We've had some BUSY weeks!
The alphabet countdown is in full swing.  This week we will enjoy
M:  Extra Math Day!
N: Do something Nice for a friend day (We will be writing notes.)
O: Outside Day! Weather permitting we will do a few of our lessons outside on this day!
P:  Princess/Queen Day
Q:  We will be Quick and go to Julian for our own Olympic Day  Kids need to be dressed for PE!  We will be outside if possible!

Reading:  The last few weeks we have been working on (drum roll please) FIRST GRADE READING! The students are doing such an AMAZING job reading independently that we started learning about first grade habits!  It is just a joy listening to them all read.

Writing:  We have been focusing more on handwriting this week and learning about when to use capital letters and lower case letters.

Math:  We are working on a lot of place value concepts, focusing on the teen numbers and groups of ten.

Science:  This week we got fish and learned about how the fish and our pond snails are alike and different.

Field Trip:  We had a great field trip to the Nature Museum.  Thanks goes to the chaperones for keeping us safe at a busy museum and a rainy path!  The kids had a blast.



May 28th: No School 
May 30th: Kindergarten Pizza and Play at Rehm Park 11:00-1:30
June 1st: Half day last day of school

One Book One School

I hope, like me, you are enjoying the book!  Here is the website for our One Book One School initiative.
https://sites.google.com/op97.org/oneschoolonebookirving97/home


ABC countdown this week:
C:  Dress in your favorite color!
D:  Dance Party
E:  Extra Eagle Slips and Extra Recess!
F:  First Grade Day- We will visit a first grade classroom
G:  Gum during writing!

Reading:  
We continue to work on partner reading routines and strategies.  This is a building block to book clubs in the older grades.  I am also assessing each of the students by listening to them read leveled books and talk about them.  It is such a treat to sit one on one with each of them and celebrate how far they have come.

Math: We are learning about teen numbers and practicing our fact fluency to 10.  This week I will be doing the last round of AimsWeb math testing.  These results will go in report cards.

Writing: We are working on our narrative writing this week.  Next week students can choose what kind of writing they would like to do!  They have made remarkable progress!

Science:  We welcomed some water snails to our classroom this week.  We will observe them and continue to learn about their structures and behaviors. 

Upcoming Dates

May 11th :  We are going to the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum.

May 18th:  We will be doing our Olympic Day at Julian instead of Irving.  You filled out the permission slip for Special Olympics and I need one back for Irving.

May 30th:  Picnic at Rehm.  All families are welcome to join us!

Other Events

Library Dates:

• Last Day of checkout:  Week of May 11th (library classes will continue through the last day of the year)
• All Books due: Week of May 18th
• All books from other schools due May 23rd

Kindergarten Open House:  Please tell friends and neighbors about Kindergarten Open House on May 2nd.  It is a little different format than years past.  Please make sure they know to come at 2:30 and plan on staying until 3:30!

Art Fest:  This is my favorite Irving Event!  It is a night to celebrate Art, Music, Poetry, Languages and Dance.  Every student in the school will have a piece of art displayed.

Can Do Food Drive:  Please read this flyer about a coin drive run by Student Council!

Busy Time of Year!

Traveling Poets
Every Year Ms. Noonan helps us celebrate Poetry by doing Traveling Poets.  Every child in the school gets a poem and a partner.  They memorize the poem and then... they travel!  During library time we will travel around the school reciting our memorized poems.  It is a memorable event and I can say that the two poets in my house can still remember every poem they recited!

• Your child's poem will be in the folder on Monday.
• Practice the poem until it is memorized.
• Keep practicing it until May
• Come back to School on May 10th and recite it at Art Fest!

One Book One School
Ms. Noonan is also organizing another all school event called One Book One School.  Every family will receive a book to read together thanks to our generous PTO!  We will read the first two chapters at school on Tuesday and then we will send the books home.  The title of the book is still a secret!  Your child will also get a suggested calendar for reading the book at home to keep up with everyone.  Let's hear it for Ms. Noonan!

