. Try Xtramath if you haven't or work on Lexia.
This week:
It was all about constellations! We took a much closer look at our night sky and looked for the star patterns or pictures we call constellations. We study what a star is and how they are not all the same size or intensity. We learned that all stars are not a white color but can be blue, red yellow and orange. The students were fascinated by the constellation names and the stories behind them that are rooted in Greek Mythology. One of our station day activities was to create our own constellation and name. Check them out in the hall outside of our room. Very cosmic!!!
Reading: We continued in our unit called, " Red, White and Blue." The students used sequencing frames. They independently read a decodable story and wrote what happened first, in the middle and at the end. We continued working on our questions and concepts for the word, patriotism. We investigated the use of proper nouns, abbreviations and continued our discussion on what an adjective is. We worked on our weekly WORD PLAY activity (see homework), oral and written comprehension skills, blends, digraphs and working with silent e. The students were introduced to a game called, "Silly Rhymes," where they have to construct a sentence using rhyming words, verb, adjectives and articles. It can get pretty silly!!!
Math: What is subtraction? was the question of the week. We worked on the subtraction process in our math journals and began to listen for specific words in our story problem that would tell us if we needed to subtract, take away or "minus" something. We worked on counting down from random numbers, wrote our numbers from 0-50 on our number grid, played the plus or minus game, the disappearing train game, and continued our work with place value. We revisited the world of 3 dimensional structures. This time we used marshmallows and toothpicks to create our dimensional structures. Can't wait to see what they create for their homework project. We will set up a multi-dimensional museum in our classroom.
Writing: We continue to respond to literature we have read in class. The students are working hard at refining their upper and lowercase letters, spacing and placement of letters and punctuation. We are composing 3-4 sentences.
Science: We worked with a shadow clock or sundial. We read about the history behind unsing the sun to mark time. Each table group observed their sun dial at different parts of the day and reflected their observations in their science journals. We experimented with solar paper. Each student placed an object on their solar paper and placed it outside in a sunny spot. They checked it after an hour and recorded what they observed and why they thought happened. We checked out the different pictures of the moon's phases. We made a topographical moon with packing peanuts and aluminum foil.
Literature: "The Heavenly Zoo," "Seeing Stars," "Children's Atlas of the Universe," "Space Race," "Shooting Stars," "Mercury and Venus," "The Solar System," "Stars, Stars, Stars," "The Story of Betsy Ross," "The American Wei," "To Root, To Toot to Parachute--What is a verb?" "If You Were a Minus Sign."
**Centennial Celebration/Taste of Irving--Friday, April 15th 6-8 pm. Bring a dish to serve 10-12 people. Last name beginning with A-L Bring an appetizer. Last name beginning with J-R Bring an entre. Last name beginning with S-Z Bring a dessert. Great fun for all!!!
**To start off our celebration week, a presenter from the Oak Park Historical Society will come on Monday, April 11th at 8:30 am. to speak to the students on the history behind Irving School and the south end of our village. He will bring drawings and artifacts.
**District 97 FUN RUN! May 7th t 8:00 am. at Lindberg Park RUN WITH ME!!!!
**Keep sending those giant boxes and other cool stuff for our space station construction. We will begin construction on April 18th.
**What a great response to Irving's Annual Academic Fair and Egg Drop Contest. Our class has 8 participants in the academic fair and 10 participants in the egg drop. Stop by the afternoon of Wednesday, April 20th to see it all! Students will also be in the gym on Wednesday night to speak about their projects.
**The Irving Annual Spelling Bee is THIS Wednesday, April 13th at 11:00 am in the auditorium. Come cheer on our class representatives, Alistair, Rylee and alternate, McKenna. The schedule is as follows: The bee will begin at 11:00 am. K -2 students may come to watch the bee. At 11:25 am., those students will go to eat their lunch. The bee will continue. As student representatives finish their part of the bee, they will eat their lunches in the auditorium. It will be exciting!!!!!
