October 27-31, 2014

It was great to see everyone at the Harvest festival! Thanks to our wonderful PTA for a fun afternoon and thanks to all of you for coming in and showing your support!  We are so grateful for our PTA and all they do for our Caraway Community!

Red Ribbon Week

This week is Red Ribbon Week.  We will talk about a healthy life style, eating healthy, exercising, and staying away from all the harmful things that could hurt our body. As a whole school, we will do different activity each day to show our support for a healthy and happy life. 

Monday:  Red Ribbon Day- we will start to wear our red ribbon today for the rest of the week.
Tuesday: Pair up and make good choices (find a friend and dress up as twins)

Wednesday: Sock It To Drugs Day (we will wear silly/crazy socks to school)

Thursday: Good character is our super power (we will wear superhero clothing)

Friday: Rally In Red Day (We will wear as many red items as we can). 

Here is what we will be doing this week:

READING
We will continue our study of expository/non-fiction text. As a class we discussed the features of nonfiction such as real photos, table of contents, glossary, caption, labels, index, diagram, and maps. We concluded that the purpose of reading nonfiction text is to learn! We also learned the differences between fiction and nonfiction. One difference is that we read a fiction text from beginning to end. However, we do not have to so the same thing when we read a non-fiction.  We can read the parts of nonfiction text which holds the information we want to know, or the information that is important to us. This week we will be reading texts about bats! 

WRITING
We will continue writing non-fiction.  Our focus this week will be writing facts about bats.  We are learning how to draw careful diagrams like scientist and label the parts. Our goal is to write these facts so we can teach others about what we have learned.

MATH
This week we will learn to tell time.  We will learn to tell time to the hour using a digital and an analog clock.  We will learn about the hands, the hour hand (the short hand), and the minute hand(the long hand) and how they move: The minute hand makes one full turn while the hour hand moves slowly from one numeral to another.

SOCIAL STUDIES
Maps and globes are the focus this week in Social Studies. As a class we will compare the two and learn how each is important. We will also be learning about where we are located in the big scheme of the world, starting with our street address and moving outwardly to the entire world.

Habit #5 Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood:  I listen to others without interrupting.  I try to see things from their viewpoint.  I am confident in voicing my own ideas.

REMINDERS:
*Specials- A Group:  PE on Monday, Wednesday and Friday
               B Group:  PE on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday
**Wear tennis shoes for sure on these days!!!!
*Library- Tuesday 11-11:30
*Send orange folders back every day.
*Send a healthy snack with your child every day.  We will eat snack at 10:30

DATES to REMEMBER:

October 29:  Early Release Day dismissal @12:45

November 24-28:  Thanksgiving Break

December 3:  Early Release Day dismissal @12:45

December 8-12:  Book Fair

December 19:  Winter Break begins

October 20-24, 2014

Math:  This week, we will be learning about length and measurement.  We will talk about longest and shortest and longer and shorter.  We will not use rulers to measure in First Grade.  We will use non-standard units of measurement.  We will use pencils, cubes, paper clips, and other non-standard objects to measure.  We will even have a small history lesson to learn what a cubit is.  You can help your child with this skill at home by letting them measure different objects around the house.  How many steps is it from the front door to the couch?  How many pennies long is a fork?  Have fun!

Reading Workshop:  We have been learning about Nonfiction and this week, we will actually begin doing teacher guided research!  In the spirit of the month of October and Halloween, we will be researching Spiders.  The kids love this unit!  We will become experts on Spiders by the end of the week, and your child should be able to tell you some very interesting facts about Spiders.

Writing Workshop:   We are continuing our Nonfiction unit from Reading.   We will begin by learning the difference between fact and opinion since Expository writing is only facts.  We will talk about how authors who write Expository texts are experts on the topics they write about.  We will pick topics that we are interested in and that we already know a lot about to practice writing facts.  At the end of the week, we will write facts that we have learned during our Spider research.

Word Study:  We will begin working with a whole class sort in Words Their Way to get familiar with the procedure.  These sorts will be how we supplement our spelling instruction, and this work will be done in the Word Study Notebooks. 

