Kindergartners picture sorting fruits and vegetables!

 

 

It's hard to believe that we only have 8 more days left of school until Winter Break!

Here's a look at this week's happenings in ELL:

One group of Kindergartners is working on communication exercises and practicing engaging in conversations describing characteristics about themselves. They are focusing on using eye contact, answering in complete sentences, and staying on topic.

Another group of Kindergarten ELL students is working on organizing foods into different food groups. This week's work was on sorting pictures and writing examples of fruits and vegetables. The students sorted pictures into categories, then used their journals to draw pictures and write sentences using the sentence frame A _________ is a fruit or A ________ is a vegetable.

First grade is working on writing details about holidays that they know of. We began our unit with a quick write about our favorite holidays and everything that we know that represents that holiday. We will continue by doing a picture sort with characteristics of various holidays and then doing another writing project where we will work on expanding on the details of a specific holiday.

Second grade is discussing healthy and un-healthy foods. Monday, we completed our Rally Robin activity identifying healthy and un-healthy foods and we will continue tomorrow by completing nutritious plates of food.

Third grade is working with Mrs. Howard on features of animal habitats and are utilizing vocabulary words such as adaptation, habitat, predator, prey and climate.

Fourth grade is working on features of the Southeast with Mrs. Krishnan.

Fifth graders are beginning a unit on Atoms. We will discuss the vocabulary protons, neutrons, nucleus and electrons before examining the periodic table of elements.

 

I hope everyone had a wonderful and relaxing Thanksgiving break :)

 

Here's a look at what's going on in ELL this week:

 

Kindergarten: We are continuing to discuss our 5 senses and talk about what we can hear, see, touch, taste and smell while we are at school.

 

 

First Grade: We are discussing rhyming words. I have introduced my rhyming "brag bag" to the students and they have been guessing the special items in the bag by being given a rhyming clue to help them figure it out. We then did a listening activity where the students needed to respond to a clue and find the missing mittens based on the rhyming clues.

 

Second Grade: Mrs. Krishnan and I are reviewing the stories The Ugly Duckling and The Tortoise and the Hare  before the students go on their exciting field trip to view these plays on Thursday. We will be acting out a reader's theater of these plays in our ELL group tomorrow afternoon so that they have a good background knowledge of what the stories are about.

 

Third Grade: Mrs. Howard is continuing their discussion on our government and identifying various characteristics of government using picture sorting and allowing the students to have a meaningful discussion.

 

Fourth Grade: Mrs. Krishnan is continuing to cover rocks and minerals topics within their science unit in her small group of ELL students.

 

Fifth Grade: We are working on describing life in the original 13 colonies and comparing it to life today. I have provided links on the side of my blog to further examine what life was like during this time.

 

 

As always, please contact us with any questions!

 

Miss Lundeen 

 

 

We are working hard leading up to our final week before Thanksgiving Break!

 

 

Here's a look at what our ELL groups have been up to:

 

Kindergarten: We are continuing to examine our five senses and have spent this week working on our sense of hearing and explaining to each other different sounds that we can hear with our ears. We also have sorted sounds that are loud and others that are quiet. We will continue the rest of the week working on the sense of touch and describing how objects feel.

 

First grade: We are beginning to align our unit with the Science curriculum studying rocks. This week's focus is looking at the word texture! The students began the unit completing an individual quick write describing all facts that they know about rocks. We then used a texture box to examine examples of words to describe how rocks feel; smooth, hard, soft, rough, sticky, etc. Based off of this list, the first graders identified words that did not represent the word texture such as shiny, sparkly, colored, etc. They are bringing home a completed Frayer Model vocabulary page to display their new knowledge of this word!

 

Second Grade: We have been analyzing the word history and identifying words that belong and do not belong in that topic. We also looked at timelines and identified the essential elements of what belongs on a timeline and ended by creating timelines of our own lives!

 

Third Grade: Mrs. Howard is continuing to discuss government with the third graders and they have been focusing on the three branches of government.

 

Fourth Grade: Mrs. Krishnan has been working with the fourth graders on activities to further examine the effects of water and erosion on rocks.

 

Fifth Grade: We are working on comparing different colonies and identifying various traits of the 13 colonies. We will continue to compare and contrast Puritans and Pilgrims.

 

 

Parent/Teacher conferences are this week!

 

We are going to attempt to attend as many conferences as possible, however, if you wish to meet with either Mrs. Howard, Mrs. Krishnan or Miss Lundeen to discuss the ELL program or your child's progress, please feel free to contact us to set up a time to meet.

 

There are a few time blocks where we do not have any conferences scheduled, so feel free to stop by the ELL room (107) to speak with us.

