May 23-27, 2016

Thanks to all of our wonderful parents who volunteered at a station, helped the kiddos or chaperoned our line during the Field Day.  We couldn't have done it without your help.  A big thank you to our P.E. coaches for organizing this event. The kids had a blast!

We will have a busy week ahead of us! Please mark your calendar for Thursday, May 26th at 9:30.  We will have an award ceremony for our Fabulous Firsties.  Each student will be honored for a special quality, character, or effort that they have shown this year. We
would love for you to join us.  The award ceremony is at 9:30-10:30 in the cafeteria. Hope to see you all there.

There will be no more Homework Bags this year.  Please continue to have your child read every day, work on writing and math as well. 

REMINDERS
Tuesday: Tuesday folders
Thursday: Award ceremony 9:30-10:30 in the cafeteria.
Friday: Career Day 8:15-10:30

READING and WRITING
We will continue working on our first grade memory books and write about all the great memories that we've had in first grade.  In doing so, we will review the writing conventions such as capitalization, punctuation, subject-verb agreement, and correct sentence structure.
In reading, we will continue reading fiction books and review some comprehension strategies that we've been working on this year such as making inference, prediction and connection.

  

MATH and SOCIAL STUDIES
This week, math and social studies will be integrated.  We will learn about financial Literacy and discuss different ways people earn money.  We will also discuss ways money earned (income) can be spent. We will talk about options for saving money or sharing money with others (charitable giving).

THANK YOU!
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*

*No more school Library check out!

DATES TO REMEMBER:

May 26: 1^st Grade Award Ceremony @ 9:30 in the cafeteria.

May 27:  Career Fair

May 30:  No School- Memorial Day

June 2:  End of the Year Party, Last day of School

May 16-20, 2016

Tomorrow (Tuesday, May 17) is our day to go to the book fair in order to buy (if you are allowing your child to buy something).  Any other day, your child will have Owl Time or Recess to go to the book fair.

SPRING PBL PROJECT
We will be finishing up this project this week!  Our mini gardens look great and they will be ready to go home at the end of this week.  We planted Basil, Tomatoes, Hot peppers, Sweet peppers, Cucumbers, and Squash.  We have learned so much!  The kiddos have recorded their learning in a folder which will be ready for you to view when you come to visit us on Thursday for the Open House.

READING and WRITING
This week, in Writing, we will finish up our "family" writing and start working on our first grade memory books.  We will remember all the great things that we did in first grade and write about our first grade memories. As always, we will emphasize on neat writing along with correct capitalization, punctuation, and sentence structure.   
In reading, we will continue to read some of our favorite fiction books and review some important comprehension strategies.  We will use the picture clues as well as the text clues to make predictions and inferences, visualize a part of the story or make connections. 

MATH
We will review three-digit numbers as having a quantity of hundreds, a quantity of tens, and a quantity of ones, and represent three-digit numbers up to 130.  We will compare and order three-digit numbers on an open number line and count forward to 130 from any number, and count backward within 130.  We will also be working on a 1^st Grade Math Review. 

THANK YOU!
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*

*No more school Library check out!

*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:

May 16-20:  Book Fair

May 19:  Volunteer Breakfast @ 7:45

             Spring Open House @ 5:30-7:30

May 20:  Field Day

May 27:  Career Fair

May 30:  No School- Memorial Day

June 2:  End of the Year Party, Last day of School

May 9-13, 2016

Thank you all so much for everything that you did for us for Teacher Appreciation week.  Ms. Knight, Ms. Ready, and I truly feel loved and appreciated by all of you. Thank you!

Thanks to our creative and talented team of PTA hospitality for decorating the school for us and providing breakfast on Friday.  We truly have the best PTA in the world!

A special thank you to Ms. Melissa Ross for providing yet another lunch and homemade dinner for us! You all gave so generously for Festive Friday, and Ms. Ross was able to provide more meals for us this week.  Thank you for your generosity as always. It felt so good to come home on Friday and have dinner ready!

Homework bags will only be coming home for the next 2 weeks.  After this I will need to begin packing up anything I can due to the school getting a beautiful make-over this summer!  Please do not send them back every day as well.  They can come home on Monday and not come back to school until Friday!
REMINDERS
Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday: STAAR tests for 3,4, and 5th graders.  These days, the campus will be closed to any visitors due to testing.  Please keep the older students at Caraway in your thoughts!

I will be doing the End of the Year Reading Assessment starting this week until May 20th.  This is a time that I will be reading with each child individually to assess their reading level and readiness for next year.  For this reason, I will not be sending any more reading folders home.  Please continue to visit the library (public or school library) and encourage your child to use RAZ-kids to read at home.  Your child knows that they need to complete the quiz for each book before moving on to the next book or next level.  The RAZ-kids username and passwords were sent home in November.  Please let me know if you are missing your child's username or password.