Science:   This week we will be continuing our discussion on physical changes to materials.  We learned this past week, that adding heat and removing heat cause materials to change.  We will be doing more experiments this week to observe those changes first hand!

Here is a picture of our Crayon Experiment if you missed the email.

https://mail.google.com/mail/ca/u/0/?ui=2&ik=a2cb3592a8&view=att&th=1491edfe386134d4&attid=0.1&disp=safe&realattid=869948ae525318b8_0.0&zw

Habit #4 Think Win-Win:  I balance the courage of getting what I want with consideration of what others want.

Thank you!!!!

Claudia Aguilar- Classroom Chores

Meghan Stack- Parent Reader

Reminders:
*Specials- A Group:  PE on Monday, Wednesday and Friday
               B Group:  PE on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday
**Wear tennis shoes for sure on these days!!!!
*Library- Tuesday 11-11:30
*Send orange folders back every day.
*Send a healthy snack with your child every day.  We will eat snack at 10:30

Dates to Remember:

October 25:  Harvest Festival

October 29:  Early Release Day dismissal @12:45

November 24-28:  Thanksgiving Break

December 3:  Early Release Day dismissal @12:45

December 8-12:  Book Fair

December 19:  Winter Break begins

October 14-17, 2014

Thank you for your continuous help and support inside and outside the classroom. Whether you help us in the classroom, or support your child's learning at home, I will appreciate all you do! Everyone returned their Reading Homework promptly last week and by the quality of children's work, I could say that they really took their time, got the support they needed from you and did a fantastic job! I am so proud of all of you!

We have couple of exciting events a head of us.  We appreciate if you could volunteer some of your time and help us.

SCIENCE NIGHT
Thursday, Oct 16 @ 6:00 PM-We have hot air balloons, computers to take apart, engines to explore, lava lamps to make, and much, much more....  And in order to do all this, we need volunteers on Thursday, October 16th.  Come have fun with the Caraway community.  No training or science know-how required.  Just go to http://www.signupgenius.com/go/30e0e45aaaf292-science1 and sign up to volunteer. Thank you!

HARVEST FESTIVAL
Saturday, October 25th: Harvest Festival -There are many volunteer positions to be filled. Please consider taking just one hour of time to volunteer in different stations in order to insure the kids can have the best experience.

Harvest Fest. is one of the three biggest PTA fundraisers of the year.  We also need you to bring your children for an afternoon of fun.  Please keep in mind that adults are not required to purchase a wristband.

Hope to see you all there!

Here is what we will be doing this week:

READING
This week we will read expository/non-fiction books.  Writers of expository books are expert in an area and therefore they write the expository texts to teach us about that subject. We will learn that the purpose of reading expository books is to get information. We might have questions before reading a non-fiction book, or questions during reading the non-fiction book, or even after reading it. These questions will help us to read more and find out more. We will learn about the features of non-fiction such as: table of contents, index, glossary, real photos, labels, and captions.

WRITING
We will continue revising our stories for one more week.  Ask your child what revising is and what is the purpose of revising.  They are truly becoming an expert on this.  We are learning to reread our stories carefully a couple of times to make sure that our stories make sense.  In the process, we are learning to add some more words or take off a few that are not needed.  We are checking for sight words misspelling, neat writing and correct punctuation.  Some of us are even adding dialogues in quotation marks to make our stories more interesting. I am so proud of my young writers!  

MATH
This week we will use a hundred chart and use a count on strategies to explore the numbers.  Number chart is a bigger version of number line/number track.  Numbers are increasing by a certain pattern and once we see the pattern, we could quickly recognize 2 more, 5 more, 10 more than any chosen number.  Counting on is the same as adding on to a number.  We will also take this further and explain addition as "part-part whole".  Two parts come together to make a whole.  If I have 5 pennies and you give me 3 more, 5 is a part and 3 is another part and altogether, the whole/sum or total is 8.