**Children's author, Marc Brown, of "Arthur" fame will be here on Wednesday, April 13th from 12:45 until 1:30 pm. to read/draw to our K-2 students. Thanks to Ms. Noonan for arranging this.
**Check out the new Irving Parent Resource wiki (under great resources on this blog). This is a tremendous resource containing many helpful sites for parents and kids. Our esteemed 3rd grade teacher, Ms Homann, researched sites and put this together. A giant THANK YOU to her for all her hard work! Enjoy.
**Check out Book Order info.
**Spelling City has been updated. Try Xtramath if you haven't or work on Lexia.
This week:
It was all about constellations! We took a much closer look at our night sky and looked for the star patterns or pictures we call constellations. We study what a star is and how they are not all the same size or intensity. We learned that all stars are not a white color but can be blue, red yellow and orange. The students were fascinated by the constellation names and the stories behind them that are rooted in Greek Mythology. One of our station day activities was to create our own constellation and name. Check them out in the hall outside of our room. Very cosmic!!!
Reading: We continued in our unit called, " Red, White and Blue." The students used sequencing frames. They independently read a decodable story and wrote what happened first, in the middle and at the end. We continued working on our questions and concepts for the word, patriotism. We investigated the use of proper nouns, abbreviations and continued our discussion on what an adjective is. We worked on our weekly WORD PLAY activity (see homework), oral and written comprehension skills, blends, digraphs and working with silent e. The students were introduced to a game called, "Silly Rhymes," where they have to construct a sentence using rhyming words, verb, adjectives and articles. It can get pretty silly!!!
Math: What is subtraction? was the question of the week. We worked on the subtraction process in our math journals and began to listen for specific words in our story problem that would tell us if we needed to subtract, take away or "minus" something. We worked on counting down from random numbers, wrote our numbers from 0-50 on our number grid, played the plus or minus game, the disappearing train game, and continued our work with place value. We revisited the world of 3 dimensional structures. This time we used marshmallows and toothpicks to create our dimensional structures. Can't wait to see what they create for their homework project. We will set up a multi-dimensional museum in our classroom.
Writing: We continue to respond to literature we have read in class. The students are working hard at refining their upper and lowercase letters, spacing and placement of letters and punctuation. We are composing 3-4 sentences.
Science: We worked with a shadow clock or sundial. We read about the history behind unsing the sun to mark time. Each table group observed their sun dial at different parts of the day and reflected their observations in their science journals. We experimented with solar paper. Each student placed an object on their solar paper and placed it outside in a sunny spot. They checked it after an hour and recorded what they observed and why they thought happened. We checked out the different pictures of the moon's phases. We made a topographical moon with packing peanuts and aluminum foil.
Literature: "The Heavenly Zoo," "Seeing Stars," "Children's Atlas of the Universe," "Space Race," "Shooting Stars," "Mercury and Venus," "The Solar System," "Stars, Stars, Stars," "The Story of Betsy Ross," "The American Wei," "To Root, To Toot to Parachute--What is a verb?" "If You Were a Minus Sign."
Thursday, March 24, 2011
UPDATES for 3/21-2/25 2011
**Spring break--begins March 26th, ends April 3rd. Students will return to school on Monday, April 4th.
**Thanks for helping out with our ZERO WASTE DAY. The student lunches had great food plus reusable or recyclable containers. Our School Lunch students only took what they were going to eat and we opened and drank our milk without a straw!
**The annual ACADEMIC FAIR and EGG DROP contest is Wednesday, April 20th. Ms. Creehan spoke to the students about both events and they got to look at some examples of projects. We now have 5 students doing an academic project and 7 students working on their egg drop vehicles. Come on----join in the fun and learning!!!! There is still time to decide what you would like to do. It is a great learning experience and fun to represent our kindergarten class.
**SAVE THE DATE--Friday, April 15th, 6:00-8:00 pm--Centennial Celebration/Taste of Irving. Our committee is working hard and we have some great events going on that evening. What was it like at Irving 100 years ago? Was Ms. Gullo teaching then? Find out from alums what the curriculum was like throughout the years. Bring a meal to share, hear the wonderful sounds of the Irving Chorus, view artwork from all the students at Irving. It is going to be great! More info is coming!!!!
