This week in First grade...

Nov. 30-Dec 4

What a wonderful, glorious week of family, friends and sleeping in!  We hope you enjoyed your time last week as much as the Caballero's did!  We have 14 days of school until the next break! We're going to make it great!

Remember to sign up on Seesaw to see your child's digital products they create on their iPads!
Early Release Day

Tuesday, Dec 1st- Library Day! Please remind your child to return their books by 8:00am.

                                       Family Art Night 6:30pm-7:30pmWednesday, Dec 2nd - Early Release Day.  Dismissal is at 12:45

Thursday, Dec 3rd - Mrs. C off campus at a NextGen Training

                                Miss Lee's last day with us!

Monday, December 7th- Field Trip to the Austin Nature Center
FIELD TRIP
Our first field trip to the Austin Nature Center is on Monday, December 7th. Thank you all for sending back the permission slips on time.  Your child will need to bring a lunch for our picnic after we return to school.  This will be after our regular lunch time. 


IMPORTANT REMINDERS

Tuesday: Tuesday folders come home. Please return signed Tuesday folders every Wednesday morning. 
Reading bags will come home this week.  We are reading 2 stories (one fiction and one nonfiction) from RAZ Kids.  There will be a small strip of paper in the Reading Response Notebook. 
Wednesday: Early Release Day 12:45pm

                     Field Trip permission slips due today. 

Thursday: 
Friday:


This week:

READING
This week we will dive deeper into fiction. We will read a variety of fairy tales and learn about the elements in fairy tales. Fairy tales are stories that contain many unique elements. They usually start with "Once upon a time" and end with "They lived happily ever after". There are good vs. evil characters and good always defeats the evil. Another definitive element of fairy tales is the royalty and magic.  We will look at the plot of the story and retell the important events in the story in the order in which they occurred. We will also determine the setting of the story (where the story takes place). We will determine the main characters and try to understand their emotions and actions in the story. 



WRITING
 In writing, we will make our own expert list, things that we are really experts at and have lots of information about. We will pick a topic from our expert list to write about. Our purpose as expository writers is to inform others about what we know. 

MATH
We will review subtraction and then move on to a new strategy for addition called doubles.  Knowing the doubles will help us to do addition faster.  We will practice the doubles from 1-10. We will then apply our strategies in math problem solving.

SOCIAL STUDIES
As we approach the holidays, we will learn about cultures, customs, traditions, and celebrations. This week we will focus on the celebrations of Diwali, Christmas, and Hanukkah.  

This week in First grade...

Nov. 16-20

It is that time of the year when we give thanks and count our blessings. I could think of so many things that I am thankful for, my health, my children, my family, many wonderful friends, this great community that I am part of... But I am especially thankful for all my wonderful 22 students.  Each special, sweet, bright and talented in their own way.  I am also thankful to you! You, the wonderful parent for sending your child to school well prepared each morning, for supporting his/her learning at home and for teaming up with me to make a difference! I am thankful to all of you!


FIRST GRADE FIRST FIELD TRIP
Our first field trip to Austin Nature Center will be on Monday, December 7th.  This week in your child's Tuesday folder, you will receive a Field Trip Permission Slip.  More detailed information are included in permission slip.  Please sign the permission slip and send it back by Monday, Nov. 30th.  Thank you!

Our technology goal this week will be to upload a few of our digital learning products to our SeeSaw Digital Portfolios!  Please look for the letter that will come home in the Tuesday folder.  It will give you directions on how to log in to your child's account and view their work. I'm really excited about this because it will give you, as parents, the ability to see our amazing learning in real time without having to come to the classroom!

IMPORTANT REMINDER

Monday: Reading Bags will come home.  This week the students will have a Time for Kids that we read in our small groups last week.  Each group selected their own magazine according to their interests!

Tuesday: Library Day! Please remind your child to return their library books by 8am!

Tuesday folders come home. Please return signed Tuesday folders every Wednesday morning. 
Wednesday: 

Thursday: Phil's Family Social Night @6pm
Friday: Reading folders are due!
Nov. 23-27: Holiday break


This week:

READING

This week, we will read a variety of non-fiction and fiction stories about Thanksgiving.  In non-fiction, we will dig deeper into important information vs. small interesting details.  When writers write non-fiction, they include a lot of details to make the writing interesting. A detail is a bit of information about something.  These details make the book or article more interesting, but the details are not the most important information.  When we are learning about something, we can't remember all the information that we come across.  We have to try to figure out what information is the most important.
In Fiction, we will review the elements of fiction such as the plot of the story, the beginning, middle and ending, and the characters. 

WRITING
We will continue to tell and write the story of Thanksgiving in our own words. The students have written about the pilgrims.  This week, we will write about the Native Americans, and the first Thanksgiving feast as well as how they worked together.  As we write, we will be emphasizing on neat and clear illustrations, neat writing, and following the writing rules: Correct letter formation, starting with capitals, end with correct punctuation, and leaving one finger space between the words.

MATH
This week in subtraction we will work on the concept "part-part whole".  Addition is adding the parts and subtraction is taking away a part from the whole to find the other part. We will work on problems that involve finding a whole, or a missing part. we will also re-visit the number line and use number line to solve the problems that involve subtraction.  I have attached a  youtube link about part, part, whole.  Please sit with your child and have your child watch this youtube. It is a good practice.

