December 7-11, 2015

The Field Trip to the Austin Nature Center was awesome!  Everyone had a great time, learned a lot, and represented Caraway amazingly!  Success!

FIRST GRADE PBL (Project Based learning) PROJECT:
We are so excited to start our first PBL project this year.  Project-based learning is an active and engaged learning in which our students explore real-life problems and challenges.  In doing so, they will obtain a deeper knowledge of the subjects they are studying. 

In the spirit of Holiday, giving to the community, and helping our community, we will focus on the flood that happened on Oct 30th this year in South Austin. Twenty-two classrooms at palm Elementary school were damaged.  Many teachers lost classroom books and many other supplies.  What can we do to help? How can we help? What is flood and what is the effect of flood on people and their properties? 

Our students will get inspired to think deeply about these questions, brainstorm, discuss, and come up with different ways, and ideas. One idea, is to hold a book drive donation.  Our first graders will inform the public (caraway community) through media (school broadcast, fliers and posters) and ask for gently used books to be donated.  They will set up empty boxes around the school and each day, collect and count the donated books. We have set up a big graph in the first grade hall and our students will mark the graph to show the progress.  They will work cooperatively and collaboratively towards a common goal and a good cause.  In the process, they will practice writing letters, and making fliers, learning about graphs, different types of weather including flood, good citizenship and helping community, and much more. 


SPREAD THE WORD AROUND AND HELP OUR FIRST GRADERS TO HELP THE COMMUNITY
If you have any gently used books at home for elementary ages especially kindergarten, or first grade, please consider donating it to our book drive.  Our first graders will be collecting the books and send them to Palm Elementary school.

SCIENCE:

We will be discussing the weather this week.  We will keep a log of the weather outside.  We will also be talking about different types of weather, such as rain, wind, snow and temperature.  We will also talk about different tools to measure weather

THANK YOU!

Thank you for stuffing the folders, and being willing to help in the classroom or outside the classroom. Your helping hands and hearts are greatly appreciated!

More than anything, thank you for supporting your child's learning at home.  Your child's success and education is a result of, us working together! So thank you for being a partner in your child's learning!

IMPORTANT REMINDERS:
*Tuesday folders come home.  Please sign and return the folders the next day.

*Agendas:  Please initial the behavior calendar and send it back every day.

*Snack:  Please send a healthy snack with your child every day.

*PE:  Group A will have PE on Monday, Wednesday, Friday.

       Group B will have PE on Tuesday, Thursday, Friday.

          *Please make sure your child wears Tennis shoes on those days*

        *You can see what group your child is in on the right side of this blog*

*Next library day is Tuesday, December 15.

*Homework bags come back to school every day.  Please leave the books and response notebook in the bag.  We will use them during the day at school!

DATES TO REMEMBER:

Dec. 7-11:  Book Fair

Dec 10:  International Festival

Dec. 17:  Class Holiday Party

Dec 18-Jan 5:  Winter Break/No School

Dec. 31:  Ms. Smith’s Birthday

November 16-20, 2015

It is that time of the year when we give thanks and count our blessings. I could think of so many things that I am thankful for, my health, my children, my family, many wonderful friends, this great community that I am part of... But I am especially thankful for all my wonderful 21 students.  Each special, sweet, bright and talented in their own way.  I am also thankful for you! You, the wonderful parent, for sending your child to school well prepared each morning, for supporting his/her learning at home, and for teaming up with me to make a difference! I am thankful to all of you!

FIRST GRADE FIRST FIELD TRIP!!! YAY!!!
Our first field trip to Austin Nature Center will be on Monday, December 7th.  This week in your child's Tuesday folder, you will receive a Field Trip Permission Slip.  More detailed information are included in permission slip.  Please sign the permission slip and send it back by Monday, Dec. 2nd.  Thank you!

