This week in First grade...

April 30- May 4

Wow! Field Day was so fun!  We loved having the opportunity to travel with our small teams to stations of our choice. It's great to build independence and be responsible for cooperating with our team mates! Thanks to all of the parents that volunteered to run a station and walk around with kids! They loved seeing you there.

Reminders...
Monday (4/30): Book Fair Preview
Tuesday (5/1): Tuesday folders come home. Please return them Wednesday.
Wednesday (5/2): Library- We will be going to the Book Fair.  Your child can bring money during this time or wait for you to join them after school or at KnOWLedge Night.
Thursday (5/3): KnOWLedge Night 5:30pm-7:00pm  Come to our Reading Restaurant!
Friday (5/4):

KnOWLedge Night is this Thursday, May 3.  Our Reading Restaurant will be open for business! Please come to Caballero's Cantina to enjoy a lovely selection of writing and reading that will be shared with you by your favorite server! The selections will be delectable! This event will be a come and go from 5:30pm-7:00pm.  When you arrive please wait to be seated.  Your hostess will be glad to show you to your table.

This week in Reading Workshop...
We will be focusing on reading comprehension skills to help us become stronger readers.  This week we will have read aloud experiences and lessons that review the skills we've learned this year.

This week in Writing Workshop...
We will finish our Family Writing.  This writing sample will be on the menu for Thursday night! We will share our beginning of the year family writing and compare it to the end of the year. We have grown so much as writers this year.

This week in Math...
We will work on comparison subtraction in problem solving situations.  We will explore problems such as, "Molly has 12 lollipops, Kennedy has 10 lollipops. How many more lollipops does Molly have than Kennedy?"  We will work on comparing data and measurement as well during this unit.

This week in Science...
We will learn about Habitats such as the Rainforest, Savannah, Desert, Ocean, Forest and Wetlands.  We will discuss how the plants and animals work together in these habitats.  We will also think about how the food chain works in these habitats.

This week in Spelling...
We will continue to work on the skill of compound words.  The words will be the same as last week.

Our words will be...

clownfish, backdoor, teacup, into, whatever, into, today

Have a great week! We hope to see you on Thursday!

Seesaw

 app.seesaw.me

This week in First grade...

I hope everyone had a lovely weekend.  It's starting to feel more like Summer these days! I hope everyone was able to enjoy some outdoor time. 

A message from the Cub Scouts:

Hello parents!

Does your family like being outdoors? Are you looking for an affordable way to spend time with your family that focuses on character development? Is your son or daughter entering first through fifth grade in the fall? If so, come to our information session on Cub Scouting, coming up on Thursday, April 26, at 6:30PM in the Caraway cafeteria. We will be talking about summer programming and info for joining Cub Scouts now and in the fall. If you’re completely new to the Scouting program, please see the attached letter and feel free to email me at committeepack162@gmail.com with any questions. Thanks and we are looking forward to seeing you on April 26 and in Scouting next year!

Yours In Scouting,
Evan Cone (dad of Mitch, Hazel, and Turner)

Field Day Information:

Field Day–Friday, April 27th    K, 1st, 2nd Grade- 8:30-10:30 am

This year promises to be another fun and exciting Field Day with some new games, a fun inflatable, and a new format.  This 2018 Field Day has 36 stations!!! Your child’s homeroom teacher will place their students into small “Buddy Teams”.  Buddy teams will go to each station together. Team members travel together with a card that lists all 36 stations. Upon completion of a station, the parent volunteer will highlight the station on the team card.  Students will decide as a team which station to go to next.

What will your child need/wear to field day?  Clothing-SHORTS and t-shirt!!!  Also, children need to wear sunscreen and tennis shoes (please no sandals, flip-flops or Crocs)!!!! Children may also wear a hat.  Sunglasses are discouraged.

Volunteers: If you are a parent volunteer that will be helping at one of the field daystations, on Field Day please  stop at the Safe and Secure entrance (Oak View side of the school) to pick up your RAPTOR (school volunteer) sticker.  All volunteers should arrive at least 20 minutes before the start of their Field Day session.  Please be on time so you can sign in, obtain your assignment and read instructions/rules related to your Field Daystation.   Also, realize that Safe and Secure will be very busy and parking may be tough. Also, if you are a volunteer we ask that younger siblings not attend field day. Thanks for your time, help and cooperation.

