Happy September!

One of the funnest beginning of the year science experiment is the “gummy bear experiment!” In Mrs. Skalaban’s class,  the kids made their observation on the gummy bear on the first day, soaked them in hte cup overnight and observed them the second day. They had to predict what was going to happen to the gummy bears. The verdict....the gummy bear gets twice as big!

 These past 2 weeks, we have been working on adding 2 or more numbers. We have been practicing using our fingers and drawing out pictures to help us find the answer.

 In social studies, we started learning about community helpers. 

 We finally filled out our WOW chart! When the WOW chart is filled, co Tracy randomly picks out 5 names from the bag and the names that are chosen gets to punch a cup and get a prize.

Happy 2018-2019 School Year!

Welcome back! We had a good first week of school. I can already tell it’s going to be a good year. This week in math, we practiced getting back into the groove of identifying numbers and working with ten frames.

 We worked as a team and worked with our tablemates to make posters with different rules we need to follow. We did a pretty good job taking turns and letting everyone have a turn to draw. After we finished, we shared our posters with the class.

 We read the book Lacey Walker, Nonstop Talker. It was about an owl that talked way too much that she ended up losing her voice. Since she lost her voice, she learned that she had to use her ears to listen once in awhile. She learned that listening wasn’t so bad after all.

 Look at how cute our social contract turned out!

 We finally had Bead Store on Friday! We worked really hard to earn beads throughout the week so we could have lots of beads to spend at Bead Store. If anyone has toys at home they would like to donate, Mrs. Skalaban and I will gladly take them off your hands.

Hello Summer 2018!

We did it! We made it through 172 days of first grade! It has been a great year. Hope everyone has a fun and restful summer. Keep reading, writing, and practicing math skills over the summer.

 Mrs. DaMommio, our 5th grade teacher, was able to write a grant and get us enough books to where each student at Summitt was able to choose and pick 3 books to keep to read over the summer! 

In Mrs. Skalaban’s class, the kids did a research over sea animals. They made a sea creature out of recycle materials and shared their writing with friends in the class.

In VLA, we continued our last blends and read The Three Little Bears. If you want to continue to practice Vietnamese, you can go to www.ilearnviet.com and login. The username is ttran and the password is aisd.

 We had fun with our May Fun calendar. Here is a picture of Backwards Day and DEAR Day. On Backwards Day, Suzanne and I thought it would be fun to swtich it up and do the schedule reversed so my homeroom started with her in the morning, and I started with her homeroom in the morning.

For the last three weeks of school in math, we practiced double digits addition and subtraction for fluency. For some of my other kiddos, we started learning how to borrow and regroup. I’m so proud of the progress the kids have made in first grade. That is one part of why I love teaching first grade so much. It’s such a rewarding grade to teach because expectations are so high and you see the tremendous growth in the kids from the beginning of the school year til the end of the school year. 

 We got to watch the 3^rd graders launch their rockets outside. I know a lot of the students are excited to do this when they get to 3^rd grade. 

We had bead store blowout to use all of our beads before the year ended. That means the kids were able to buy unlimited items until they used up all their beads. The kids had a blast shopping around the room for items. 

12 more days of school left!

We had a busy week this week. In math, we worked on odd and even numbers. In Social Studies, we did needs and wants, we finished up our unit on ĂM and ÂM blends in VLA, and did a little bit of science on frogs. Next week, there will be STAAR testing.  Parents and visitors are not allowed on campus during school hours due to testing. Thank you for understanding. We will not have our weekly Spanish lesson this week because our Spanish teacher will be on her home campus for STAAR testing. This upcoming week will also be our last week of homework.

Thank you all for donating money towards our Spring Fling baskets! The money raised goes towards our Technology teacher, Mrs. Neill. We had two class baskets but when I returned back to the library to take a picture, I didn’t see our other Mother’s Day basket.

 Meet our class pet parakeet! This will be our last class pet of the year.

Austin Nature Center, Hawaiian Field Day and Multicultural Night...all in one week!!!

Minus the 8 mosquito bites I got, the Field Trip on Tuesday was so fun. The kids were well behaved and really enjoyed learning about and seeing different animals. The weather was also beautiful. Mrs. Sharon, our tour guide, was excellent! We got to explore the mammals, birds of prey and reptile room with her. We also got to explore the live animals outside and the small wonders room.

On Thursday, we had our Hawaiian Field Day. Here are some pictures of our eventful but tiring day.

And to end the week off, last night was our school’s Multicultural Night. I saw some familiar faces last night. The kiddos seem to really enjoy trying new foods and learning about different cultures. The students learned a song during Spanish class and got to perform on stage with all the other first graders.

 I’m so happy it’s the weekend because I was pretty drained from all the events this week. Hope everyone is enjoying this nice weather this weekend. I will be placing a MAY FUN calendar in their folders this week. Each day in May, we will have a fun theme. Please stop by the classroom to sign up for an item to bring. It would be greatly appreciated! 

Area, Perimeter, Earth Day and VLA Writing

Before I get started, I wanted to share this cool video we just received from Mr. Johnny! The kids recently did a Creative Lesson Initiative (CLI) lesson making a stop-and-go animation. Our school is piloting CLI for 3 years and so this is all new to our campus. CLI is basically just different strategies to incorporate inside the classroom to enhance learning. We often do “statues” during VLA time to help us with our VLA sight words.

https://youtu.be/IGIoxpV0JFA

This week was a pretty normal week. The next two weeks will be super busy though. We have Book Fair, Catch Night, Field Trip, Field Day and Multicultural Night all coming up!

We did some Earth Day activities this week. One activity was to make as many words with the letters in the word “PLANET EARTH.”

We completed our unit on AN and IN blends this week.

It makes me so proud when I see these kids writing independently in their Vietnamese journals. We have new students who just joined this year into the dual language program that are amazing at catching on a new language! To see them write in their journals by themselves and to see them help and teach other students in the class makes my heart happy.

 We updated our math bulletin board this week with an interactive perimeter activity. I started an Instagram page this school year that I post pictures on from the classroom. If you would like to follow, add FUNINFIRSTWITHCOTRACY on Instagram! Sometimes it’s faster for me to post on IG than it is to update this blog.