This week:

READING/WRITING

Yesterday, we read a fiction book and a non-fiction book about Thanksgiving.  We wrote 3 facts about Thanksgiving in our Response Notebook, and now we are in the process of creating a Google Doc so we can share what we've learned!  We are learning how to log in to our gmail accounts (yep, your kiddo has their own student gmail account!), how to navigate our drive, how to create a Google doc, and working on our typing skills as well! This is a big undertaking, so I am very proud of the kiddos!

  

MATH
This week in subtraction we will work on the concept "part-part whole".  Addition is adding the parts and subtraction is taking away a part from the whole to find the other part. We will work on problems that involve finding a whole, or a missing part. we will also re-visit the number line and use number line to solve the problems that involve subtraction.  I have attached a youtube link about part, part, whole.  Please sit with your child and have your child watch this video. It is a good practice.

Part-Part- Whole Video

SOCIAL STUDIES
This week in social studies, we will learn about the concepts of time and chronology.   We will describe and measure calendar time by days, weeks, months, and years and create a simple classroom calendar and timeline.  We want our students to understand and distinguish among, past, present, and future.

THANK YOU!

Thank you for stuffing the folders, and being willing to help in the classroom or outside the classroom. Your helping hands and hearts are greatly appreciated!

More than anything, thank you for supporting your child's learning at home.  Your child's success and education is a result of, us working together! So thank you for being a partner in your child's learning!

IMPORTANT REMINDERS:
*Tuesday folders come home.  Please sign and return the folders the next day.

*Agendas:  Please initial the behavior calendar and send it back every day.

*Snack:  Please send a healthy snack with your child every day.

*PE:  Group A will have PE on Monday, Wednesday, Friday.

       Group B will have PE on Tuesday, Thursday, Friday.

          *Please make sure your child wears Tennis shoes on those days*

        *You can see what group your child is in on the right side of this blog*

*Next library day is Tuesday, December 1.

*Homework bags come back to school every day.  Please leave the books and response notebook in the bag.  We will use them during the day at school!

DATES TO REMEMBER:

Nov. 23-27:  Fall Break/No School

Dec. 2:  Early Release @ 12:45

           Skate Night

Dec. 7:  Field Trip to Austin Nature Center

Dec. 7-11:  Book Fair

Dec 10:  International Festival

Dec. 17:  Class Holiday Party

Dec 18-Jan 5:  Winter Break/No School

November 9-13, 2015

Wednesday, November 11th is Veterans Day! For all the brave men and women who have served in military, we say thank you! You are our heroes!

Tomorrow is Library day!  Don’t forget to send your child’s library book with them tomorrow!

This week:

READING

We will continue learning about non-fiction/expository texts.  We will be reading different nonfiction texts about spiders.  We will be recording facts that we learned by reading the different texts.  We will also be focusing on the main idea, supporting details, and author’s purpose.

WRITING
We will continue writing facts about topics of interest.  We will be focusing on the difference between fact and opinion. As we write, we make sure we go over the writing conventions: Starting with capital letters, forming the letters correctly, leave one finger space between the words, write sentences with corrects grammar and structure and put punctuation (periods, exclamation points or question marks) at the end of our sentences.

MATH
This week we will start subtraction. Subtraction names a missing part by taking away, removing or comparing to find a difference. We will use concrete and pictorial models including ten-frames, math racks, Base Ten blocks and other manipulatives to represent word problem situations involving separating or comparing sets of whole numbers up to 20 where the unknown may be start, change, or result of separating problems.

SCIENCE
We will continue learning about energy.  We will explore the objects around us and observe different kinds of energy that these objects use or produce.  We will discuss the importance of energy and saving energy.

THANK YOU!

Thank you for stuffing the folders, and being willing to help in the classroom or outside the classroom. Your helping hands and hearts are greatly appreciated!

More than anything, thank you for supporting your child's learning at home.  Your child's success and education is a result of, us working together! So thank you for being a partner in your child's learning!

IMPORTANT REMINDERS:
*Tuesday folders come home.  Please sign and return the folders the next day.

