Hello October and Breezy Weather!

This week was CRAZZZZY. I feel like even almost 2 months within school, our schedule is still not settled because there’s always something new that pops up that we have to do. We started FIT (flexible instruction time) with the whole first grade last week. FIT is the first 30 minutes of school. What is FIT you ask? FIT the time the whole first grade disburses all at the same time to another first grade teacher’s class and gets ELA or math intervention. We group the kids by academic ability level so they are in the same class with other kids around their level. We do this Tuesday-Friday. Monday is used for a SEL lesson in the classroom which stands for social emotional learning. FIT happens from grades 1-5.

In math this week, we worked on subtraction numbers under 20. We also did word problems.

Frannie had 20 apples. She ate 6 apples. How many apples does Frannie have left? 

Lynn had 18 balls. She lost 14 balls. How many balls did she have left?

During Social Studies, we learned about Christopher Columbus. Ask your child what they learned about his voyage! We are still in the process of completing our Columbus packet.

 Also in Social Studies this week, we talked about the Presidential election. AISD students were asked to vote for a candidate that they want to be president. I kind of thought it was silly to make the kids vote for someone because they’re so young and they truly don’t understand the whole concept but 60 percent of both classes voted for Hilary Clinton. Click on the link below to watch what we watched in class to learn more about the candidates!

 Hilary Clinton

Donald Trump

Kid Friendly Election Video

We talked about how candidates have to go out and campaign to try to convince people to vote for them so we did a fun activity campaigning for ourselves with our own poster.

In VLA, we completed our unit of colors. We studied these words for 2 weeks and took our sound check yesterday. We will have a set of 6 new words starting Tuesday.

 The class received our second class pet on Wednesday. He’s a little guinea pig named Aristotle. The kids love him. To try to convince them to work quietly, I told them he only comes out to play when the room is quiet and it has somewhat worked. haha. We will have him for another week until he returns and we get a new pet.

 In Mrs. Skalaban’s class, the kids wrote spider facts in science. They are hanging on the wall in the back of the room by the bathrooms. Ask your child to share some interesting facts they learned.

Please sign up for eagle fest! We need help running our class booth!

http://www.signupgenius.com/go/4090949a9ad2aa2fe3-eagle

This week will be a busy week of conferences. On Thursday, we will be going to AHS to watch a play and then Friday is Soaring Skyward Day. Please feel free to join us on the fun Friday.

Wrapping up September!

In math this week, we started composing numbers up to 20. We used snap cubes to help us do single digit addition and then wrapped up the week doing addition word problems. We read the word problem together and then looked for key words in our word problem. Other than using snap cubes, we drew pictures to help us.

We met our 5^th grade science buddies for the first time on Thursday. The kids really enjoyed this. We will do science buddies once a month with Ms. Le’s class. There were 4 stations that we rotated around. Check out the fun we had!

In VLA, we continued learning more colors. We will have our third sound check this Friday. We have been studying the words every day in class during VLA time on our dry erase boards. I ask the kids to write one sentence per word and than pick two pictures to draw. 

Skip Counting by 5's, Tree Frog, First Guidance Lesson and Mid-Autumn Festival!

So we got a tree frog last week and it never came out until today when I went up to school on a weekend. The poor kids have been peeking into the tank trying to see what it looks like but no luck throughout the week. So ta-daaaa, here it is!

 Mrs. Cardosa, our school counselor, came into our class on Wednesday and taught our first guidance lesson. She taught us our 5 senses and related it back to how a counselor can help us.

 All week, we learned about Mid-Autumn festival. We made lanterns and hung them up in the front of the school. I hope everyone that joined us on Friday had fun. Our next big event will be Lunar New Year and that will be in February.

Here are some links to learn more about Tet Trung Thu: 
http://www.adoptvietnam.org/vietnamese/tet-trung-thu.htm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KM_ukjzEydo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0Wv0jHPJAw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rx_wIzbYMtk

 In math this week, we learned how to skip count by 5’s. Please make 
sure you are practicing at home with your child. Skip counting by 5’s is real important because it will help the kids tell time and count coins later on in the year. We want to master skip counting by 10’s, 5’s and 2’s. For our math warm-up, we sat in a circle as I scrambled the numbers. I called on a student and they would have to go into the circle and place the next number in the correct spot. We skip counted all the way on to 120!

