This week in First grade...

March 30-April 2

Thank you so much for all of you who came and ran with us at Shamrock'n Roll Run.  The children had so much fun seeing their family members.  Keep up that healthy lifestyle!


Here are a few reminders for this week:

 REMINDERS

Monday: Homework Folders come home.
Tuesday: Tuesday folders and report cards come home.  Please sign the report card envelope and return it the next day.  Thank you!
Wednesday:  Return Tuesday folders and Report Card Envelopes.
Thursday: **Library Day**  All library books are due by 8:00 AM
Friday: Spring Holiday

READING and WRITING

We will continue our research on chicks.  The children are very excited since we now have a few eggs in our incubators and we are expecting them to hatch in less than three weeks (April 13th or 14th)! We are recording the facts that we learn and also jot down our "wonder" questions.  The "wonder" questions will encourage us to do more research and find out more.  So far, we have been learning about the body parts of chicks, and their life cycle.  This week we will delve into this and find out about how a chick grows inside an egg, where chicks live and what they eat.

MATH
We will continue working on telling time to the hour and this week we will focus on telling time to half-hour.  We will look at both analog and digital clocks and learn that time is shown differently on each of these clocks.  The short hand in the analog clock points to the "hour" and the long hand points to the "minute".  In digital clock time is shown by digits.  The digit before the two dots shows the hour and the digits after two dots show the minute.   



SCIENCES
This week in science we will focus on living things and their offspring. We will learn that the offspring usually resemble their parents, although they are often called differently.   We have been learning about the inter-dependency of living things in their ecosystem for the past couple of weeks. This week we will move on to simple food chains.  We will learn how the plants are the producers, and can make their own food but the other living things either depend on each other or the plants for food.  

This week in First Grade...

March 23-27

Yay! The kids go back to school tomorrow!! I know everyone is excited! Even me! I'm sure everyone enjoyed an abundance of family time!  Spring Break is just a tease for summer!!! Start making those plans now!! 53 days and counting!

Here are a few reminders for this week:

 REMINDERS

Monday: Homework this week will be a reading activity and a math problem solving activity.  I will send home a Reading Log so you can track what your child reads and for how long.  
Tuesday: Tuesday folders come home.  Please  return the signed Tuesday folder the next day.
Wednesday: 
Thursday: 
Friday:Library Day.  All library books are due by 8:00 AM

March 27th Shamrock'n Roll Run 

SOME NEW EXCITEMENTS IN FIRST GRADE:

It is that time of the year! Each first grade class will be hosting close to a dozen eggs for hatching!  This is such an exciting time for our students!  Our incubators are up and running.  We are expecting our eggs to arrive sometime this week.  We will then put the eggs in the incubators and patiently wait for 21 days for the eggs to hatch.  This is a part of the animal unit and our first graders will get to observe the life cycle of birds first hand, right in our classroom! It will be an exciting time for all of us!  If you or someone you know is interested in giving our sweet chickies homes please let me know!

READING and WRITING
This week we will start an exploratory unit as we research Chicks and Chickens. We will determine what we already think we know about chickens, questions we have, want to learn from a source and stretch our thinking. Readers wonder more as they learn and read more. We will learn how we can go to different sources such as books, reliable internet sources, or asking adults to find out the answers to our questions. In Writing we will continue to record our new findings and learning and put it into a book where others can read it and learn from our research.
We are also finishing up stories we wrote for the kindergarteners.  Before spring break we were writing animals stories, both fiction and nonfiction.  We wanted our "audience" to either enjoy a story about an animal or learn something from reading a story about an animal.  Hopefully these will be finished around Wednesday and we can send them down the hallway!

MATH
This week we will have a review on some of the concepts that we learned before.  We will review the coins (pennies, nickles, dimes and quarters), and their values and attributes.  We will also review time to the hour and half-hour.  We will include problem solving using money, time as well as addition and subtraction.



SCIENCE
We will continue learning about living and non-living, ecosystem and the inter-dependency of animals and plants in their ecosystem.  This week we will focus on birds, their external characteristics and how these characteristics determine where the birds live, what they eat and how they move.  We will also learn about the life cycle and the interdependency of birds and other animals and plants in their ecosystem.

March 9-13

I hope you all had a great evening at Family Dinner Night.  We were in and out pretty quickly because one of my little ladies didn't feel well and the other was super busy!  

Today, in the afternoon, I will be attending the SXSWedu conference with Ms. Marsh.  We both won a 4 day pass to the event by tweeting out innovative ways we use technology in our classrooms.  Mrs. Barnes will be my sub today.

Tomorrow morning Ms. Marsh and I will be attending the conference for the morning session then returning to campus for a Technology training.  Mrs. Neville will be here in the morning and Mrs. Clark will be here in the afternoon.  