*Agendas:  Please initial the behavior calendar and send it back every day.

*Snack:  Please send a healthy snack with your child every day.

*PE:  Group A will have PE on Monday, Wednesday, Friday.

       Group B will have PE on Tuesday, Thursday, Friday.

          *Please make sure your child wears Tennis shoes on those days*

        *You can see what group your child is in on the right side of this blog*

*Next library day is Tuesday, December 1.

*Homework bags come back to school every day.  Please leave the books and response notebook in the bag.  We will use them during the day at school!

DATES TO REMEMBER:

Nov. 10:  Library Day

Nov. 23-27:  Fall Break/No School

Dec. 2:  Early Release @ 12:45

           Skate Night

Dec. 7-11:  Book Fair

Dec 10:  International Festival

Dec. 17:  Class Holiday Party

Dec 18-Jan 5:  Winter Break/No School

October 26-30, 2015

It was good to see many of my students at Harvest Festival! It rained hard, but the kids had a great time.  It is only our wonderful Caraway PTA that can pull together such an amazing Harvest Festival on such a rainy day! Thank you for your continuous support to our students, school and PTA!

EARLY RELEASE DAY: Wednesday, Oct. 28th is ERD! Dismissal is at 12:45.

RED RIBBON WEEK ACTIVITIES

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 bodies. As a whole school, we will do a different activity each day to show our support for a healthy and happy life. 

Monday:  Come to school in red! Wear as many red items as you can!
Tuesday: Wear your Super Hero shirt.

Wednesday: Wear your Caraway Owl shirt.

Thursday: Wear crazy hats or socks.

Friday: Wear your pajamas!

This week:

READING

We have been learning about the features of Nonfiction/Expository texts and this week in the spirit of the month of October and Halloween, we will be focusing on spider books! We will be asking questions about spiders, think about information that we already know, and find new information or hopefully, the answers to our questions in non-fiction texts.  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
This week we will shift our writing from small moments/personal narratives and learn to write other ways: we will learn to write like scientists.  Scientists have very attentive lives, noticing interesting things, and recording what they see.  We will draw and sketch, but this time emphasize on the importance of capturing details with precision. As we research and learn facts about spiders, we will record and write these facts so we can teach others about these amazing arachnids. 

MATH
This week we will introduce place value.  We will use number tracks and make numbers using our 10 sticks (10 blocks) and ones.  We will emphasize that the place of a digit in a number matters.  Depending on where the digit is, in tens place or in ones place, the digit has a different value (example: compare 17 and 71).  So far, we have worked with teen numbers.  This week we will work with 2 digit numbers greater than teens. When studying 24, we will see that 2 is 2 sets/groups of 10 which makes twenty and the 4 is just four ones.  When comparing the numbers, we will think about both tens and ones in a number.  24 is greater than 22.  The number of 10 sticks are the same but the ones are not.  24 has 4 ones and 22 has only 2 ones.  We will emphasize the vocabulary such as greater than, less than, before and after.

SOCIAL STUDIES
We have been learning about some very important historical figures and inventors such as Alexander graham Bell,  and Thomas Edison. We learned about their contributions and how they changed our lives with their inventions.  We also learned about John Venn and used his method of comparison (Venn diagram) and compared the two inventors together and learned about the similarities and differences.  This week, we will learn about Garrett Morgan, and Richards Allen who also influenced our nation by their individualism and inventiveness. 

THANK YOU!

Thank you for stuffing the folders, and being willing to help in the classroom or outside the classroom. Your helping hands and hearts are greatly appreciated!

More than anything, thank you for supporting your child's learning at home.  Your child's success and education is a result of, us working together! So thank you for being a partner in your child's learning!

IMPORTANT REMINDERS:
*Tuesday folders come home.  Please sign and return the folders the next day.

*Agendas:  Please initial the behavior calendar and send it back every day.

*Snack:  Please send a healthy snack with your child every day.