Friendship Flowers, Vietnamese Writing and Skip Counting by 10's

Even though it was only a 4 day week, it felt like a very long week. The kids are slowly getting into the routine of things. We got a lot done this week. In Vietnamese Language Arts (VLA), we continued practicing our sight words and had a test over it on Friday. Next week we will start to learn the colors in Vietnamese and have a test over the words in 2 weeks. Not only did we have our first Vietnamese test for the first time, but we also wrote in our VLA journals for the first time. The kids did a very good job on these. Journal writing is an independent activity. I really stress to the kids that they need to have neat handwriting when writing.

 We have been practicing skip counting by 10’s in math. We did lots of different activities. Next week, we will skip count by 5’s.

 Mrs. Skalaban continues to teach good manners, how to be a good friend and respect. We read a fun book about a fox trying to catch and make a friend and then made our own friendship flowers.

 In Social studies, we made a map of our own house.

Please don't forget to join us on celebrating Mid-Autumn Festival at school next Friday, September16th! It will be fun!

Second Week Completed!

We have been working hard with getting used to the routine of school. We are continuing to discuss manners, sharing about our families, learning how to say family members in Vietnamese and making 10 in math. This week, we had the opportunity to visit Mrs. Neill in the computer lab. We drew a picture on Tux Paint on what we did over the summer. Some of the kids had some really cute pictures. This week, we will visit Mrs. Richey in the library and hopefully we’ll get to check out our first book of the year. I always look forward to library days. Mrs. Richey plans some very cool lessons. If you would like to sign your child up for Birthday Book Club, please make sure to visit the library!

 The kids worked on their respect dolls in Mrs. Skalaban’s class. Check out our dolls in the hallway to see how we show respect.

Thank you parents for helping your child complete the homework and turning it in on Friday. As the year goes on, homework will get more challenging and reading stamina will get longer.

There will be lots of papers in your child’s folders this upcoming Tuesday (both daily folder and Monday folder.) I will be sending home a pink paper about your child’s “All About Me” Project. Please take a look over this when you get the chance.

Hope everyone has a great Labor Day weekend!

First Week of School!

Welcome back! It’s that time again! New clothes, new supplies, and a bunch of excited little first graders reunited with their friends after summer!

We had a fun but busy week. So busy that I didn’t get to snap a lot of pictures because I was caught up. This week we reviewed over Summitt rules and also classroom rules. We read lots of fun first grade books and did summer writing activities. The kids got to explore math centers this week. They get to go to math centers after they are finished with their work and are waiting for other friends to finish their work. 

Above are pictures of the kiddos in math center and working together as a team to create a poster of good citizens. We practiced presenting in front of an audience and being good listeners. 

Thank you for checking your child’s folder every day and initialing. Next week, the children will start having weekly homework that will be in their daily folder. It is sent home Mondays and returned back on Fridays. Also, Mrs. Skalaban will check out a daily reader for the kids to keep at home. Please keep these for one month and practice reading the stories in the book. If your child finishes, please re-read the stories to practice for fluency. It is also good to practice comprehension questions. Are they able to reflect back on what they have read? 

Catching up for the month of April and May!

Sorry for disappearing for awhile...things have been pretty busy in class that I forget to take my camera out to capture learning moments. Get ready for a long post because here is what’s been happening!

We survived Field Day!!! Boy was it a chaotic day. Since it was pouring rain that day, we had to have it indoors. The kids were pretty exhausted by the time it was over but I think I might have been more exhausted than they were. I took a good ol’ long nap when I got home. The kids had great teamwork and great sportsmanship. 

 We have had a fun time with the themes on the May Fun calendar. We did our D.E.A.R. time yesterday and the kids did a good job reading. I would say they read for a good 30 minutes straight before they started getting wiggly. Building stamina is real important so thank you parents for practicing with your child at home.

 The kids have written multiple “How-To” assignments in Mrs. Skalaban’s class. On this particular day, they wrote a paper on “how to ride a bike.”

 We’ve been practicing sight words every two weeks and then taking a sound check over them. Looking through their VLA journals, it makes me so happy to see the sentences the kids are producing in Vietnamese.

 Our fifth graders dissected a squid last week and so Mrs. Fleming left a squid out for classes to come observe. We took the opportunity to go out there and looked at the squid. Let’s just say, the smell wasn’t pleasant…but it was interesting to see a real live squid and their body parts.

 We have been learning a lot of animals, their young, and different life cycles. Here is our cute frog and fun facts.

We took our last trip to the Austin Nature Center last month and the kids had a blast. They got to see live animals and even got to touch some of the animals.