**Thanks to those of you who participated in Family Reading Night--Swap, Shop and Read. We had a nice turnout of families, swapped some really great books and ate yummy cookies!
**Our Spelling Bee participants, Alistair and Rylee and our alternate, McKenna are hard at work practicing their word lists for Irving's Annual Spelling Bee on Wednesday, April 13th at 11:00 am. All are welcome to watch the bee take place in the auditorium.
**Our Field Trip to the Planetarium is set for Tuesday, April 12th from 9:00-2:00 pm. Our parent volunteers are Tracy Zurawski, Samir Oufkir, Diane Donaldson (Danny's grandma) and Amy Baker. Specific info will go out to you after break. Don't worry--we still have 2-3 more field trips left!!!! I appreciate that many of you were interested in coming.
**After break---send in all the giant boxes and other cool stuff that you have been saving for our space stations. We will devote the week of April 18th-21st for design, construction, painting and detailing of our space stations. The students will work in small groups.
**Route to Reading Skills Groups will resume Tuesday, April 5th. I am very pleased with all the student's progress thus far.
**CHECK IT OUT--Author Marc Brown, of "Arthur" fame will be a Irving School of Wednesday, April 13th from 12:45-1:30 pm. Order form for books is in the digital backpack.
This week:
It was all about the MOON!! What do you get when you put flour and cocoa powder in a pie tin and drop marbles down into it-----a MOONSCAPE!! Groups of students created their moonscapes and then sketched them in their science journals They labeled the craters, hills, mountains and "seas." We learned about the moon's surface and how it was formed. We talked about astronauts and space vehicles and other living things (tomato seeds, chimps, ladybugs) that have traveled to the moon.
Reading: We began Unit 6 called, "Red, White and Blue." This unit explores the idea of patriotism and loyalty to our country. It incorporates family, friends and school and takes a look at symbols that represent our country. The literature centers around our flag, citizenship, democracy and the right to vote. We continue to work on parts of speech-nouns, verbs and adjectives. We explored the use of articles (a, an and the.) The students are having fun playing a game called "Silly Sentences." We review r blends, 4-5 phoneme words, word play activities, and where they hear a particular sound--beginning, middle or end of the word. We continue to work on reading fluency and reading for meaning. Many of the students are beginning to challenge themselves by reading stories with more vocabulary. Keep reading those Busy Readers!!!! Keep those reading logs coming in.
Math: We continue work in our daily math journals. We will begin working on the subtraction the process after break. The students are becoming more consistent in recognizing coin values and exchanging pennies for dimes and nickels. We reviewed counting by 2"s and 5"s as well as counting on, comparing shapes and writing 2 -3 digit numbers.
Writing: In our writing process this week, we learned about a simple paragraph, writing about a topic and using details and descriptions to tell about a topic. We used our shadow dance photographs for our topics and constructed 4 questions to answer about them. We learned what a draft is. We wrote our answers to our questions in sentence form, read them back and made any corrections on the draft. We then transferred our work to our final copy using our best handwriting and all we know about letter size, line usage, spacing and punctuation. The students were awesome and so were their paragraphs. I will display them in the hallway after break.
Science: We pondered the questions--What is the moon? When can we see it? How does it compare in relation to the sun and earth? We took a look at many photos, reflected our thoughts and ideas in our science journal. We created our moonscapes. We are finding out that space is a pretty amazing place. We are beginning to learn our planet song.
Literature: "Meggie Moon," Kitten's first Full Moon," If You Decide to Go to the Moon," "Sun and Moon," Poetry selection--The Moon, by Robert Louis Stevenson, Seymour Simon's-"The Moon," "What is the Moon," "Spend the Day in Backwards Bay," a word family book and "Patriotism."
**Thanks for helping out with our ZERO WASTE DAY. The student lunches had great food plus reusable or recyclable containers. Our School Lunch students only took what they were going to eat and we opened and drank our milk without a straw!
