Animal Body Coverings and Shaping up 3D Style

In Math this week, we started and ended our lesson on 3D shapes. We have wrapped up our shape lessons and are moving on to measurement for the next 2 weeks. We will first start off with measuring length and then we will continue measuring capacity the following week.

 In science, we reviewed over basic needs of what all living things need to survive, living and non-living, and animal body coverings. The students love learning about animals and so they look forward to science every day. These are some vocabulary words we learned about:

Thú Vật Cần...- Animals Need...

Nước- Water

Đồ Ăn- Food

Không Khí- Air

Chổ Ở- Shelter

 Sống- Living

 Không Sống- Non-Living

Lông- Fur

Lông Chim- Feathers

Vẩy- Scales

Khác- Something Different

Next week, our upper grades will testing for their STAAR tests. We need to be extra extra quiet in the hallways. We made our fifth grade buddies little encouragement hearts for the test. It came out super cute. I forgot to take a picture of it so I’ll post a picture of it next week.

This upcoming week will only be a four day week because of Good Friday so the children will only have three pages of homework to do. I bet they will be super estatic about that. I can’t believe March is coming to an end and the end of the school year is right around the corner. Please make sure you are reading at home every day and asking your child reflecting questions about what they are reading. The EOY reading test is going to be assessed in May.

HAVE A GOOD WEEKEND EVERYONE!

Importance of Reading Every Day and Being Bilingual

I ran across these 2 articles and wanted to share. There’s a reason why Suzanne and I stress about reading every night with your child! Also, these bilingualism facts are pretty interesting J

Shapes and Parts of a Plant. Happy SPRING BREAK y'all!

Happy Spring Break everyone! I hope everyone has a fun and safe 9 days off.

In math this week, we learned about 2D shapes. I didn’t get to introduce 3D shapes because we didn’t have time but I plan on doing that when we get from Spring Break. The unit of shapes is always fun for kids to learn. In class we did a lot of fun hands on learning this week with shapes. Below are some pictures of activities we did this week. 

Góc= vetix/vertices (corners)

Cạnh= sides

The kids really caught on fast on learning about vertices and sides.

 This activity was trickier than it looked! As I was modeling to the kids this activity, I was having a little trouble. (Yes, even teachers don’t get things perfect the first time.) As the kids saw me try to figure this out, we talked about how sometimes in life we don’t get things perfect the first time and we have to keep on trying until we accomplish what we are trying to do. With this discussion, it prevented any potential meltdowns in class J

In science this week, we learned parts of a plant and what plants need to survive.

 Cây Cần= Plants Need

Air= Không Khí

Food= Đồ Ăn (We talked about how a plant’s food is the sun)

Water= Nước

Soil/Dirt =Đất

Look at these cute flowers!

 Bộ Phận của Cây= Parts of a Plant

Bông Hoa= Flower

Lá =Leaf

Thân Cây =Stem

Rễ =Roots

We had science buddies outside this week with our 5^th graders. Our fabulous 5^th graders were kind enough to teach us about filtering water. The kids have really bonded with their 5th grade buddies. 

On Tuesday, our orange crew had our 1^st grade folk dance. The kids did such a great job. The kids have been practicing for months now. What really impressed me was that they were learning the entire dance steps for their folk dance PLUUUUS all their dance choreography for the Tết show at the same time. Good job kids! We had lots of proud parents and teachers! Parents, please keep these tie-die shirts. We will be wearing them on April 8^th for our last field trip of the year to the Austin Nature Center.

Graphing and Shapes

We finished up our unit of graphing this week. We worked on bar graphs, pictographs, and answering specific questions about our graph. I’m very proud that the kids are able to read graphing math questions in Vietnamese because that is something that is not very easy. We are incorporating math, reading, and Vietnamese all in one. 

We had a very funky schedule this week with an “ice” day on Thursday and taking class time out for dance practice 3 times this week. The kids did good adjusting and being flexible. With an ice day on Thursday, we will have to make up that day on May 22^nd.

We started our unit on 2D shapes today. In my opinion, learning shapes in English is much easier than learning shapes in Vietnamese. As you can see in the chart below that we have in class, a shape in English is only one word but in Vietnamese, it’s like 2 or 3 different words. We will do lots of hands-on learning this upcoming week on shapes, both 2D and 3D. 

We didn’t get through our 6 new sight words in Vietnamese Language Arts this week like I was planning so we will continue with these 6 words this upcoming week before Spring Break. We are working on the G and GH sounds. One more week until Spring Break!!!

National Children Dental Health Month and Graphing!

We had a very fun-filled week filled with food and freezing weather. Hope everyone is staying warm inside. The kids haven’t been able to go out to recess for awhile but we’ve been accommodating and have been having indoor recess instead.

In math, we have been graphing different things like jelly beans, coins, favorite school lunch, Lucky Charms marshmallows, and next week we will be graphing eye colors, birthdays, and rainbow Goldfish.

This graphing unit is great because it incorporates both math and reading. It’s tricky already enough in English but it’s so cool to see the kids work together and help other read in Vietnamese.

We haven’t done science much this week because we focused more on health activities but we did learn about different bodies of water and determining if it is made of freshwater or saltwater.

Nước Ngọt is freshwater. Nước Mặn is saltwater.

 February is National Children’s Dental Health Month so we talked a lot of how we can take care of our teeth and what happens if we don’t. We read lots of books this week from the library and even wrote about it. Ask your child to see what they learned about the importance of taking care of your teeth! On Thursday some ladies from Sunny Hills Dentistry came to visit Summitt to teach us about teeth and even gave each child a care kit to take home. Inside included a fancy toothbrush, toothpaste, floss, and some more things. I forgot to hand them out after school on Friday to some students but they should receive theirs on Monday if they are missing one.

In Mrs. Skalaban’s class, the kids finished their George Washington writing and it is hung up inside our treehouse in the classroom. Come check out the biographies the students wrote. Please make sure you are working on writing exciting first grade sentences at home with your child! 

We will only have our corn snake for 2 more days. The students really enjoy looking at the snake. We won’t have another animal in the classroom until after Spring Break. Also, make sure you are checking your child's folder every day.