ABC Countdown
ABC countdown is a Kindergarten tradition that starts this year on April 26th.  Each day we will celebrate a letter of the alphabet with different activities, dress up opportunities and fun.  The calendar will go home on Monday so you can prepare. It is linked here.







Field Trips
May 11th :  We are going to the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum.  We can take one more chaperone on this trip if you are interested.

May 18th:  We will be doing our Olympic Day at Julian instead of Irving.  You filled out the permission slip for Special Olympics and I will send another home on Monday for Irving.

May 30th:  Picnic at Rehm.  All families are welcome to join us!

Other Events

Kindergarten Open House:  Please tell friends and neighbors about Kindergarten Open House on May 2nd.  It is a little different format than years past.  Please make sure they know to come at 2:30 and plan on staying until 3:30!

Art Fest:  This is my favorite Irving Event!  It is a night to celebrate Art, Music, Poetry, Languages and Dance.  Every student in the school will have a piece of art displayed.

Can Do Food Drive:  Please read this flyer about a coin drive run by Student Council!

Spring?

It does not seem like Spring outside, but inside the classroom I can see signs of Spring wherever I look!  Students are reading and writing like First Graders and solving math problems with each other!  It has been a blast watching them blossom these last few weeks!

Reading:  We are working on being avid readers of non-fiction books.  Students had a chance to sort the books in their book box into fiction and non-fiction books. We are also working on reading words all the way through and then rereading to make sure we were right.

Writing:  We finished up our quick unit on persuasive and opinion writing and are working on narrative writing again.  Students remembered that narrative writing should have a who, where, and a what.  This week we also learned that narrative writing can be even better if the author includes feelings! 

Word Work:  Students continue to do word family sorts and this week we took it to the first grade level and wrote the words!  Wow!  They are doing great!

Math:  Students are learning about teen numbers being a group of ten and more ones.  We are reviewing shapes and subitizing as well.

Social Studies:  This week in Second Step we reviewed being active listeners.  Students looked at pictures of themselves and decided if they were being active listeners.  Check out these great listeners!

Mr. Packer came last week and did our class spelling bee.  Congratulations to Ari and Madelyn who will be representing us in our class spelling bee!!  Violet will be our alternate.  Way to go, Kindergartners!

FYI:

I will be out this Thursday at the district office to attend a Word Study Committee meeting.  

Reading:  We are learning about being avid readers.  Avid readers look at books the whole time.  Avid readers make a stack and can't stop reading.  They find a good spot to read.  They really pay attention to the book.  Avid readers think about how the character feels.  Take a look at some of these avid readers!

We also practiced reading with partners!  

We learned about persuasive writing.  We learned that words can be like magic wands!  You can write something and change the world!

These two students think we should have more stuffed animal days.  They had some good reasons, so they convinced me.  Let's go for it!  Your child can bring a stuffed animal on Friday.  It has to be small enough to fit in their book box and stay in the book box until reading and writing time!

We have been working in our handwriting books, too.

Math:  We have been working on decomposing teen numbers and practicing writing number sentences for number stories.

Reminder that there is not school on Tuesday for our district institute day.  I will be headed back to DePaul for our last inclusive classroom training.

Next week is I BELONG week at Irving!  Read this flyer for more information.  

End of Trimester 2

Wow!  As we close Trimester 2 it is amazing how far the students have come this year.  We spent a lot of time this week doing some check in assessments and I am so excited about the progress in all subjects.

Reading:  This week we talked about predicting when we read.  We use what we know about how stories work and predict what will happen next.  We also learned about how sometimes our sight word show up in disguise.  For example, "play" sometimes shows up as, "playing" or "played" or "plays."   We also loved illustrating our new poem by Dr. Seuss!   Then we did some shared reading in honor of Dr. Seuss' birthday!

Writing:  We finished our How To unit and did our On Demand writing.  Kids did a good job on this and we are ready to move on to some persuasive writing until Spring Break.  We also began focusing on handwriting.  We will work on this until the end of the school year. 

Math:  The students are working really hard on using drawings and objects to solve addition and subtraction problems.  Wow! They did great.

Science:  We are finishing up our Science Bins on making a room in our dream house.