**The annual ACADEMIC FAIR and EGG DROP contest is Wednesday, April 20th. Ms. Creehan spoke to the students about both events and they got to look at some examples of projects. We now have 5 students doing an academic project and 7 students working on their egg drop vehicles. Come on----join in the fun and learning!!!! There is still time to decide what you would like to do. It is a great learning experience and fun to represent our kindergarten class.
**SAVE THE DATE--Friday, April 15th, 6:00-8:00 pm--Centennial Celebration/Taste of Irving. Our committee is working hard and we have some great events going on that evening. What was it like at Irving 100 years ago? Was Ms. Gullo teaching then? Find out from alums what the curriculum was like throughout the years. Bring a meal to share, hear the wonderful sounds of the Irving Chorus, view artwork from all the students at Irving. It is going to be great! More info is coming!!!!
**Thanks to those of you who participated in Family Reading Night--Swap, Shop and Read. We had a nice turnout of families, swapped some really great books and ate yummy cookies!
**Our Spelling Bee participants, Alistair and Rylee and our alternate, McKenna are hard at work practicing their word lists for Irving's Annual Spelling Bee on Wednesday, April 13th at 11:00 am. All are welcome to watch the bee take place in the auditorium.
**Our Field Trip to the Planetarium is set for Tuesday, April 12th from 9:00-2:00 pm. Our parent volunteers are Tracy Zurawski, Samir Oufkir, Diane Donaldson (Danny's grandma) and Amy Baker. Specific info will go out to you after break. Don't worry--we still have 2-3 more field trips left!!!! I appreciate that many of you were interested in coming.
**After break---send in all the giant boxes and other cool stuff that you have been saving for our space stations. We will devote the week of April 18th-21st for design, construction, painting and detailing of our space stations. The students will work in small groups.
**Route to Reading Skills Groups will resume Tuesday, April 5th. I am very pleased with all the student's progress thus far.
**CHECK IT OUT--Author Marc Brown, of "Arthur" fame will be a Irving School of Wednesday, April 13th from 12:45-1:30 pm. Order form for books is in the digital backpack.
This week:
It was all about the MOON!! What do you get when you put flour and cocoa powder in a pie tin and drop marbles down into it-----a MOONSCAPE!! Groups of students created their moonscapes and then sketched them in their science journals They labeled the craters, hills, mountains and "seas." We learned about the moon's surface and how it was formed. We talked about astronauts and space vehicles and other living things (tomato seeds, chimps, ladybugs) that have traveled to the moon.
Reading: We began Unit 6 called, "Red, White and Blue." This unit explores the idea of patriotism and loyalty to our country. It incorporates family, friends and school and takes a look at symbols that represent our country. The literature centers around our flag, citizenship, democracy and the right to vote. We continue to work on parts of speech-nouns, verbs and adjectives. We explored the use of articles (a, an and the.) The students are having fun playing a game called "Silly Sentences." We review r blends, 4-5 phoneme words, word play activities, and where they hear a particular sound--beginning, middle or end of the word. We continue to work on reading fluency and reading for meaning. Many of the students are beginning to challenge themselves by reading stories with more vocabulary. Keep reading those Busy Readers!!!! Keep those reading logs coming in.
Math: We continue work in our daily math journals. We will begin working on the subtraction the process after break. The students are becoming more consistent in recognizing coin values and exchanging pennies for dimes and nickels. We reviewed counting by 2"s and 5"s as well as counting on, comparing shapes and writing 2 -3 digit numbers.
Writing: In our writing process this week, we learned about a simple paragraph, writing about a topic and using details and descriptions to tell about a topic. We used our shadow dance photographs for our topics and constructed 4 questions to answer about them. We learned what a draft is. We wrote our answers to our questions in sentence form, read them back and made any corrections on the draft. We then transferred our work to our final copy using our best handwriting and all we know about letter size, line usage, spacing and punctuation. The students were awesome and so were their paragraphs. I will display them in the hallway after break.
