Hawaiian Field Day!

 

Aloha! What a week it’s been. We had the anticipated Track and Field Day on Wednesday and the kids had a blast. It was fun but boy was it exhausting.  Before starting off our day, we talked about what good sportsmanship looks like and sounds like. Here is what we came up with…

1.    No tears!

2.    Say “good job” or “good game” even if you lose!

3.    Shake each other’s hands

4.    Say “good try”

This is real important to me that the kids show good sportsmanship. It makes math centers go a lot more smoothly in class J Here are some pictures of our Hawaiian Track and Field Day. I tried taking a picture of each station.

I can’t believe we finished our LAST FRIDAY of the year! 4 more days of school and it’s summa time. I think most of the kids have already "checked out" for the summer so we've just been just reviewing basically in math, science, and Vietnamese.

Yearbooks came in. If you would like to purchase a yearbook, please send in $25 in CASH this upcoming week.

Silly Quote of the Week:

A: “It’s okay, my mom can buy it [ice cream] because she’s rich.”

Me: “How do you know she’s rich?”

A: “Oh, it’s because she works…”

I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream!

Friday was our ice cream day. Suzanne and I bought ingredients to make an ice cream sundae and had the kids write a how to paper of how to make a sundae step-by-step. We took some examples of what the kids wrote and actually made the sundae as they read it back to us. What we learned from this is that it’s very important to add details to our writing! The kids had a kick and thought this was so funny.

 

I hope everyone has a fun and safe Memorial weekend!

8 more days of school left...

I can’t believe we just wrapped up our last FULL week of school. Tear…

I came just back from a massage J My body really needed it. I’ve been working such long hours that my body has been aching. Now I’m feeling refreshed to finish off the last 8 days of school!

This week, the 5^th graders dissected squids in the school’s butterfly garden. We stopped by but they were heading to lunch so our class went over the big squid station and looked at the squid. I heard from previous students who touched the squid that the smell did not come off their hands after washing it three times so I didn’t let the kids touch the squid. I put on gloves and held up the squid and we just looked at the parts of a squid and talked about it. The texture and the smell were not very pleasant. Let me say…this was digusting. In any other case, I would not have done this but I did it for the kids. Now, that’s love! Lol.

 

 

Also this week, since my morning class is ahead of my afternoon class, Mrs. Ruenes’ 3^rd class and our class got to hang out Tuesday morning. My first graders buddied up with a 3^rd grader and they did friendship posters/crafts with each other. It was awesome seeing them really enjoy talking to older kids. The 3^rd graders were very nurturing towards the little ones.

Most of the kids wanted to take home their proud little project they did with the 3^rd graders.

Silly Quote of the Week:

N: “Cô Tracy, how come you were born in Texas but you’re so Vietnamese?”

"If I worked at a circus..."

So this week, we kind of had a circus theme going on. Monday was circus day and they were fed the circus animal crackers, Wednesday’s writing homework was to write anything about a circus, and Mrs. Skalaban read them circus related books this week.

I have been picking up some ELA assignments to help Mrs. Skalaban since we have been having events that interfere in our afternoon block. I want my kids to do all the reading and writing as possible because they really need it. So I did this writing activity with them…”If I worked at a circus, I would…” I showed them a short clip of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus because so many of them have not been to a circus before.

 

Look at how CUTE their pictures are! All these were quiet independent writing. Comparing writing samples from the beginning of the year with writing samples from now makes me so happy to see the comparison of how far they have come.

End of the Year Picnic's Fun in the Sun!

What great weather we had on Saturday. Lots of students, families, food, and wet kids! Thank you parents for all the support you have given our program this year.  We couldn't have done it without you. I hope your child has enjoyed the New Years celebration, Mid-Autumn festivity, and everything else we have done this school year! We had lots of new students join the program in first grade and I hope they will continue to participate for the years to follow.

I tried getting a picture of all our students but they were scattered everywhere so I gave up!

Maybe next year I will join the students in the water fight. J

13 more days of school...

What an exhausting week it has been…I woke up on Tuesday and already thought it was Friday just because it’s been such a busy week.