 

 

First Graders are working hard on their animal description writing! The students completed writing pieces this week about their favorite animal and described in detail how they look, sound, and move. Each student completed a detailed graphic organizer and used that to fill in sentence frames about their animals such as A _______ makes a _________ sound that reminds me of __________. (EX: An elephant makes a trumpeting sound with their trunk that reminds me of a musical instrument in a band.) They used these sentence frames to complete a final piece of writing in their journals about their chosen animal.

Happy Halloween Week!

 



This week, we are doing many engaging and cooperative activities in our ELL groups.

Kindergarten: We are focusing on describing direction words and using pumpkins to explain where you can put it in the classroom. We will be working on on, in, in-between, next to, under/below. The students will be describing to a partner where they put the pumpkin in the room using the following frame: The pumpkin is __________ the table. They will have an opportunity to write the sentence as well.

First grade: We are continuing our writing samples on describing animals and objects. We are using a four square organizer where they are describing what an animal looks like, sounds like, how it moves and how we feel when we see the animal.

Second grade: We are working in cooperative groups on problem solving! Last week, the students read the book Each orange had 8 slices by Paul Giganti, Jr. and did the cooperative activity Rally Coach to guide each other through the problem solving steps to come up with a correct answer to each problem. Each partner described the steps they took to his or her coaching partner. This week, we are in those same cooperative groups studying a set of objects and identifying appropriate words that can be used to create number stories with a connecting number sentence.

Third and fourth graders are continuing to do interesting and engaging activities related to science and social studies with Mrs. Krishnan and Mrs. Howard!

Fifth grade: We will continue the colony unit from Social studies beginning by comparing and contrasting Roanoke and Jamestown. We will continue throughout the week to look at the Puritans and Pilgrims and incorporating a jigsaw activity to study these two groups further in depth.

As always, please feel free to contact us if there are any questions!

Miss Lundeen

This week has been fairly short in ELL due to our half day on Wednesday and the upcoming first grade field trip to the zoo on Friday. Here is a look at what we have been working on in our ELL groups so far this week:

Kindergarten: Miss Lundeen is going into the Kindergarten classrooms and working on rhyming activities. Today we looked at my rhyming "brag bag" and guess special items in the bag using rhyming words. Then, we completed a listening activity where we followed directions and colored items on a page that went along with appropriate rhyming words. Our sentence frame that we are working on is "________ rhymes with _________" and filling it in appropriately.

Flex groups for Kindergarten are working on identifying letter sounds and blending them together to form sounds. We are also practicing words that have similar endings and are identifying why certain words don't belong in a word family. EX: Cat and bat come from the -at family. Net and Set cannot belong in the family since they do not end in -et.

First grade: Completed our weather unit and used the cooperative structure "Mix, pair, share" to share our excellent writing with each other. Since first graders are heading to the zoo, today we made predictions of what we might hear, see, smell, or touch at the zoo tomorrow. The ideas that the students came up with were very creative such as "I might hear an elephant stomping his feet". I look forward to hearing if their predictions are correct :).

Second grade: We will be looking at problems to solve and analyzing the sentence structures to determine the correct steps needed to solve a problem. Our group will be working on this throughout next week and will eventually create their own math story problem to present to a different group of students.

Third grade: Last week, the third graders completed a creative writing activity where they wrote their own scary story. Each student had an opportunity to share his or her story around a "campfire" to the rest of the peers. The students completed bones and muscles this week working with Mrs. Howard and did various activities relating to the vocabulary involved within this unit.

Fourth grade: The fourth graders are working with Mrs. Krishnan on identifying vocabulary words related to natural resources, government, economy, history, etc. and were justifying their ideas in a small group.

Fifth grade: Fifth grade students are working on creating colonies in their Language Arts blocks. The students have come up with very creative ideas to create individual colonies with a unique climate, government, and other features.

Please contact us if there are any questions!

Miss Lundeen, Mrs. Howard, Mrs. Krishnan

We are officially into the month of October :)

 

Here is a look at what our ELL students have been doing:

Kindergarten: We finished identifying the colors of various objects and we practiced counting numbers and identifying what numbers come before a number and after a number. This past week, our small group of ELL students has been reviewing our letters and sounds and identifying words that have a particular letter in them. We did a project where the students matched letters, words and pictures and we worked on partner reading.

First Grade: We have identified different weather patterns and practiced writing the weather words and matching the words to pictures. Our next topic will be connecting the four different seasons to weather patterns using the following sentence frame: In the _______________ the weather is ______________. Next week, the students will be writing about different aspects of a chosen season.