Early Dismissal Policies on Field Day:  Leaving school early on Field Day is discouraged.  However, if your student must leave early on Field Day, please follow the below guidelines:

Student leaving DURING Field Day Session:

Parent/Guardian MUST sign student out from Cheryl Borden in the Safe and Secure Office.

• Parent/Guardian will receive a pink Student Pass.
• The Parent/Guardian will need to locate their student on field and bring their student AND the pink Student Pass to their teacher.
• Parent/Guardian will need to keep pink Student Pass when they walk their student through the teacher monitoring zones to exit school property.

Students leaving AFTER their Field Day ends

• All students MUST go to their Grade Level Meeting Place at the end of their FieldDay session to be accounted for by the classroom teacher.
• Please inform the classroom teacher your student will be leaving early.
• Near each Grade Level Meeting Place, staff members will have sign-out sheets for you to sign out your student.
• Students should enter the school with their class to retrieve their belongings and then meet their parents/guardians by the picnic tables.

Thanks for your help to make field day a fun and enjoyable event!

Weekly Information:

Monday 4/23- 

Tuesday 4/24- Tuesday folders come home//Empty and Return on Wednesday

Wednesday 4/25- Library Checkout (last one!)

Thursday 4/26-

Friday 4/27- Field Day! 

This Week in Writing….

We will be working our way through the writing process one last time through a family writing story! You will be able to enjoy reading these at our Knowledge Night on May 3rd! The students are taking ownership of their writing and working on revising, editing, adding details and publishing their lovely stories!

This Week in Reading…

We will be reading cultural folktales and fairy tales. The students already have a foundation of the elements of folktales/fairytales so it will be fun to add a cultural twist to these stories! We will be digging deeper into the text and using our reading strategies to truly understand these stories.

This Week in Science…

We will be reviewing habitats! Our class will be studying the rainforest habitat. We will learn why animals need the plants, why the plants need the sun, and more about interdependency. We will eventually make a class mural to hang in the hallway featuring all the layers and characteristics of the rainforest habitat!

This Week in Math…

We will be wrapping up working with the hundreds chart and moving in to 2 digit place value, money and expanded form. We have learned most of these concepts before, and now its time to tie them altogether! Students will display mastery of these skills through problem solving and hands on activities. IXL has great practice on money and expanded form. (M.3, Q.1-10)

This week in Spelling...

We will be working on compound words this week. Our words will be...

clownfish, backdoor, teacup, into, whatever, into, today

Our life skill of the week is… Initiative.

This week in First grade...

April 16-20

We had the BEST time designing and building our Chicken Coops this week! We watched video tutorials by Becky's Homestead (youtube) to teach us more about chickens and coops.  She helped us think about what we needed to have in our chicken spaces.  Thank you for sending in materials for the boys and girls to use.  They had an hour to create and build their chicken coops then we did a Coop Parade around the room to look at everyone's creations.

Party for Celebrating Mrs. Sanders:

On April 17th we will celebrate Mrs. Nelda Sanders and her 50 years of dedication to education. We will honor her with a come and go reception in the library beginning at 3:30 p.m. We are collecting memories, stories, and photos of Nelda from over the past 50 years. You can either share in the linked form or write a memory on any kind of stationary. You can deliver to Caraway Elementary or bring with you the day of the celebration. We look forward to hearing from you! If you have any questions, please email lisa_costello@roundrockisd.org.

If you would like to participate, our celebration is a "Groovy 60's" theme (students may dress in 60s attire at school on April 17th). ​​No gift needed, your presence is gift enough

Reminders:
Monday (4/16):
Tuesday (4/17): Celebration for Mrs. Sanders at 3:30pm
                          Tuesday folders will come home. Please return Wednesday.
Wednesday (4/18): Chick Fest (see email)
                                No Library this week
Thursday (4/19): Mrs. Caballero gone (half day PM) Mrs. Jackson here
Friday (4/20): Mrs. Jackson here all day

This week in Reading Workshop...
We will feature a Read Aloud this week all about diverse cultures.  We will discuss comprehension strategies such as making connections, inferring and retelling the story.  We will discuss how celebrations can be the same or different for different cultures.

