The Last week in First grade...

May 31-June 2

Monday, May 30th Memorial Day

I can hardly believe this is our last week! It's been such a great year! I enjoyed getting to know your little people.  I hope I made an impression on their hearts.  I often think about what it was like to be a first grader and I fondly remember my teacher, Mrs. Gooden.  I hope your children will do the same.

REMINDERS

Monday: Memorial Day-No school
Tuesday: Tuesday folders will come home- Please keep them. 
Wednesday: Fifth Grade Graduation
Thursday: End of the year Party- Parents are welcome!
Report cards will be sent home.
Last Day of school.


THIS SUMMER
Research has proved that students forget almost seventy percent of what they have learned over the summer.  We worked hard this year! Please continue to practice what they learned this year during the summer in order to have a good start to second grade. Here are some suggestions for reading, writing and math.

SUMMER READING

Public Library

Visit the public library regularly over the summer to check out books that your child is interested in. Making this routine a weekly occurrence will help your child stay interested in reading!

RAZ Kids

I will send home your child's login card this week.  They should have login information in their blue folders from earlier in the year.  In Razkids, each book comes with a set of reading comprehension quizzes.  Please be sure your child take those quizzes before moving to the next book. 


Bookflix, Tumble books, Pebble Go, Brainpop Jr.
Your child can access all these resources during the summer and read a variety of fiction and non-fiction books. Login information is located in the directory.

SUMMER WRITING

  Please encourage your child to write for 10-15 minutes each day. They could write small moments (personal narratives), poetry, non-fiction/true facts, stories, or just about all the fun and adventures they have during the summer. When writing, please go over the writing conventions such as starting sentences with capital letters, putting correct punctuation at the end, and leaving spaces between the words.  The 100 first grade sight words must be spelled correctly.  You can also find a copy of sight words in your child's daily folder. 

MATH
To review and sharpen some of the math skills we learned this year, Mrs. Amiri recommends a math activity book called "180 days in math", for first grade or second grade if your child is more advanced. This book can be purchased at Barnes and Noble or online. Please refer to your child's math journal for ideas regarding math word problems.  The math journals will be sent home this week.

IXL math: Please have your child continue working on IXL math over the summer. You will need to access the site through school website. The login information was sent home at the beginning of the year.  I will send home their laminated computer this week.  Please let me know if you have trouble logging in.

Username: s######@caraway

password: s######

*Their student number is on their login card

 In addition, please set aside time for playing board games, going to the park, swimming, bike riding, helping with chores around the house and some fun play dates.  Have a great summer with your families! I can't wait to see my friends next year when your just a little taller and a little older! 

This week in First grade...

May 16-20


REMINDERS
Tuesday:Tuesday folders come home.  Please sign the folder and return it the next day.  Thank you!

Wednesday: 
Thursday:Annual Spring Open House 5:30-7:30 (our classroom) 
Volunteer Appreciation Breakfast.
Friday:Field Day 8:00-10:00

Dear Parents,

Field Day is Friday, May 20^th!  Can you believe it?  Kids will get wet.  Below are the event and lunch schedules for field day and some helpful information.

K and 1^st grade- 8:00-10:00

 Lunch: 11:50-12:20-1^st Grade

*What to wear for field day? 

We want the kids to be super comfortable.  Tennis shoes (crocs, flip flops, and sandals will NOT be allowed), play clothes, sunscreen, a hat, and a water bottle with child’s name of the bottle. 

*Swim suits are allowed, but girls must be fully covered and boys must keep shirts on at all times.

**What should my child bring?

A change of clothes, a towel, dry shoes (flip flops are fine for changing into), WATER bottle with child’s name on it, (Sunglasses discouraged, because they are easily lost), extra sunscreen

***Volunteers – please arrive 20 minutes prior to event. Also, please be sure to complete the RRISD Volunteer Application. Thank you!

https://hrsapp.roundrockisd.org/workspace/

SPRING PBL PROJECT
This week we are finalizing our Nontraditional Garden Project.  We have been recording the growth of our plants in our seed journal and we are also planning a final destination garden for our plants.  During this project we've researched the idea of community gardens.  We found a resource here in Austin called "Food is Free".  The idea behind this movement is to encourage communities to plant a garden or gardens for all to share.  The initial idea was to create front yard gardens in your neighborhood to encourage sharing among neighbors. My wish is that your family will consider a way to nurture the ideas we have discussed and find a way to cultivate your own garden. 

READING and WRITING
This week we will finish up our "family" writing and start working on our first grade memory books.  We will remember all the great things that we did in first grade and write about our first grade memories. As always, we will emphasize on neat writing along with correct capitalization, punctuation, and sentence structure.   
In reading we will continue to read some of our favorite fiction books and review some important comprehension strategies.  We will use the picture clues as well as the text clues to make predictions and inferences, visualize a part of the story or make connections. 

MATH
We will review three-digit numbers as having a quantity of hundreds, a quantity of tens, and a quantity of ones, and represent three-digit numbers up to 130.  We will compare and order three-digit numbers on an open number line and count forward to 130 from any number, and count backward within 130.  


SOCIAL STUDIES
This week we will review economics and personal financial literacy.  Earlier on we learned about goods and services and how some jobs produce, or make goods and other jobs provide a service.  We all need money to satisfy our needs and wants, and in order to gain money we need to have jobs.  But we also need to make wise choices and be smart about spending our money.  We will distinguish between spending and saving and consider charitable giving.

This week in First grade...