Second Grade: Mrs. Krishnan will begin to work with groups from 2W and 2BR while Miss Lundeen will work will our students from 2C in the morning. 2C completed our investigation of the word greater and now we are working on comparing even and odd numbers. We finished the week by creating question clues to try and have the members of our group guess their magic even or odd number! Many students were extremely creative and invented number stories to convey their magic number.

Third Grade: Mrs. Howard has been reviewing the bones and muscles vocabulary with our third grade ELL groups.

Fourth Grade: Mrs. Krishnan has been working with our fourth grade students on describing themselves and communicating effectively with their peers. The students also looked at vocabulary introducing social studies topics such as natural resources, economy, geography, etc.

Fifth Grade: The fifth grade ELL students completed their writers workshop activity and did a fantastic job putting a story that they created into a unique comic! They are sharing the comic book with their group in their classes this week.

We have two Kid-to-Kid students from Metea Valley that are coming to May Watts to work with our students :) They will be coming in the afternoon on either Monday or Wednesday to work with and observe our students.

Next week will begin the district Interim Assessments for students in grades 2-5. ELL students that are levels 1-3 will not be required to take the interim assessments at this time.

 

As always, please contact us with any questions!

 

Miss Lundeen, Mrs. Krishnan and Mrs. Howard

Happy Fall!!

 

Our ELL groups started meeting this past week and it is wonderful to see and work with everyone again!

 

The following is a brief explanation of the schedule for when the students will be working with us:

 

9:15-9:55: Second grade students (Miss Lundeen- pull out small groups alternating MWF and T&TH)

10:00-10:45: Kindergarten students (Miss Lundeen- pushing into classes and rotating through each class during the week)

10:50-11:30: Fifth grade students (Miss Lundeen pushing in and pull out 5B)

11:50-12:20 (Miss Lundeen pull out 1st grade students alternating throughout the week)

12:25-1:00: (Miss Lundeen pull out lower level Kindergarten students)

2:30-3:20: (Miss Lundeen pull out newcomer students)

 

12:45-1:15 (Mrs. Howard push into 3BA)

1:20-1:50 (Mrs. Howard pullout students from 3K and 3P for small group)

2:00-2:30 (Mrs. Howard pull out 3BA and 3A students)

2:30-3:00 (Mrs. Howard push into Kindergarten M-TH)

 

12:40-1:30: Second Grade (Mrs. Krishnan push into 2BR for Math)

1:40-2:45 (Mrs. Krishnan push into 4th grade classes)

2:45-3:20 (Mrs. Krishnan pull out 4th grade students for small group)

 

Next week we will be testing 2nd and 5th graders for the CoGat test from 9:30-10:30 Monday-Wednesday, therefore our ELL morning groups will not be meeting. 

 

As always, please contact me with any questions. Enjoy the fall weather :)

 

Miss Lundeen



 

Welcome to the 2012-2013 school year :)

I am very excited to begin this school year and work will all of our wonderful ELL students again. I have a few updates to share:

- We have two additional part time ELL teachers coming from other schools to assist our ever-growing English language learner population. Mrs. Krishnan will be coming over part time from Kendall Elementary and Mrs. Howard will be coming from Scullen Middle School in the afternoons.

- Mrs. Karra will be working this year with our Telugu students in various classrooms.

We are in the midst of organizing the number of students in the ELL program and working out our schedule for each grade level to begin seeing our students. Paperwork for all ELL students was sent home on Friday September 7. Feel free to contact me with any questions that you have in regards to the program.

We will be having our ELL parent night on Thursday 9/13 from 6:00 to 6:30 before curriculum night in Room 107. We hope that you can attend a brief informational meeting to receive a description of the program, meet the ELL teachers, see the classroom and ask any questions that you may have!

We look forward to meeting all of you and working with your children this year!

 

Miss Lundeen

It's hard to believe that the month of May is here and the school year is slowly coming to a close!

The students in ELL have been working this week on doing various cooperative activities and even conducting research to present to others in our group.

Kindergarten has been working on describing their favorite places by first drawing and labeling a picture with details and then forming complete sentences to describe what can be seen and done at their favorite place. These writing pieces turned out fantastic and will be a great addition to their journals from throughout the school year :).

Mrs. Krishnan and I pushed into the first grade classrooms to assist with their stories that were published by the first grade parents. These stories were extremely creative and it was very interesting to see their ideas come to life!

Second grade is reading and discussing national geographic books on animal life cycles to tie into their mealworm and life cycle unit. The past few days, we have been reviewing vocabulary words that connect to this unit and read various books to generate ideas on how all animals on Earth go through a life cycle. Next week, the students will be researching an animal and then describing their life cycle findings and facts to the rest of the group!