This week in Writing Workshop...
We will complete our Chick Research Project.  We've collected our facts by reading from different sources of information such as books, websites and watching short videos.  Now we are ready to teach others about what we learned.

This week in Science...
We will relate our study of chicken coops to different animals and examine their habitats.  We will think about how the animals depend on plants and other animals to live and get shelter.  We will study habitats from all over the world.

This week in Spelling...
We will not have spelling this week! Enjoy extra reading time or iXL at home!

This week in Math...
We will focus on counting collections of coins.  A collection of pennies is counted by 1's.  A collection of nickels is counted by 5's and a collection of dimes is counted by 10's.  We will also begin thinking about numbers up to 120 and find patterns on the hundreds chart.  We will learn about place value by using concrete objects to represent numbers with three digits.

Have a great week!

Chicken Resources

Links for more Learning about Chickens

http://www.kiddyhouse.com/Farm/Chicken/

http://easyscienceforkids.com/all-about-chickens/

https://www.tillysnest.com/2016/04/kids-and-chickens/

Facts about Chickens (from Tractor Supply Company)

There are more than 25 billion chickens in the world, and dozens of breeds. With so many of them, it seems only natural to want to know more about this peculiar bird. Here are some scientific facts mixed in with some purely fun facts, so enjoy the read!

• The chicken, Gallus gallus domesticus, is a domestic subspecies of the red junglefowl, a member of the pheasant family that is native to Asia. Genetic studies have found that the grey junglefowl also contributed to the chicken's evolution.
• According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, "Humans first domesticated chickens of Indian origin for the purpose of cockfighting in Asia, Africa, and Europe. Very little formal attention was given to egg or meat production..."
• We've already said there are more than 25 billion chickens in the world. This makes the chicken more numerous than any other bird on the planet.
• There are approximately 280 million laying hens producing 50 billion eggs in the U.S. each year.
• Adult male chickens over a year old are called roosters in Australia, Canada, and the U.S.. Males less than a year old are called cockerels. Adult females are hens, and young females less than a year old are called pullets, although in the egg-laying industry, a pullet becomes a hen when she begins to lay eggs. Young chickens are called chicks.
• Chickens begin communicating before they are hatched, when the mother hen makes a purring noise towards her eggs and the chicks peep back at her from inside the unhatched eggs.
• There are approximately 30 distinct vocalizations that chickens use to communicate with each other.
• Chickens are omnivores, meaning they eat seeds and insects, but also have been known to eat mice and lizards.
• Chickens can recognize around 100 different faces.
• Chickens can't fly very far, but they can get airborne enough to make it over a fence.
• The rooster's wattle — the dangly bit beneath his beak — helps him to gain a hen's attention.
• Chickens live in flocks and establish a "pecking order" — an order of dominance/importance. Birds that are higher in the pecking order get priority food access and nesting locations.
• Removing birds from a flock will disturb the pecking order temporarily. Adding to the flock, especially younger birds, will also disturb the pecking order and can lead to fighting and injury (or on rare occasions death), if not done properly.
• Chickens lay eggs of different colors. The colors do not affect the nutritional value of the eggs, but the chickens' diet does affect it.
• Most hens prefer to lay eggs in nests that already have eggs in them. Occasionally, this results in hens trying to lay on top of each other if the nest is small.
• Chickens lay eggs only after receiving a light cue, either from natural sunlight entering a coop or artificial light illuminating a commercial egg hatchery. The light stimulates a photo-receptive gland near the chicken's eye, which in turn triggers the release of an egg cell from the chicken's ovary.
• A chicken will lay bigger and stronger eggs if you change the lighting in a way that makes her think a day is 28 hours long.
• A single hen can produce between 250 and 300 eggs per year.
• A hen turns her eggs about 50 times a day to keep it from sticking to the side of the shell.
• Fertilized eggs take about 21 days to incubate and hatch.
• You can tell whether an egg is fresh or stale by dropping it in water. A fresh egg will sink, but a stale one will float.
• Eggs are a good source of lutein, which promotes eye health. The yolk and white is made of 74% water, 11% fat, and 12% protein. Egg yolks are one of the few foods that naturally contain Vitamin D.
• Chickens have full-color vision.
• Scientists think chickens are the closest living relative of the Tyrannosaurus rex.
• The waste produced by one chicken in its lifetime can supply enough electricity to run a 100-watt bulb for five hours.
• Agricultural researchers have found a carbonization process that converts ordinary poultry manure into granules and powders that can mop up pollutants in water.
• Researchers at NASA are testing a new jet fuel made from chicken fat.