Science: We pondered the questions--What is the moon? When can we see it? How does it compare in relation to the sun and earth? We took a look at many photos, reflected our thoughts and ideas in our science journal. We created our moonscapes. We are finding out that space is a pretty amazing place. We are beginning to learn our planet song.
Literature: "Meggie Moon," Kitten's first Full Moon," If You Decide to Go to the Moon," "Sun and Moon," Poetry selection--The Moon, by Robert Louis Stevenson, Seymour Simon's-"The Moon," "What is the Moon," "Spend the Day in Backwards Bay," a word family book and "Patriotism."
Thursday, March 17, 2011
UPDATES for 3/14-3/18 2011
**Please send in permission slip and money for our Planetarium field trip ASAP. Thanks!
**REPORT CARDS went home Friday. Any questions at all---feel free to contact me.
**Tasty Dog Challenge appears to be a BIG HIT!! Thanks to all who participated.
**My class had some cool moves during the PBIS Dance Party with D. J. Mick.
**Come to Family Reading Night--Swap, Shop and Read on Thursday, March 24th from 6:30-8:00 pm. Have a snack and read with me!
**The Opera for the Young presentation of "Pirates of Penzance" was amazing! The students had a great time. It was highly visual with top notch singing.
**ZERO WASTE DAY is March 23rd. Bring your lunch in a recyclable/reusable container. Pack a healthy lunch. If you order a school, only take what you are going to eat.
**SAVE the DATE--Friday, April 15th, 6:00-8:00 pm--Centennial Celebration/Taste of Irving. What was is like at Irving School 100 years ago? Has it changed much? Find out from alums what the curriculum was like throughout the years. Bring a meal to share, hear the wonderful sounds of the Irving Chorus and view artwork from all the students at Irving. It is going to be great!!!!
**The annual ACADEMIC FAIR and EGG DROP contest is Wednesday, April 20th. Create a project about something that interest you. Create a vehicle that will prevent an egg from cracking when it is dropped from the 3rd floor window at Irving. I have asked the students to think about participating. What a great way to use thinking, predicting, researching, drawing, speaking, engineering, creativity, writing, art skills and more. Ms. Creehan will be speaking to our students on Monday to show examples and answer questions. Hey students, think about it--it could be a really cool thing to do!!!!!
**Spring Break--March 26th-April 3rd.
**Ms. Bell-Bey has compiled a big list of summers programs and camps in the area. If you are interested in seeing it please email me. It is really big and there is only one copy.
This week:
We examined the parts of a tuber (potato), looked at the eyes, viewed different varieties (purple!!), learned the history and view the flesh under a microscope. We are turning Peter's potato into a plant. No soil ---just water!.
Reading: We learned what an adjective was and how to use them in our sentences. We worked on drawing conclusions, comprehension strategies and sentence building. In our decodable book, "Hug a Bug," we discussed the idea of story extension--what could happen when we finished the story. How could the story be continued? Reviewing short u words, 3, 4 and some 5 phoneme words, word play activities and the introduction of a game where the students have to say where they hear a particular sound--beginning, middle or end, when looking at a picture were also part of this weeks activities.
Math: We began our Math Journals this week! The students are excited about listening to the story problem and recording the origin of the problem, illustrating the problem and writing the solution in number sentence form. We reviewed plus sign and equal sign terms. We continue work on counting on from a random number, time by the hour, writing 3 digit numbers and working with money values. Students played the "Piggy Bank" and "Mushroom Money" games.
Writing: We continue to work on upper and lowercase letters, paying particular attention to "dive down" letters, p, r, n. Students continue to write about various topics. We began talking about what a paragraph is and what the process is in writing one.
Science: We made frames for our silhouettes and posted our picture silhouettes in the hall. Can you tell where my shadow is? Check it out in the hall outside our classroom. Some very cosmic frames! We looked at our pictures of our "shadow dance." These will be the topic of our paragraphs. Stay tuned. We looked at where shadows fall in relation to the light. We observed their change in direction when the light source is moved. We talked about the sun. We learned about what it is made of, what impact it has on the planets and that it is a star. Next week--a shadow clock-sun dial and taking a look at the moon.
