Announcements
iReady Testing: Next week, we will be doing our End of Year iReady Diagnostic in reading and math. We will break the testing time into 10-15 minute sessions twice a day. Students who need additional time can finish the following week. What can you do to help your child do their best on these assessments? Please help your child to get good rest over the upcoming long weekend. This is especially important towards the end of the weekend as often after a long weekend there are many very tired kids to start the week. Please also encourage your child to take their time and do their best on these assessments. Lastly, please make sure your child has a good breakfast and healthy snacks. The children have grown SO much this year and it’s their time to shine!
Camp Elim Information Meeting: Thank you for coming to our meeting on Wednesday. We hope that it was helpful! Ms. Ashley will be sending out a follow-up email next week with a link to the slideshow. If you were not able to make it, I will contact you about an alternate time.
Calendar
April 26: No School- Professional Development
April 29-May 3: iReady End of Year Diagnostic
May 1: Art Walk 4:15-6
May 3rd: Community Reading 8:30-9am
May 15-16: Overnight Voyage to Camp Elim
May 17: Day of Rest (No school for kindergarten)
May 22: Student Led Conferences- Here is the sign-up for reference.
May 31: Elephant & Piggie Plays 8:45-9:45am
Crew Highlights:
This past Monday was Earth Day! Students learned about how to take care of our planet, composting, and The Three Rs: reduce, reuse, and recycle.
In phonics, we were working on the letter V and Q. We will continue to review Q and how it is “best friends” with U. We reviewed our latest sights. Many students are still finding these challenging, so if you have a minute to practice, please practice: are, come, have, here, look, me, said, & two. Shaving foam, rice or sand, play doh, or scavenger hunt for reading then spelling words out loud are some fun suggestions. I have postponed the phonics assessment to next Wednesday. For reference, here is our updated phonics list.
In reading, we used the mentor text Alvarro’s Snow Day to learn about a drama. Students learned that drama is a kind of play which has characters, setting, and stage directions. The events of the story are told through the actions of the characters. We can use clues about the feelings of the characters and details from the illustrations to support understanding of what is happening.
In writing, I am SO PROUD of the work that students are doing with Opinion Writing. Already they have shown incredible growth with stating their opinion at the beginning and supporting it with 2-3 reasons why. This week, we added goals to use sketches (quick illustrations) before writing to help generate more reason why before writing and then restating their opinion at the end. Bravo to our writers!
In math, students were finishing up the unit on Compose and Decompose 8 and 9. We have started to incorporate addition math facts into our Morning Meeting to practice these skills outside of workbook pages. A lot of students are using their fingers, which is okay, but our goal is to build an understanding of how number pairs can equal 6, 7, 8, or 9 without using fingers.
In our study of weather, we learned about clouds. We had the perfect opportunity on Monday to go outside and be “weather watchers” on a cloudy day. We were able to spot all 4 types of clouds. Then in our Weather Logs, we have practiced labeling our illustrations with the cloud type. We defined them and sang a song as: cirrus- thin & wispy; stratus- low like a blanket; cumulus- white & puffy; cumulonimbus- dark & stormy! Then, as an EXCITING bonus, we got to visit the “Starlab” in library this week. This was an inflatable dome shaped planetarium which offered an immersive learning experience. To connect to our expedition, the first part was about clouds and weather. Then we got to learn about stars, stories and legends of the stars, and constellations. It was incredible! A huge thank you to Ms. Erin and Ms. Kristen for making this such a memorable experience for our Crew!
Lastly, our Crew did a “Save the Chocolate Challenge.” Students were tasked with helping a friend prevent her chocolate from melting on a sunny day. Students used classroom materials and an ice cube to test out their solutions. Unfortunately, no one was able to “save the chocolate,” but a GREAT discussion came after, when students came up with several ideas of what they would do differently next time. Some ideas included using white materials to reflect the sunlight, cover the sides so no sunlight could get in, and put something on the bottom so the warm ground would not melt the ice cube. GREAT IDEAS! These papers went home on Wednesday. If you have a moment over the long weekend, try out these new solutions with an ice cube on a sunny day for 2-3 hours. Send me a picture! I would love to see what they come up with and how it goes!