SPRING PBL PROJECT
This week we will wrap up our PBL project.  Our students have learned so much about the benefits of a homegrown garden.  They have learned that food could come for free if every person in the community takes a small part in growing a small manageable garden. They have learned about different parts of the plants and how we eat different parts such as roots, stems, leaves, or fruits.  This week, we will work on designing our gardens on the paper as well as in our small mini gardens.  We will planted our seeds in small egg cartons or strawberry and blueberry containers and will send them home on Friday.  The children should be able to find the best sunny spots for their mini garden and care for them from then on.  They should also be able to tell you what they need to do after little sprouts grow which is transferring them into bigger containers. They are all very excited about their mini gardens!

READING and WRITING
We will continue reading fiction and non-fiction stories and review different comprehension strategies that we have been working on this year.  In writing, we will work hard to finish our Family writing so everyone can see them displayed at our Spring Open House on May 19.  

MATH

This week we will work on solving word problems with objects and pictorial models that involve joining, separating, and comparing sets and represent those problems with number sentences. We will solve problems when the unknown as any term in the problem (the sum, the difference, or the unknown part in part-part-whole). We will also spiral back and remind ourselves about measurement in order to design our own sustainable gardens for our home!

SCIENCE
As part of our PBL project we will work on creating folders to present the information we have learned about plants and sustainable gardens.  These will be the final product and they will be presented in the hallway at the Spring Open House on May 19.

THANK YOU!
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*

*No more school Library check out!

DATES TO REMEMBER:

May 9-11:  STAAR testing (no visitors on campus these days!)

May 16-20:  Book Fair

May 19:  Spring Open House

May 20:  Field Day

              Last day Homework bags come back. No more homework!

May 27:  Career Fair

May 30:  No School- Memorial Day

June 2:  End of the Year Party, Last day of School

May 2-6, 2016

Thank you for sending the signed registration forms for the next school year back to me.  If you still have not had a chance to sign and return it to me, please send them my way this week.  Thank you!

SECOND GRADE FUNDRAISING PROJECT
Our students in 2nd grade are holding a fundraiser to help the animals in Austin Zoo. To raise awareness about their fundraising project, they are asking all grade levels to wear special clothes each day (this activity is optional).

Monday: Hats Off to Helping- Wear a crazy hat to school
Tuesday: Socks for Snakes- Wear mixed up socks
Wednesday: Tattoos for Tigers- Wear stripes.
Thursday: Operation Ocean- Wear blue of all shades
Friday: PJs for Pandas- wear your PJs and enjoy a movie showing during lunch in the cafeteria (PJs optional)

END OF THE YEAR READING ASSESSMENTS
I will be doing the End of the Year Reading Assessment starting this week until May 20th.  This is a time that I will be reading with each child individually to assess their reading level and readiness for next year.  For this reason, I will not be sending any more reading folders home.  Please continue to visit the library (public or school library) and encourage your child to use RAZ-kids to read at home.  Your child knows that they need to complete the quiz for each book before moving on to the next book or next level.  The RAZ-kids username and passwords were sent home in November.  Please let me know if you are missing your child's username or password.

SPRING PBL PROJECT
Our first graders have been hard at work learning and discussing about growing manageable, non-traditional gardens. Last week we had a guest speaker who grows small vegetable gardens.  She showed us pictures of her garden and talked to us about the process which started with growing mini-gardens in egg cartons, and then transferring the growing sprouts into bigger containers or spaces.  Growing our own garden has so many benefits.  Not only we could have quick access to fresh and organic vegetables, we would also save money and time spending in grocery stores. Our students will be thinking about designing a mini garden and presenting their learning and ideas about non-traditional gardens in different ways such as making posters or brochures. 

READING and WRITING
We will continue reading fiction and non-fiction stories and review different comprehension strategies that we have been working on this year.  In writing, we will be working on some heartwarming mother's day projects and use all of our writing and art skills to say thank you to our wonderful moms.

MATH
We will continue on composing and decomposing numbers.  For example, there are so many ways to show 18, such as, 9+9, 10+8, 9+8+1, 8+8+2, 7+8+3, ....The options are so many and for our students to have a strong number sense, they need to be able to see what other smaller numbers can come together to make bigger numbers.  We will use coins such as dimes and nickles to count by 5's and 10's. Our students should be able to count by 1's, 2's, 5's and 10's from any given number from 1 to 120.  For example, starting from 35, counting by 5's to 120 or starting from 48 and counting by 2's to 120. Thank you for reinforcing these skills at home.

SCIENCE
Last week, we learned about plants, their parts and what each part does.  This week, we learn about seeds and how they grow.  We will grow a few seeds in the classroom and observe the growing sprout and its parts (roots, stem and leaves).

THANK YOU!
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*

*No more school Library check out!

*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:

May 2-6:  Teacher Appreciation Week

May 4:  Early Release @ 12:45

May 9-11:  STAAR testing (no visitors on campus these days!)

May 16-20:  Book Fair

May 19:  Spring Open House

May 20:  Field Day

May 27:  Career Fair

May 30:  No School- Memorial Day

June 2:  End of the Year Party, Last day of School