Literature: "Laura Ingalls Wilder," "1000 Facts about Space," "The Sun," "Solar Energy," "The Book of Stars," "Sun," "Dogs in Space," "The Sun is My Favorite Star," "Happy St. Patrick's Day, Clifford," "The Leprechaun Who Lost His Rainbow," "If You Were a Plus Sign."
**REPORT CARDS went home Friday. Any questions at all---feel free to contact me.
**Tasty Dog Challenge appears to be a BIG HIT!! Thanks to all who participated.
**My class had some cool moves during the PBIS Dance Party with D. J. Mick.
**Come to Family Reading Night--Swap, Shop and Read on Thursday, March 24th from 6:30-8:00 pm. Have a snack and read with me!
**The Opera for the Young presentation of "Pirates of Penzance" was amazing! The students had a great time. It was highly visual with top notch singing.
**ZERO WASTE DAY is March 23rd. Bring your lunch in a recyclable/reusable container. Pack a healthy lunch. If you order a school, only take what you are going to eat.
**SAVE the DATE--Friday, April 15th, 6:00-8:00 pm--Centennial Celebration/Taste of Irving. What was is like at Irving School 100 years ago? Has it changed much? Find out from alums what the curriculum was like throughout the years. Bring a meal to share, hear the wonderful sounds of the Irving Chorus and view artwork from all the students at Irving. It is going to be great!!!!
**The annual ACADEMIC FAIR and EGG DROP contest is Wednesday, April 20th. Create a project about something that interest you. Create a vehicle that will prevent an egg from cracking when it is dropped from the 3rd floor window at Irving. I have asked the students to think about participating. What a great way to use thinking, predicting, researching, drawing, speaking, engineering, creativity, writing, art skills and more. Ms. Creehan will be speaking to our students on Monday to show examples and answer questions. Hey students, think about it--it could be a really cool thing to do!!!!!
**Spring Break--March 26th-April 3rd.
**Ms. Bell-Bey has compiled a big list of summers programs and camps in the area. If you are interested in seeing it please email me. It is really big and there is only one copy.
This week:
We examined the parts of a tuber (potato), looked at the eyes, viewed different varieties (purple!!), learned the history and view the flesh under a microscope. We are turning Peter's potato into a plant. No soil ---just water!.
Reading: We learned what an adjective was and how to use them in our sentences. We worked on drawing conclusions, comprehension strategies and sentence building. In our decodable book, "Hug a Bug," we discussed the idea of story extension--what could happen when we finished the story. How could the story be continued? Reviewing short u words, 3, 4 and some 5 phoneme words, word play activities and the introduction of a game where the students have to say where they hear a particular sound--beginning, middle or end, when looking at a picture were also part of this weeks activities.
Math: We began our Math Journals this week! The students are excited about listening to the story problem and recording the origin of the problem, illustrating the problem and writing the solution in number sentence form. We reviewed plus sign and equal sign terms. We continue work on counting on from a random number, time by the hour, writing 3 digit numbers and working with money values. Students played the "Piggy Bank" and "Mushroom Money" games.
Writing: We continue to work on upper and lowercase letters, paying particular attention to "dive down" letters, p, r, n. Students continue to write about various topics. We began talking about what a paragraph is and what the process is in writing one.
Science: We made frames for our silhouettes and posted our picture silhouettes in the hall. Can you tell where my shadow is? Check it out in the hall outside our classroom. Some very cosmic frames! We looked at our pictures of our "shadow dance." These will be the topic of our paragraphs. Stay tuned. We looked at where shadows fall in relation to the light. We observed their change in direction when the light source is moved. We talked about the sun. We learned about what it is made of, what impact it has on the planets and that it is a star. Next week--a shadow clock-sun dial and taking a look at the moon.