In math, we worked on lining up place values when adding. We specifically added money this week and talked about how it is very important that we line up the decimal or else we will not have the correct numbers. I am so impressed at how fast most of the students grasped the concept. They will so be ready for 2^nd grade! Next week's math homework will be very easy simple adding or subtracting. I want to make sure the kids are very comfortable with simple adding/subtracting and I'm sure their brains are fried by this time of the year because I know mine is.

We haven’t done science daily just because we’ve been doing more Vietnamese. This whole year, I’ve been using different strategies for my lessons and learning what works, and doesn’t work. What I’ve found out that has made my lessons more effective is using dry erase boards. The kids loooove using the boards. The only bad thing is that the dry erase markers are always drying out and I’m having to buy markers for the class almost every weekend.

On Wednesday, we had a walking field trip to the Milwood Library literally a block down from the school. It was a nice little break to be outside of the classroom. The whole field trip was just an hour. The librarian at that library gave the kids a quick tour and talked about different events/programs the kids can participate in for the summer. The green paper that was placed in their daily folders on Wednesday has all the information! Please take advantage of this. The best part is that it is FREE dollars!! Who doesn't like free things?!

Today was a very fun day for my homeroom class. We practiced our Vietnamese in place of math first thing in the morning, watched the 3^rd grade’s rocket launch by the track, and then had our movie and popcorn party that was earned earlier this week.

Please come join us for the picnic tomorrow at 11AM! It will be a beautiful day. Hope to see everyone there!!!

Silly Quote of the Week:

I usually don’t wear T-shirts to school but I decided to wear a shirt I received at a bilingual conference…I guess they’re not used to seeing me wear a loose T-shirt.

N: “Cô Tracy, did you shrink?”

a-MAY-zing!

It’s so crazy how time has flown by and we’re finishing up the last month of the school year already. This is the time of the school year where our schedule gets super duper busy…with fun things, of course.

I was definitely feeling the love this week for Teacher Appreciation Week. I even cried while reading a present given to me from the whole class. I overheard a student asking another student “Is she really crying?” Yes, I really was crying…I am the biggest baby in the world! Lol. Thank you for all who donated money towards the gift. It really meant a lot and I love it! Now I need to find a place to hang it :)

This is a picture of half of my presents I received this week. I ate almost all the chocolates I received already. It’s very hard to say no to chocolate when they are just sitting on your desk!

I can officially say I am ALMOST done with testing. I just have to test 2 more kids and enter in the test scores. It’s so crazy that I have managed to teach and assess each student 3 different test in the past month—the TPRI, DRA, and a progress monitoring test we have to turn in to the principal. On top of all this testing, there are one million and one more things us teachers need to get done for the end of the school year!

 

On Friday, we combined frisbee day and bubble day since it rained on Thursday and we couldn’t go outside for recess.

 

(Bao and Peyton are playing outside. The 2 friends see 15 birds, 2 ducks, and 2 rabbits. How many animals did Bao and Peyton see?)

(Nancy wants 17 dogs, 11 bunnies, and 10 horses. How many animals does Nancy want?)

During math, we are doing work problems that require the students to add 3 numbers. We learned how to line up the place values when adding and when we add, we have to start in the ones place and work our way to the tens then hundreds. Since this is what we are doing in class, you will see that the homework for last week and this week will be a lot of adding and subtracting with double digits.

I started challenging some students to do the math word problems in Vietnamese this week. I’m so happy to see how much Vietnamese they have picked up.

In science, we have been learning about the food chain and food web. We have specifically been working on vocabulary words like:

Producer

Energy

Herbivore

Carnivore

Decomposer

--Make sure you check the “Announcements” tab. There are a lot of new events for the month of May!--

Silly Quote of the Week:

Outside during recess he found a piece of glass and brought it to Mrs. Skalaban…

A: “I found a piece of bird DNA!”

Sounds like somebody’s been watching too many forensics shows at home!

Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers out there this weekend! The kids made some crafty things this week for Mother’s Day that I hope made it home nice and straight. I say this because I’ve noticed the kids are starting to just stuff papers inside their backpacks without much care lately. Yikes.