Third grade completed a jigsaw activity this week with vocabulary words from the Boomtown story that they are reading in class. Each student was placed on a color team and was responsible for researching information on their word, becoming an "expert" on the word from the story, discussing the word with a partner from the other color team, and teaching the definition (in his or her own words) and providing examples to his or her team members. The teams are working on creating a descriptive poster that showcases their knowledge of these words. Luckily, many of these words tie into their migration unit in social studies as well :)!

Fourth grade is beginning their unit on the West region. This week, the students were divided into pairs to compare and contrast the West region with the previously studied Northeast region using a venn diagram. All students used national geographic materials to locate interesting facts about both regions to find their simliarities and differences. Next week, the students will be completing a foldable that will highlight some key facts that we will discover about the West!

With Mrs. Bennick's flex group, fifth grade observed two stories that involved the work of Barbara Cooney including Miss Rumphius and Ox Cart Man. The students completed reading activities for Miss Rumphius and then discussed the differences between the 19th century and today for the Ox Cart Man.

Tomorrow and Monday will be CBM testing, therefore there will be no ELL services on those days. Mrs. Krishnan and I will be putting together a schedule to begin screening the incoming Kindergarten students beginning on May 21st, therefore ELL classes will end on May 18th.

As always, if there are any questions, please feel free to contact me :)

Miss Lundeen

Happy Earth Day!

This week in ELL we have many different assemblies and events going on!
Second grade has their musical tomorrow morning and Thursday we have an assembly to celebrate Earth Day :)

Throughout the week, our ELL groups will be doing different activities to celebrate going GREEN.

Kindergarten will be brainstorming ways that we can keep the Earth clean. We will be discussing these different ways through cooperative activities and then writing about all of the ways that we can help keep the Earth clean.

First grade has been studying all about insects and now we will be learning how we can take care of those insects as well to help protect the Earth. We sang a song and wrote about Going Green on Friday that can be found on havefunteaching.com!  "We're going green and keeping the Earth CLEAN!"

Second grade will be learning about the oceans and discussing ways that we can protect our oceans of the world.

Third grade read a story that they are familiar with since they studied the author Chris Van Allsburg. We read the story Just a Dream and identified what the world would be like in the future if we don't protect it.

Fourth grade is doing a similar activity as third grade with a focus on identifying what the world would look like in the future if we continue our current actions and polluting the Earth. We have been working on past, present, and future tenses, so we will be practicing using sentences that represent events in the future (I will, It will probably..., etc.) 

As always, if you have any questions, please feel free to contact me :)
Miss Lundeen

This week in ELL!

Hopefully everyone had a great long weekend! Our ELL groups have been working hard in our class to practice furthering our understanding of different skills and English vocabulary.

In Kindergarten, we are discussing different places in our community. We identified that houses, our favorite restaurants, parks, hospitals, etc are all places that exist in our community. Each student created a building that they included later on in our Kindergarten ELL community! 

First graders have been discussing the ways that we can take care of our bodies. We have read stories, sung songs and read poems, and are now using our special sequencing words (first, next, then, last) to create a writing piece that describes the different things that we all can do to take care of our bodies!

Second graders are identifying the different landforms that exist on our Earth. We created motions that represent different landforms and have been working on matching descriptions of each landform with their pictures doing a Mix, Freeze, Match activity. We will continue our study of Geography by working with the terms continent and ocean and completing different activities to represent these physical features.

Third grade is discussing the terms immigration and migration. We have identified which students in our ELL group are immigrants and which students are not immigrants and were born in the United States. We have found that there are six students in our group that are immigrants! Later this week, we will be comparing the terms immigration and migration and identifying examples of each.

Fourth graders are continuing our discussion on the different steps included in the scientific method. We have been talking about what each step looks like and what we do during each step. We will also be practicing using these words by performing different experiments that allow us to correctly state a hypothesis and reflect on and revise our predictions for what will happen.

As a side project, we have also been comparing and contrasting currency from different countries. So far, we have compared the different forms of currency from the United States, Australia, India, Saudi Arabia, Italy and Korea! I'd like to thank our fourth grade parents for helping their children find money from other countries so that we can look at it in our ELL class! :)

This week in ELL

After a long week of ISAT testing for our 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade students, we are finally getting back to our normal routine!

Kindergarten has been attending ELL in smaller group sessions for 30 minutes in the afternoons. This week is "W" week and our focus is Who, What, Where, When. The main "W's" in terms of reading and describing stories.

First grade is learning about bones and comparing our bodies to the environment around us. We are using measurement vocabulary terms such as taller, shorter, bigger, smaller and analyzing how we can keep our bodies healthy.