Part-Part- Whole Video

SOCIAL STUDIES
This week in social studies, we will learn about the concepts of time and chronology.   We will describe and measure calendar time by days, weeks, months, and years and create a simple classroom calendar and timeline.  We want our students to understand and distinguish among, past, present, and future.

This week in First grade...

Nov. 9-13

Wednesday, November 11th is Veterans Day! For all the brave men and women who have served in military, we say thank you! You are our heroes! We've been discussing the branches of military and how people choose to serve our country.  What noble and honorable profession!

Thank you to Wyatt's Grandfather for joining our celebration! We are so glad we were able to honor him!

IMPORTANT REMINDER

Tuesday: Tuesday folders and homework bags come home.
Wednesday: Counselor Lesson

Thursday: 
Friday: Reading folders are due today or Monday.

This week we have a technology goal of trying a Kahoot in every subject during our day.  Kahoot is a great online tool used to assess learning.  Teachers from all over the world make quizzes and post them!  We love using Kahoot.

This week:

 READING

We will continue learning about non-fiction/expository texts.  Since we are getting closer to Thanksgiving, we will focus on Thanksgiving books for the next two weeks. Strong readers activate their prior knowledge or think about what they already know when they read a non-fiction.  They also ask questions, think about author's purpose and identify important facts.  And in addition to all these, strong readers confirm things that they thought they knew and clear any misconceptions.  We will practice doing all these things as we learn about this important tradition: Thanksgiving.

WRITING
As we learn about the story of Thanksgiving, we will record  the information in our own words so we could teach others about history and this important tradition.  We will go back to the time of pilgrims, who they were and where they came from.  We will write about the Mayflower ship, the Plymouth Rock, and the Native Americans. As we write, we make sure we go over the writing conventions: Starting with capital letters, forming the letters correctly, leave one finger space between the words, write sentences with corrects grammar and structure and put punctuation (periods, exclamation points or question marks) at the end of our sentences.

MATH
This week we will start the subtraction. Subtraction names a missing part by taking away, removing or comparing to find a difference. We will use concrete and pictorial models including ten-frames, math racks, Base Ten blocks and other manipulatives to represent word problem situations involving separating or comparing sets of whole numbers up to 20 where the unknown may be start, change, or result of separating problems.

SCIENCE
We will continue learning about energy.  We will explore the objects around us and observe different kinds of energy that these objects use or produce.  We will discuss the importance of energy and saving energy.  Last week we made a pic collage using PicCollage Kids to show different types of energy around our school.  We are also experimenting with Google Classroom to share our digital products and collaborate.

Social Studies

Today we read about a Hindu celebration called Diwali.  PebbleGo, along with the friends in our class, taught us about their celebration that starts Wednesday.  We compared Diwali to other traditional celebrations that are celebrated by students in our class.  The students who celebrate Diwali were so excited to teach us about their family's traditions.  We also listed to a story on our Reading Rainbow Skybrary app called The Diwali Gift.  

This week in First grade...

November 2nd-6th 


IMPORTANT REMINDER

Tuesday: Tuesday folders come home. Please return signed Tuesday folders every Wednesday morning. Report cards for the first 9 weeks will come home.  Please keep the report card for your reference but sign and return the envelope on Wednesday.
                       Library this week! Please help your child remember their books!
Wednesday: Reflections project are due (see PTA website for more details)

Thursday: No Field Trip after all- we will keep you posted about another.
Friday: Reading bags can be returned Friday or Monday.


This week:

 READING

We will continue our study of expository/nonfiction text. As a class we discussed the features of nonfiction such as real photos, table of contents, glossary, caption, labels, index, diagram, and maps. We concluded that the purpose of reading nonfiction text is to learn! We also learned the differences between fiction and nonfiction. This week we will learn about the main idea in a book vs. the most important information in the book. When we read nonfiction, the cover, the title and the pictures in the book will help us to understand the main idea of the book.  The important facts and information are related to the questions that we might have before or during reading the book. 

Last week we learned about Bats.  The story Stellaluna is read by Pamela Reed on Storyline Online.  Here is the link if your child wants to listen! It's a great way to compare what we've learned about nonfiction to a fictional story! 

WRITING
We will continue writing nonfiction.  We are learning how to draw careful diagrams like scientist and label the parts. Our goal is to write important facts that we learn after reading nonfiction texts and write them in our own words.  We are writing facts so we can teach others about what we have learned.  We will also ask questions before, during and after our reading.  We will look for the information we need to answer our questions!  We will record our answers on our chart!

MATH
So far, we have been working on place value.  The children have learned  the place of a digit in a number matters and depending on its place.  A digit can represent tens, or ones.  This week we will continue learning about building numbers to 99 using ten sticks (base ten blocks) and ones. We will also compare numbers, or finding 10 less, or ten more than a number using number line or hundred chart and review the vocabulary, greater than, less than or equal to.  We will apply our knowledge of number line and number comparison to solve everyday math problem.

SCIENCES
This week in science we will learn about different forms of energy such as light, heat and sound.  We will discuss the importance of energy in everyday life and how scientists use energy to invent objects that improve our daily lives.  We will use our iPads to learn more about Energy and record our learning.  We're even trying to post what we've learned in Google Classroom so we can collaborate!