May 9-13

I can not even begin to tell you how grateful I am for the outpouring of love that happened last week! I feel appreciated one million times over! From the seven beautiful bouquets of flowers around my classroom to the yummy treats, supplies and a new shelf for our classroom! I'm so excited to use the gift cards that everyone sent as well!  Ms. Hughes and I were talking about how spoiled we were this afternoon! This has been a phenomenal week! 

Thank you for your generosity and kindness! I can hardly believe my time with your children is almost over! I know I will always remember them for their little personalities and sweet hearts! I hope they will always remember me too!

Thank you again for all of the wonderful things this week! It was amazing!

REMINDERS
Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday: STAAR tests for 3,4, and 5th graders.

Tuesday: No Tuesday folders come home.  They are empty this week. 
Wednesday: Mrs. C out for 2nd grade Field Trip

Thursday:

Friday:  


I will be doing the End of the Year Reading Assessment starting this week until May 20th.  This is a time that I will be reading with each child individually to assess their reading level and readiness for next year. 


SPRING PBL PROJECT
This week we will wrap up our PBL project.  Our students have learned so much about the benefits of a homegrown garden.  They have learned that food could come for free if every person in the community takes a small part in growing a small manageable garden. This week we will learn about plants life cycle and work on designing our gardens on the paper as well as in our small mini gardens.  We've watched our plants grow from seeds in small egg cartons.  We have transplanted some into bigger containers.  The children should be able to find the best sunny spots for their mini garden and care for them from then on.  They should also be able to tell you what they need to do after little sprouts grow which is transferring them into bigger containers. They are all very excited about their mini gardens!

READING and WRITING
This week we began our Author Study Unit.  We are exploring our favorite authors and finding out what motivates them to entertain and inform their readers.  We've used scholastic.com to look for favorite authors such as Geronimo Stilton, Mary Pope Osbourne, Barbara Parks and Dav Pilkey.

MATH

This week we will work on solving word problems with objects and pictorial models that involve joining, separating, and comparing sets and represent those problems with number sentences. We will solve problems when the unknown as any term in the problem (the sum, the difference, or the unknown part in part-part-whole). Our problem solving theme this week is "Lemonade Stand".

SCIENCES
As part of our PBL project we will learn about the plant life cycle.  We will continue our seed journal and write daily entries about our plant's growth.

This week in First grade..

May 2-5
Our school is growing by leaps and bounds! Thanks for sending your registration forms back super quick! If you have not turned your child's in yet please do so by Wednesday, May 4th.  
REMINDERS

Tuesday: Library Day.  All library books are due at 8:00 AM. *Last turn in of the year!

Tuesday folders come home.  Please sign the folder and return it the next day.  Thank you!
Wednesday: Early Release Day. Dismissal is at 12:45
Math homework is due.  
Thursday: 
Sunday: Mother's Day!


SECOND GRADE FUNDRAISING PROJECT
Our students in 2nd grade are holding a fundraiser to help the animals in Austin Zoo. To raise awareness about their fundraising project, they are asking all grade levels to wear special clothes each day (this activity is optional).

Monday: Hats Off to Helping- Wear a crazy hat to school

Tuesday: Socks for Snakes- Wear mixed up socks

Wednesday: Tattoos for Tigers- Wear stripes.

Thursday: Operation Ocean- Wear blue of all shades

Friday: PJs for Pandas- wear your PJs and enjoy a movie showing during lunch in the cafeteria (PJs optional)


I will be doing the End of the Year Reading Assessment starting this week until May 20th.  This is a time that I will be reading with each child individually to assess their reading level and readiness for next year.  We will continue our At home reading routine with the Reading Logs.  Thanks for helping your child fill it out and turn it in when it's full! I will give them a new one when they are ready!  


SPRING PBL PROJECT
Our first graders have been hard at work learning and discussing about growing manageable, non-traditional gardens. Last week we had a guest speaker who grows small vegetable gardens.  She showed us pictures of her garden and talked to us about the process which started with growing mini-gardens in egg cartons, and then transferring the growing sprouts into bigger containers or spaces.  Growing our own garden has so many benefits.  Not only we could have quick access to fresh and organic vegetables, we would also save money and time spending in grocery stores. Our students will be thinking about designing a mini garden and presenting their learning and ideas about non-traditional gardens in different ways such as making posters or brochures. 

READING and WRITING
We will continue reading fiction and non-fiction stories and review different comprehension strategies that we have been working on this year.  In writing, we will be working on some heartwarming mother's day projects and use all of our writing and art skills to say thank you to our wonderful moms.

MATH
We will continue on composing and decomposing numbers.  For example, there are so many ways to show 18, such as, 9+9, 10+8, 9+8+1, 8+8+2, 7+8+3, ....The options are so many and for our students to have a strong number sense, they need to be able to see what other smaller numbers can come together to make bigger numbers.  We will use coins such as dimes and nickles to count by 5's and 10's. Our students should be able to count by 1's, 2's, 5's and 10's from any given number from 1 to 120.  For example, starting from 35, counting by 5's to 120 or starting from 48 and counting by 2's to 120. Thank you for reinforcing these skills at home.

SCIENCE
Last week, we learned about plants, their parts and what each part does.  This week, we learn about seeds and how they grow.  We will grow a few seeds in the classroom and observe the growing sprout and its parts (roots, stem and leaves). All of this learning is being done through our PBL (Project Based Learning) Experience.  We are super excited to see where our learning journey takes us!  We will share our learning on May 19th at our evening Knowledge Night!