*PE:  Group A will have PE on Monday, Wednesday, Friday.

       Group B will have PE on Tuesday, Thursday, Friday.

          *Please make sure your child wears Tennis shoes on those days*

        *You can see what group your child is in on the right side of this blog*

*Next library day is Tuesday, November 10

*Homework bags come back to school every day.  Please leave the books and response notebook in the bag.  We will use them during the day at school!

DATES TO REMEMBER:

Oct 28:  Early Release @ 12:45

           Skate Night

Nov. 3:  Flu Shots @ Caraway

Nov. 10:  Library Day

Nov. 23-27:  Fall Break/No School

Dec. 2:  Early Release @ 12:45

           Skate Night

Dec. 7-11:  Book Fair

Dec 10:  International Festival

Dec. 17:  Class Holiday Party

Dec 18-Jan 5:  Winter Break/No School

October 19-23, 2015

Parents,

Please don’t forget to sign up for a conference.  The sign-up sheet is in Google Doc form, and it was sent out a week (or so) ago.  If you need it shared with you again, please let me know and I will share it with you.  Thank you!

Ms. Smith                

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 should be able to explain it to you.  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 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. Later on in the year, we will learn to tell the time in half-hour.

SOCIAL STUDIES
This week we will learn about a few historical figures such as Alexander graham Bell, Thomas Edison, Garrett Morgan, and Richards Allen who influenced our nation by their individualism and inventiveness. We will learn about their inventions and the contributions that these important people made to our lives.

THANK YOU!

Thank you for stuffing the folders, and being willing to help in the classroom or outside the classroom. Your helping hands and hearts are greatly appreciated!

More than anything, thank you for supporting your child's learning at home.  Your child's success and education is a result of, us working together! So thank you for being a partner in your child's learning!

IMPORTANT REMINDERS:
*Tuesday folders come home.  Please sign and return the folders the next day.

*Agendas:  Please initial the behavior calendar and send it back every day.

*Snack:  Please send a healthy snack with your child every day.

*PE:  Group A will have PE on Monday, Wednesday, Friday.

       Group B will have PE on Tuesday, Thursday, Friday.

          *Please make sure your child wears Tennis shoes on those days*

        *You can see what group your child is in on the right side of this blog*

*Library is on Tuesday.

*Homework bags come back to school every day.  Please leave the books and response notebook in the bag.  We will use them during the day at school!

DATES TO REMEMBER:

Oct 24:  Harvest Festival

Oct 27:  Library Day

Oct 28:  Early Release @ 12:45

           Skate Night

Nov. 3:  Flu Shots @ Caraway

Nov. 23-27:  Fall Break/No School

Dec. 2:  Early Release @ 12:45

           Skate Night

Dec. 7-11:  Book Fair

Dec 10:  International Festival

Dec. 17:  Class Holiday Party

Dec 18-Jan 5:  Winter Break/No School

October 13-16, 2015

I am so proud of my class this week!  We finally filled up our compliment jar!  Tomorrow we will have a crazy sock/stinky feet party.  This means that the kiddos can wear crazy/mismatched socks and we will be able to  take our shoes off in the classroom.  Please remind the kiddos of keeping up with their hard work in following the rules, showing respect, and being a great citizen! 

GROWTH MINDSET
Albert Einstein said, "I am not a genius, I only stay on a problem longer".  Perseverance is the key to success. Our children will learn in time that is not a matter of luck, or being smart that makes us successful.  It is our hard work, consistency, and perseverance that make us successful.  We will read some wonderful children's stories such as "Whistle for Willie", "Ruby's Wish", and " A chair for My Mother" and see how the characters in these stories all wanted to achieve something.  It took a long time for each to get their wishes but eventually they all got what they wished for with their hard work.  

