This week in First Grade...

Principal's Pride: Our first Principal's Pride student is Sammy Siegel. We look foward to learning about Sammy this week during his Super Star week!

What a great time we've had the past couple of weeks getting to know each other! Everyone is adjusting well to first grade and learning so much! Thank you to everyone who has signed up to volunteer in our classroom. I appreciate each thing you all do! It helps me spend more time teaching your children and allows me to go home and be a mom!

This Thursday, September 17th is our 2nd annual No Fuss Fundraiser PTA Picnic. It will be held out by the soccer field (close to the park playground) at 6:30pm. Bring a picnic dinner, a blanket and come and enjoy spending some family time with the Caballero's! Don't forget the One Stop Shop forms went home last week. You can use the form to buy things for the year and donate to the PTA in lieu of fundraising projects! No Fuss! Lyla, my husband and I will be there with our picnic! Come on by and see us!

The students also have Early Release on Wednesday. Please make sure your child knows their PM routine for that day!

During Language Enrichment this week we will be learning the concepts of a vowel, consonant, syllable, open syllable and closed syllable. Learning these skills will help us become better spellers, writers and readers!

Our word study focus this week is the short u sound. Our words to master are: up, us, but, fun, run and cut. Our vocabulary words for the week are: I, like, see, can, he, community and citizenship.

During Reading workshop this week we will be focusing on monitoring our comprehension. We will record our thoughts in our Reader's Response Notebooks. We will be sharing stories like Corduroy, Silly Sally, Market to Market, and Caps for Sale. Our non-fiction focus story of the week will be Rosa. A story about Rosa Parks.

During Writer's workshop this week we will be writing stories about our experiences, our ideas that we illustrate and the world around us. We will also begin thinking about how famous authors write stories and thinks of words to pair with their pictures.

In Math we will be finishing our unit on Number Sense; Numbers to 99. We have been identifying, spelling and reading numbers to 99 during activities in our classroom. We will continue to learn and work with manipulative's, number lines and number cards to help us learn that numbers have an order. There will be a note (1/2 sheet purple) in your child's Monday folder about sending some things for us to count and organize during math problem solving activities.

In Social Studies this week we will wrap up our unit about Being Part of a School Community and will briefly talk about timelines and calendars. There will be an at home project about making a timeline in your child's Monday folder. The project is due next Monday, September 21st. We will begin working in our Science notebooks at the end of the week and talk about what scientists really do!

Have a great...cooler....week!

Mrs. Caballero

Thunder Cake by Patricia Polacco

This afternoon we could see the storm clouds rolling in and we start to hear thunder! What a perfect time to read Thunder Cake by Patricia Polacco. This is a book about a little girl and her grandma, Babuska, and how they make Thunder Cake. Here's the recipe for you to make a real Thunder Cake at home!

Cream together, one at a time
1 cup shortening
1 3/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 eggs, separated (blend yolks in. Beat whites until they are stiff, then fold in.)
1 cup cold water
1/3 cup pureed tomatoes

Sift together
2 1/2 cups cake flour
1/2 cup dry cocoa
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt

Mix dry mixture into creamy mixture.
Bake in two greased and floured 8 1/2-inch pans at 350 for 35 to 40 minutes.
Frost with chocolate butter frosting. Top with strawberries!

Enjoy!

Visit the author's website...

http://www.patriciapolacco.com/books/thundercake/thundercake_index.html

This week in First Grade...

We are going to have a great week in First grade! Please remember to send a magazine organizer with your child by Friday of this week if you have not already. We are going to begin reading groups soon and your child will need this for his or her books. There is a picture of the type of magazine organizer that your child will need in a previous post. Just scroll down to find it. I also have an example in my classroom.

During Language Enrichment this week we will be review vowels and consonants as well as learning about syllables! We will start to code words later in the week in our Language Enrichment booklet! We're learning fast!

In Reading workshop we are going to be reading a collection of big books this week that are based on fantasy stories. In first grade students have to distinguish between fantasy books (fiction) and real book (non-fiction). We are going to read The Napping House, Chicken Licken, Hattie and the Fox and The Day Jimmy's Boa ate the wash. We will learn how to summarize the stories we have read by drawing a picture and writing a sentence in our Reader's Response Notebooks. We will also talk about the order of the story, beginning, middle and end, to help us summarize.

In Writer's Workshop we are quickly building our stamina as young authors! The students are able to write and stay focused for 14 minutes! We celebrate our writing everyday! This week we will work on building stamina and writing about our experiences. We will also talk about how authors get ideas and make a list of how we can get ideas.

In math this week we will begin our Number sense unit. During this unit the students will learn to read and write numbers from 0-99, compare and order numbers to 99 and use concrete models to represent numbers to 99. We will work on these skills for the next two weeks. Our Mathematician's Notebooks will be coming home this weekend for your child to share with you. There will be a note in the baggie with the notebook for you to write something you notice about your child's learning.

In social studies we will be learning about the past present and future. Our vocabulary words for this unit are yesterday, today and tomorrow. We will be learning about the past, things that happen today and things that might happen in the future.

A note will come home in your child's Monday folder about President Obama's Speech to students on September 8th. We have recently discussed the leaders in our community. This will be a wonderful opportunity for students to see President Obama giving a speech. We will be viewing the speech on that day.

Upcoming events...
Elementary Early Release is Wednesday, September 16th
No Fuss Fundraiser PTA picnic is Thursday, September 17th at 6:30pm by the park playground