SCIENCES
This week is science we will continue to explore/observe the properties of objects by their color, shape, texture, size and mass. We will also observe what changes happen to objects when we heat, cool or freeze them. We are being real scientists and record our observation in our science journals.

THANK YOU!

Nicole Dockrey for volunteering in the classroom last week!

Habit #4:  Think Win-Win

I balance the courage of getting what I want with consideration of others.

Reminders:
*Specials- A Group:  PE on Monday, Wednesday and Friday
               B Group:  PE on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday
**Wear tennis shoes for sure on these days!!!!
*Library- Tuesday 11-11:30
*Send orange folders back every day.
*Send a healthy snack with your child every day.  We will eat snack at 10:30

Dates to Remember:

October 16:  Science Night

October 25:  Harvest Festival

October 29:  Early Release Day dismissal @12:45

November 24-28:  Thanksgiving Break

December 3:  Early Release Day dismissal @12:45

December 8-12:  Book Fair

December 19:  Winter Break begins

October 6-10, 2014

International Bike & Walk to School Day
Wednesday, Oct. 8th is the International Bike and walk to School. You can walk, bike,

scooter, skip or DANCE to school!  Just make sure you get counted by an adult on the way in. The class with the highest participation wins a healthy snack from HEB and the glory of being mentioned on the K-OWL news.

In the spirit of fun and with the idea that play is the best exercise for kids, we’ll be doing a DANCEWALK down Carlwood for any students or families that would like to join us!  I have morning duty that morning but please join Mrs. Letendre, Mrs. Bailey, and dancewalk together to school.  They will meet where Carlwood hits Fireoak at 7:15 and start the dancewalk to school at 7:20. It would be so much fun if you can join them!

 Here is what we will be doing this week:

READING
Reading is thinking and as we read, we will learn how to think about the story or the information we are reading about.  Readers make connections between the story and themselves.  The story might remind them of something in their own life.  We call this text to self connection.  Sometimes we can make connection between one story and another story, meaning one story reminds us of another story that we previously read.  This is called text to text connection.  And sometimes we can make connections between text and the world or something that has happened in the world.  We call this text to world connection.  These comprehension strategies will help us to understand the text better. 

WRITING
We have been writing great stories/small moments about our lives.  This week, we will learn how to reread and revisit our stories and make any changes that would make our stories much better before publishing it.  We will learn to read our stories carefully to make sure our stories make sense.  In the process, sometimes we need to add to our stories and sometimes we need to take off from our stories.  We will learn to fancy up our stories, by adding to our pictures, coloring neatly and writing neatly and then publishing our stories!

WORD STUDY

This week we will become familiar with a sort from Words Their Way (the program we use to supplement our phonics instruction.  

MATH
This week we will continue working on addition and count on strategies.  We will use a number track and show what happens when we jump from a number one step, two steps, or zero step (count on zero).  If we jump from 13, two steps further and land on 15, the matching number sentence will be 13+2=15.  We will apply these strategies in problem solving. We will also look at the "turn around" and see that 13+2 is actually the same as 2+13.  It might look different on the number track as far as where to start, but it lands on the same number.

SCIENCES
In science we will learn about properties of objects.  We will learn that we can use our five senses such as see, hear, smell, touch, and taste to explore the objects around us.  Properties are characteristics of objects.  These characteristics include color, texture, size, weight and shape.  

Habit #3:  Put First Things First

I spend my time on the that are the most important.  I set priorities.

Reminders:
*Specials- A Group:  PE on Monday, Wednesday and Friday
               B Group:  PE on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday
**Wear tennis shoes for sure on these days!!!!
*Library- Tuesday 11-11:30
*Send orange folders back every day.
*Send a healthy snack with your child every day.  We will eat snack at 10:30

Dates to Remember:

October 8:  Family Spirit Night @ Catfish Parlour

October 13:  No School

October 16:  Science Night

October 25:  Harvest Festival

October 29:  Early Release Day dismissal @12:45

November 24-28:  Thanksgiving Break

December 3:  Early Release Day dismissal @12:45

December 8-12:  Book Fair

December 19:  Winter Break begins