This week:

READING

We will continue reading some of our favorite children's stories and practice thinking while reading.  Strong readers constantly think about what they read, they put the clues in the story together and make thoughtful predictions.  They think about the characters and not only try to remember the characters' names, but also think about their personalities.  What kind of a character is my main character? Is this character, funny? Generous? Friendly? Scared? Thinking about the characters, setting and plot of the story will help us to have a better understanding of the story. 

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!

MATH

This week, we will be learning about length and measurement.  We will talk about longest and shortest and longer and shorter.  In First Grade we will not use rulers to measure but instead use non-standard units of measurement such as pencils, cubes, paper clips, and etc.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!

SOCIAL STUDIES
This week in social studies, we will learn about life in the past and present.  We will learn how technology has changed our lives comparing to the past.  People communicate differently, have different ways of transportation, entertainment, and hold different jobs comparing to the past due to technology. 

THANK YOU!

Thank you for stuffing the folders, and being willing to help in the classroom or outside the classroom. Your helping hands and hearts are greatly appreciated!

More than anything, thank you for supporting your child's learning at home.  Your child's success and education is a result of, us working together! So thank you for being a partner in your child's learning!

IMPORTANT REMINDERS:
*Tuesday folders come home.  Please sign and return the folders the next day.

*Agendas:  Please initial the behavior calendar and send it back every day.

*Snack:  Please send a healthy snack with your child every day.

*PE:  Group A will have PE on Monday, Wednesday, Friday.

       Group B will have PE on Tuesday, Thursday, Friday.

          *Please make sure your child wears Tennis shoes on those days*

        *You can see what group your child is in on the right side of this blog*

*Library is on Tuesday.

*Homework bags come back to school every day.  Please leave the books and response notebook in the bag.  We will use them during the day at school!

DATES TO REMEMBER:

Oct 15:  Science Night

Oct 24:  Harvest Festival

Oct 27:  Library Day

Oct 28:  Early Release @ 12:45

           Skate Night

Nov. 3:  Flu Shots @ Caraway

Nov. 23-27:  Fall Break/No School

Dec. 2:  Early Release @ 12:45

           Skate Night

Dec. 7-11:  Book Fair

Dec 10:  International Festival

Dec. 17:  Class Holiday Party

Dec 18-Jan 5:  Winter Break/No School

October 5-9, 2015

GROWTH MINDSET
This week in growth mindset, we are going to talk about the importance of showing persevere, and being persistent.  Sometimes, when we are trying out something new, or taking a risk, things won't go our way.  We might feel we have failed and for this reason, we are afraid to try again. Starting today and for the rest of our lives, we are going to be persistent, and don't let our failures prevent us from trying again and again.  We will keep moving forward!

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 will continue writing stories about our lives.  Last week we learned how to "zoom in" on one thing and write about a small moment in time, something in our life that happened over a small few minutes.  This week, we will practice stretching one small moment across several lines or several pages.  We will read stories or part of stories that have those moments in them and see how famous authors stretch a small moment over few pages.

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.

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!

THANK YOU!

Thank you for stuffing the folders, and being willing to help in the classroom or outside the classroom. Your helping hands and hearts are greatly appreciated!

More than anything, thank you for supporting your child's learning at home.  Your child's success and education is a result of, us working together! So thank you for being a partner in your child's learning!

IMPORTANT REMINDERS:
*Tuesday folders come home.  Please sign and return the folders the next day.

*Agendas:  Please initial the behavior calendar and send it back every day.

*Snack:  Please send a healthy snack with your child every day.

*PE:  Group A will have PE on Monday, Wednesday, Friday.

       Group B will have PE on Tuesday, Thursday, Friday.

          *Please make sure your child wears Tennis shoes on those days*

        *You can see what group your child is in on the right side of this blog*

*Library is on Tuesday.

DATES TO REMEMBER:

Oct 7:  International walk/bike to school day

Oct 12:  Columbus Day- No School

Oct 13:  Library Day

Oct 15:  Science Night

Oct 24:  Harvest Festival

Oct 27:  Library Day

Oct 28:  Early Release @ 12:45

           Skate Night