 REMINDERS

Monday: Reading this week will be RAZ-Kids.  Math this week will be iXL.  Please remind your child to log some time on these programs this week.  I will be checking our progress report through out the week!
Tuesday: Tuesday folders come home.  Please  return the signed Tuesday folder the next day.
Wednesday: Early Release Day- Dismissal is at 12:45   
Thursday:
Friday:  Library Day.  All library books are due by 8:00 AM
March 16-20: Spring Break!!!!

READING
This week we will work on another important comprehension strategy: making inferences.  Sometimes, authors don't give the reader every bit of information. They might just give the reader clues or hints about something.  When this happens,the reader needs to make an inference.  An inference is a thoughtful guess.  We put the hints and clues together and tell things that were not told in the text in so many words. We will ask the children: After you read this, what can you tell?


WRITING
What a great imagination our first graders have!! Talking about "the whole neighborhood turning into blocks", or " Peyton Manning coming out of the TV and giving you an autograph!!" It is so much fun to read the stories of these amazing writers! This week while wrapping up our imaginative stories, we will work on a few writing conventions.  We will review the structure of a complete sentence with the emphasis on verbs and nouns.  Verbs are action words that could happen in the past, present, or future.  Nouns are the names of people, places or things.  A noun can be singular or it can be plural.

MATH
We will continue our unit on subtraction and applying different strategies to solve problems.  This week we will emphasize on the "missing addend".  If I have 12 pennies and I need a total of 20 pennies to buy a pen, how many more pennies do I need to buy the pen? Some children may think addition and some may think subtraction to solve this problem. Both strategies are correct.  This week we will also review pennies, dimes and nickels and their attributes.


SCIENCE
We will continue learning about living and non-living, ecosystem and the inter-dependency of animals and plants in their ecosystem.  Last week we learned about the external characteristics of mammals and how these characteristics determine what the mammals eat, how they move and where they live.  This week we will learn about the fish, its external characteristics, life cycle and the interdependency in its ecosystem.

This week in First grade...

March 2-6
This week's forecast shows a lot of rain!  Just in case you were wondering what we do on an inside recess day, here it is.  We begin by discussing expectations, no yelling, no running, find a game or an activity to do.  I have an "Inside Recess Bin" with games and activities.  We enjoy this free choice play for about 15 minutes.  Then we choose an "Inside Recess" mix from GoNoodle!  We move our body in many different ways for at least 10 minutes!  I have a feeling we will be doing this routine a lot this week!

FAMILY DINNER NIGHT
Family Dinner Night is on Saturday, March 7th at Canyon Vista Middle School. This event is one of the biggest fundraising events that our PTA organizes every year. We will be attending the 5:30 sitting and would love to have some familiar faces to sit with, have fun and show our support.  Most importantly come and see who is the lucky teacher that is going to kiss a pig! This year the five nominees are: Mrs. Sanders, Mrs. Bailey, Mr. Cook, Mrs. Schultze and our librarians (Mrs. Letendre and Mrs. Hendrickson).  Good luck Teachers!  **Please send spare change to add to the luckiest contestants jar!**

 REMINDERS

Monday: reading folders come home.
Tuesday: Tuesday folders come home.  Please  return the signed Tuesday folder the next day.
Wednesday: Return Tuesday folders
Thursday: 
Friday: Homework is due. Library Day.  All library books are due by 8:00 AM
Saturday: Family Dinner Night starting at 5:30

READING
This week we will work on a few comprehension strategies that help us to understand the stories better.  We will work on visualizing a story and making a mental picture in our mind.  As we read the author's description about the characters look, their action and the setting of the story, we will try to picture them in our mind so we can have a better understanding of the story.  Authors often use sensory language such as words describing the sound, look, smell, taste or feel of something.  Sensory words help the readers to create a better picture in their mind as they read the stories.  We will also work on re-reading the parts of the story that we didn't understand. If we are confused about a part or couldn't make sense of it, we need to go back and re-read again.


WRITING
We will continue writing our stories that could be part true and part not real and based on our imagination.  The children are having so much fun with these stories! As we are writing our stories, we will keep in mind to revise and edit as we go.  We will add to parts of our stories that need more details and take off the parts that are repeated and not needed.  We will also watch for capital letters at the beginning of the sentences, correct punctuation and sentence structure and spelling the first grade sight words correctly.

MATH
This week in math we will spiral back to subtraction and reinforce count on strategies.  The students are encouraged to use a variety of strategies to solve subtraction problems.  In first grade we want to make sure they have a wide range of strategies to choose from.  Count on strategies are basically "think addition" strategies in subtraction problems.  We will apply our subtraction strategies to solve math problems.


SCIENCE
This week in science we will learn about living and non-living, ecosystem and the inter-dependency of animals and plants in their ecosystem.  We will learn about the external characteristics of animals and how these external characteristics such as body parts and body coverings determine what the animals eat, how they move and where they live.