Literature: "Laura Ingalls Wilder," "1000 Facts about Space," "The Sun," "Solar Energy," "The Book of Stars," "Sun," "Dogs in Space," "The Sun is My Favorite Star," "Happy St. Patrick's Day, Clifford," "The Leprechaun Who Lost His Rainbow," "If You Were a Plus Sign."
Thursday, March 10, 2011
UPDATES for 3/8-3/11 2011
**Information and permission slip for our field trip to the Adler Planetarium is in the homework packet. Slip and money are due by March 23rd. The trip is Tuesday, April 12th.
**SUPER TUBER volunteers needed on Thursday, March 17th from 1:30 -2:30 pm. Celebrate everything POTATO!! I will need 4 volunteers. Email or drop me a note if available.
**Report cards go home next Friday.
**Opera for the Young is Wednesday, March 16th at 9:00 am. Younger sibs may attend if accompanied by an adult.
**We had our classroom spelling bee on Tuesday. I was fabulously proud of the whole class! Each student did their very best and spelled at least 2 words. CONGRATULATIONS to Rylee, Alistair and McKenna! Rylee and Alistair will represent our homeroom at Irving School's K-2 Spelling Bee. McKenna is our alternate. The bee will take place on Wednesday, April 13th at 11:00 am. The students showed great determination and sportsmanship. It was a very positive experience.
**Student Council reps, Maggie and Danny reported on activities for National Nutrition Month. They made posters for "Eating the Rainbow." They discussed with the class the importance of eating fruits and vegetables. The class brainstormed a list of colorful fruits and veggies (red-strawberries, green-celery, lettuce etc.) Their next meeting is March 15th.
**Route to Reading will resume on Tuesday, March 15th.
**Spring Break is March 26th-April 3rd. Classes resume April 4th.
**Our school wide PBIS Celebration is Friday, March 18th from 12:30-1:30. DJ Mick will be spinning some good tunes for our Dance Party.
**Come to Family Reading Night--Swap, Shop and Read on Thursday, March 24th from 6:30-8:00 pm. Have a snack and read with me!!
**Keep saving those huge (crawl in) boxes and other cool stuff for our space station projects. You can send them in after break.
**Some of you have asked about summer programs or camps for the students. There are 6 programs for our students in the Yellow Book-School Daze Book. These books were sent home a few weeks ago. The programs are located at Irving and Hatch schools. Ms. Bell Bey and I are working to see what day camps and other programs are available to our students. Stay tuned.
This week:
For Women in History month, we read a story about Helen Keller and Beatrix Potter. The students also recalled the accomplishments of Rosa Parks, Ruby Bridges and Harriet Tubman.
Reading: We continued work on reading for meaning. We discussed what the main idea of a story meant. In our decodable book, "Run, Ron," the students talked about main idea, as well as characters, setting and plot. In our literature story, "Wanda's Roses," the students worked on comprehension strategies and the use of quotations. We continued work on vocabulary development, 3-4 phoneme words and reviewing short i words.
Math: We continued work on telling time by the hour. We reivewed parts of an analog and digital clocks. We played the game, "Time to Visit," with a partner. It is included in the homework this week. We moved on to 3 dice "Got It". I am observing the different ways students are using to count what is on the dice. They are using fingers, counting by 2's or 5's, counting in their heads etc. We worked on story problems, illustrating what is happening and writing a number sentence about it. we talked about the plus sign and equal sign.
Writing: We continue work on refining our upper and lowercase letters and placement of words on a given line. The students wrote about various topics. Next week, we will talk about what a paragraph is.
Science: We continued work on shadows. In experiment 3, we learned what makes a shadow, that light passes through some objects and not others, that shadows can be light shadows, dark shadows or no shadow at all depending upon how much light they allow to pass through them. In experiment 4, recorded the changes in a shadow from morning, midday and late afternoon. We used Ceci as our shadow maker for the experiment. The students noted the change in the position of the sun each time they recorded where Ceci's shadow was. I photographed each students shadow "dance" for a writing project next week. We traced our head silhouettes. We learned what radiometer was and how it worked.