Second grade is beginning a unit on economy. This week, we are creating vocabulary flip books that define keywords such as income, economy, goods, services, producers, consumers. The objective of our unit will be to use this academic vocabulary and use the words in a realistic context. They will create original sentences and pictures using the words.

Third grade is beginning a unit on the moon. This week, we are looking at the 8 different phases of the moon and understanding the keywords that are associated with the unit such as phase, waning, waxing, gibbous, and crescent. The students will identify the appropriate phases throughout the entire moon cycle.

Fourth grade is working on the Southwest Unit. They are working in pairs to "reciprocal teach" different elements of the Southwest such as Economy, Culture, History, and Geography. Each group will be responsible to read, ask questions, identify difficult parts in the text, summarize and make predictions as they present to the rest of the group to teach their topic!

Fifth Grade's flex group with Mrs. Bennick is working with Aesop's fables and understanding morals or lessons. We will be doing a variety of activities this week relating to morals.

The Book Fair at the May Watts library is also occurring this week and will also be open at the fun fair this Saturday from 11-3. Be sure to stop by!

That will wrap up our week this week! Next week will be a shorter day with no school on Tuesday and a half day on Friday, all before Spring Break :)

As always, be sure to contact me with any questions!
Miss Lundeen

ELL Resumes!

Since ACCESS testing is finally complete, we are finally able to get back to our usual ELL routine!

We have had some minor group changes that will allow for more direct instruction to smaller group sizes. So far, this has proven to be a positive transition!

Our Kindergarten group now meets at the end of the day in smaller group setting. This week, we have been reinforcing beginning, middle and end sequencing skills. We connected sequencing stories to sequencing events in our school day.

First graders have been practicing making comparisons between penguins and other animals. They wrote characteristics that were the same and different between penguins and another animal. After completing their writing piece, the students completed their mix pair share activity to discuss their responses with others.

Our second grade group is discussing buoyancy and comparing objects that sink and float. The key element of our discussion has been describing why objects will sink and why they float. Our focus skill for the week is forming predictions and testing those predictions to determine if they are correct.

Third, fourth, and fifth graders are working on ISAT preparation activities. Our main focus in third and fourth grade includes homonyms, homophones, antonyms and synonyms, cause and effect and identifying the main idea in various reading materials. We are doing various cooperative activities that allow them to practice these skills.

Monday is Presidents Day and Tuesday is parent teacher conferences from 1-8. I will be available to meet with various parents of students throughout the day. Enjoy the long weekend :)

Miss Lundeen

Telugu TA!

We are proud to welcome a new bilingual Telegu teaching assistant!

Due to our large population of Telugu speakers, Mrs. Anjani Karra will be here at May Watts supporting our Telegu speaking students. We are very happy to have her here to help! :)

May Watts Open House!

MAY WATTS ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

800 S. Whispering

Hills Drive

Naperville, Illinois 60540

Phone: 630 428-6700

FAX: 630 428-6701

January 11, 2012

OPEN HOUSE

Dear Parents and Students:

You and your family are cordially invited to attend May Watts School’s Open House on Tuesday, January 31, 2012.   We are holding only one Open House this year.  To alleviate being overcrowded, we are asking families whose last name begins with “A thru L” attend from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m.  Families whose last name begins with “M thru Z” are requested to attend from 7:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.  

This is an excellent opportunity for you and your family to see your children's work, meet your child's teacher and see your school.  All members of our support staff will also be available for you to visit.  Please be sure to stop by and visit with them. Due to the informal nature of the night, it will not be possible to conduct parent/teacher conferences.  Our next conference date is Tuesday, February 21^st,  or you can call the teacher anytime to schedule a meeting. 

There will not be a Book Fair during Open House this year.  We will be holding the Book Fair in March and more information will be forthcoming.

Please remember to check our "Lost & Found" which will be on display in the Office hallway during the evening.  Any items not claimed this evening will be donated to a charity.

We will open all outside building doors in order for you to enter the building so that you may park in the rear of the building.   Come on in.  We are looking forward to your visit.

Sincerely,

May Watts Staff

ACCESS Testing

Just as a reminder, ACCESS testing will begin next week January 17th and will continue to February 17th. Each student that qualified for the ELL program will be given this test at some point throughout the testing window to determine their current language proficiency level. There are four sections to this test including; speaking, listening, reading and writing. I will be testing each student during their normal ELL time, therefore, they should not miss any of their core instruction during the day.

Your child was given a letter that describes this test in further detail.Please feel free to contact me by e-mail or phone if you have any questions!