This week in First grade...

April 9-13

Family Fit and Fun Night was a great success! It was so fun to see so many faces and families enjoying their time together! There are a few more events to take part in this year!

We need your help! We have a couple toilet paper rolls and a couple paper towel rolls.  Please send in empty cereal boxes! We can also use other recycled items such as paper towel rolls, toilet paper rolls and card board.  We will need these items by Wednesday, April 11th. 

Reminders...
Monday (4/9):
Tuesday (4/10): CLOSED CAMPUS due to STAAR Testing- deliveries only to the office
                          Tuesday folders will come home.  Please unload and return Wednesday.
Wednesday (4/11): CLOSED CAMPUS due to STAAR Testing- deliveries only to the office
                                Library Check out.  Please remind your child to bring their books
                               Supplies needed for Project (see note above)
Thursday (4/12):
Friday (4/13):

This week in Reading and Writing Workshop...
We are continuing our hard work on Chicken Research.  We will continue to learn about what Chickens need to live and begin to create presentations for the facts that we've gathered. 

This week in Science...
We will focus in on our Project Based Learning Goals for this Project.  We will design and create a habitat for chickens to live. First we will plan our habitats by drawing then we will take our ideas and make a model using the recycled materials we can gather from home! Send it everything you have!

This week in Math...
We are working with numbers and place value.  We will practice composing and decomposing numbers up to 120! We will examine patterns and build numbers with concrete tools as we shape our understanding!

This week in Spelling...
We will focus on words that have beginning blends.  The blends we will focus on are dr-, bl-, st- and sl-.

drive, star, stick, slip, stud, blue, drum, blank, drink, slide

This week in Social Studies...
We will read A Chair for My Mother.  Using this piece of literature we will discuss how families in our community have to make decision about how to spend, save and donate their money.  We will talk about the needs of families and the community.

Have a good week!

This week in First grade...

April 2-6

I hope everyone enjoyed their three day weekend! We spent time with family, in and out of town.  It was great to have an extra day to enjoy!  Last week we set up our incubators and received our chicken eggs.  It's official! We will have baby chicks around April 18th! Our chickie eggs will take 21 days to develop into chicks! Hopefully we can live stream a chick hatching so everyone can experience it! Such an exciting time in first grade!

Reminders:
Monday (4/2): Reading Calendars are due!
Tuesday (4/3): Tuesday folders will come home.  Please return them the next day.
Wednesday (4/4): Library Lesson this week.  Keep books at home!
Thursday (4/5):
Friday (4/6): Family Fit and Fun night 6:30pm-7:30pm Come see me and Lucy! We will be at the i9 Sports table!

Next Tuesday (4/10) and Wednesday (4/11) the 4th and 5th graders will be taking STAAR tests.  Our campus will be closed to all visitors these two days.  Please plan lunch dates accordingly!

This week in Reading and Writing Workshop...
We will be researching all we need to know about Chickens! First we will learn all about the development of a chick in the egg by reading books and sources on the internet.  Then we will shift our focus and learn all about chickens.  As readers we will gather information from various sources and as writers we will begin to plan a way to present our information!


This week in Science...
We will begin to discuss our Project Based Learning activity.  We will pose the problem, "Where will our baby chicks live once they have hatched?"  We will move through the steps of this project by learning all about what chickens need in a habitat.  We will spend two weeks on this project.

We need your help! Please send in empty cereal boxes! We can also use other recycled items such as paper towel rolls, toilet paper rolls and card board.  We will need these items by Monday, April 9th.

This week in Math...
We will begin a new unit on deepening our understanding of two digit place value. We will ask ourselves some questions including: How do I use place value to read and write numbers? In what different ways can we show a number? How can I use patterns to help me count? We will use as many hands on manipulatives and tools to make these concepts make sense to us!


This week in Spelling...
We will have our first spelling test.  We've been review things we know about spelling patterns.  This week we will focus on long versus short vowel sounds.  Our words will be...

owl, cat, take, map, mate, space, step, pop, cake, hike

We will practice our words at school then have an assessment on Friday.

Have a great week!