Literature: "Telling Time," "What Makes Day and Night," "Are You My Mother?" Starry Skies-Questions and Riddles About the Universe," "Chasing Shadows," "I Can See My Shadow," "Guess Who's Shadow?" 'Helen Keller," "Beatrix Potter."
**SUPER TUBER volunteers needed on Thursday, March 17th from 1:30 -2:30 pm. Celebrate everything POTATO!! I will need 4 volunteers. Email or drop me a note if available.
**Report cards go home next Friday.
**Opera for the Young is Wednesday, March 16th at 9:00 am. Younger sibs may attend if accompanied by an adult.
**We had our classroom spelling bee on Tuesday. I was fabulously proud of the whole class! Each student did their very best and spelled at least 2 words. CONGRATULATIONS to Rylee, Alistair and McKenna! Rylee and Alistair will represent our homeroom at Irving School's K-2 Spelling Bee. McKenna is our alternate. The bee will take place on Wednesday, April 13th at 11:00 am. The students showed great determination and sportsmanship. It was a very positive experience.
**Student Council reps, Maggie and Danny reported on activities for National Nutrition Month. They made posters for "Eating the Rainbow." They discussed with the class the importance of eating fruits and vegetables. The class brainstormed a list of colorful fruits and veggies (red-strawberries, green-celery, lettuce etc.) Their next meeting is March 15th.
**Route to Reading will resume on Tuesday, March 15th.
**Spring Break is March 26th-April 3rd. Classes resume April 4th.
**Our school wide PBIS Celebration is Friday, March 18th from 12:30-1:30. DJ Mick will be spinning some good tunes for our Dance Party.
**Come to Family Reading Night--Swap, Shop and Read on Thursday, March 24th from 6:30-8:00 pm. Have a snack and read with me!!
**Keep saving those huge (crawl in) boxes and other cool stuff for our space station projects. You can send them in after break.
**Some of you have asked about summer programs or camps for the students. There are 6 programs for our students in the Yellow Book-School Daze Book. These books were sent home a few weeks ago. The programs are located at Irving and Hatch schools. Ms. Bell Bey and I are working to see what day camps and other programs are available to our students. Stay tuned.
This week:
For Women in History month, we read a story about Helen Keller and Beatrix Potter. The students also recalled the accomplishments of Rosa Parks, Ruby Bridges and Harriet Tubman.
Reading: We continued work on reading for meaning. We discussed what the main idea of a story meant. In our decodable book, "Run, Ron," the students talked about main idea, as well as characters, setting and plot. In our literature story, "Wanda's Roses," the students worked on comprehension strategies and the use of quotations. We continued work on vocabulary development, 3-4 phoneme words and reviewing short i words.
Math: We continued work on telling time by the hour. We reivewed parts of an analog and digital clocks. We played the game, "Time to Visit," with a partner. It is included in the homework this week. We moved on to 3 dice "Got It". I am observing the different ways students are using to count what is on the dice. They are using fingers, counting by 2's or 5's, counting in their heads etc. We worked on story problems, illustrating what is happening and writing a number sentence about it. we talked about the plus sign and equal sign.
Writing: We continue work on refining our upper and lowercase letters and placement of words on a given line. The students wrote about various topics. Next week, we will talk about what a paragraph is.
Science: We continued work on shadows. In experiment 3, we learned what makes a shadow, that light passes through some objects and not others, that shadows can be light shadows, dark shadows or no shadow at all depending upon how much light they allow to pass through them. In experiment 4, recorded the changes in a shadow from morning, midday and late afternoon. We used Ceci as our shadow maker for the experiment. The students noted the change in the position of the sun each time they recorded where Ceci's shadow was. I photographed each students shadow "dance" for a writing project next week. We traced our head silhouettes. We learned what radiometer was and how it worked.
Literature: "Telling Time," "What Makes Day and Night," "Are You My Mother?" Starry Skies-Questions and Riddles About the Universe," "Chasing Shadows," "I Can See My Shadow," "Guess Who's Shadow?" 'Helen Keller," "Beatrix Potter."
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