November Announcements

• November 5th 2007– No students at KDES
• November 6th 2007– A new quarter begins. (2nd quarter)
• Thanksgiving Feast at KDES on November 15th (Time will be announced by email)
• November 16th- Students go home at 1 pm.
• Thanksgiving holidays– 21, 22, 23, 24, 25

• Weekend Homework:

• Weekend Language Experience Books

• Please create two to three pages sharing what you did with pictures and a few sentences describing your picture. This will help your child make meaningful connections with their background knowledge and print.

Our Spelling Words of the Week...

• Said
• Get
• Can
• Come
• Came
• Every
• That
• Again
• There
• Try
• Up
• Down
• Run
• Ran
• Went
• Find
• Have
• Jump
• New
• Under

Spelling Activities to help your child remember words at home.

• Have your child sign the word then come up with a meaningful simple sentence in ASL to be written down in English.

• Practice Flashcards in the car, a few minutes before bed, or while waiting for something.

A visit from the Firemen and his Firetruck

The fire alarm is blaring. Our famous red truck and ambulance arrives to Kendall not to put out a fire, thank goodness, but to remind us of Fire Safety Day. About nine DC Firemen were there. They shared their personal experiences and even let us try on their gear.

Fire Safety rules were explained

Students asked questions and explored the fire truck and the ambulance. One student even asked a fireman to climb the ladder to the roof of KDES and he did.

Don’t worry, we warned the students not to replicate!

Vocabulary Theme Books

The Vocabulary Theme Books are created for the purpose of writing thoughts and ideas.

Students brainstorm ideas based on a theme and we create a theme page.

If you can incorporate those words in your Language Experience Books during the weekend, this activity will help children make the connections between print and meaning.

Julia’s Birthday and Farewell Party

On Thursday October 25th, Team 123 had a farewell and birthday party for Julia Kennedy.

Everyone made cards and sang Happy Birthday to her. We popped 8 balloons to celebrate the eight years of her life.

Mr and Mrs Kennedy brought a cake and Halloween cupcakes for us all to enjoy.

Julia will be moving to MSD in Columbia to be closer to home.

Julia is a delightful girl with such a beautiful smile. We will miss you, Julia!

Math

First graders are learning Math words.

• One = 1
• Two = 2
• Three = 3
• Four = 4
• Five = 5
• Six = 6
• Seven = 7
• Eight = 8
• Nine = 9
• Ten = 10

Second Graders are learning ordinal numbers

• First = 1st
• Second = 2nd
• Third = 3rd
• Fourth = 4th
• Fifth = 5th
• Sixth = 6th
• Seventh = 7th
• Eighth= 8th
• Ninth = 9th
• Tenth = 10th
  

Book Corner

Here are some books we read during class.

• “Autumn” by Pauline Cartwright
• “The Pumpkin Book” by Gail Gibbon
• “The Giant Pumpkin” by Joy Cowley
• “Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf” by Lois Ehlert
• Clifford’s First Autumn by Norman Bridwell.
• “I am a Leaf” by Jean Marzollo
• “The Eye Book” by Dr. Seuss.

ASL/English Grammar Lessons

ASL and English are equally important languages and that’s why it is important for every child here at KDES to know the differences.

We are learning the differences between pronouns and possessive pronouns in English and in ASL.

This work is still in progress...

Cox Farms Fieldtrip

The sunny weather was perfect for our field trip to Cox Farms! Team 123 along with the teachers and staff embarked on this journey on Monday October 29th 2007.

Noah’s father, John and Alyssa’s mother Darlene joined us for this exciting time.

Students had a so much fun feeding the goats, riding the wagon and looking at Halloween decorations and pumpkins.

Our Pumpkin Carving Activity

On Friday October 26th, we had a special Pumpkin Activity with the whole team. Gabrielle led the activity and had 10 pumpkins ready. Several staff from upstairs came to help us out. Kudos to all of them :)

Alyssa and Celso explained the rules. Eliyas and Noah read us the directions. Bailey and Julia passed out the worksheets.

Students picked a pumpkin and asked questions. Does it have a handle? Does it have any bumps? They wrote down the information on their worksheets.

We picked a pattern or drew a picture for the Jack-O-Lantern.

We cut out the lid of the pumpkin and took out all the seeds. Eww… it was messy but we had fun!

For Math, we counted all the seeds using a Tally chart. We counted by 5s and by 10s.

Gabriel Veit counted 467 seeds in his pumpkin!

Science– 5 Senses– The EYE

As part of our Science unit, we are learning all about our eyes. What we see, what we don’t see. The students made an eye book and colored their eye. They also drew pictures about what they can see from real life and from books. Followed up with reading a book by Dr Seuss called “The Eye Book”

We did several experiments related to sight. We did a color activity. Students would watch what happens to colors. They made predictions. They noticed the change in front of their eyes. They recorded the activities in their Science observation notebook.

We identified objects from a bag then played a game related to missing objects. The children loved the experiments.

Fall is here...

As we look out the window, leaves are everywhere. Colors are changing. Leaves are falling.

Thank you for bringing all the leaves to school. The students compared their leaves and noticed the colors.

We did a writing activity about leaves.

Themes– Cultures, Traditions and Peoples

Themes that we are addressing for the month of November and December will be Cultures, Traditions and Peoples.

As we know every family is unique and we want to cherish what each family values.

We will look at various subtopics such as food, transportation, clothing, and traditions. We will be contacting you soon to ask you to help us create a Family Traditions/Values Mosaic.

Greetings from Gabrielle...

Greetings from Gabrielle...

A big thank you to Mrs. Biega, Alyssa’s Mom for reminding me of this wonderful idea of creating a newsletter for our class. Even though I did newsletters in the past, I got so busy this Fall that it just didn’t come to mind. Now that I am actually doing it, I forgot how much fun all of this is.
I am thrilled not only to be using my computer skills but to finally sit down and take the time to share the many things that’s been happening in class.

Let’s welcome Stacey Pedersen. She will be working closely with us from now on. Our goal is to incorporate bilingual strategies in simple ways and to help students make connections between ASL their first language and English their printed language.

Alyssa's Photo Story

Alyssa created this Halloween video in his computer technology class during 1st quarter.

Click here to view video.

Bailey's Photo Story

Bailey created this Halloween video in his computer technology class during 1st quarter.

Click here to view video.

Welcome!

newsletter