Monday, March 31, 2008

March 28, 2008

Next Week:
Monday, March 31st to Friday, April 4th

* Traffic & Parking Lot Duty
Thank you to many of you for signing up for traffic/parking lot duty. I have attached the schedule. If you have not signed up, please see if you can fill in one of the empty spots. Please sign up to help during one or more of the 20 minute time slots. Remember to check in the office 5 minutes before your shift to receive your orange vest. Thank you for helping our school!

* No Spelling or Vocabulary Homework
During this week, we will not be sending spelling or vocabulary homework. However, your child will still be getting a packet of worksheets to complete. Homework will continue after this week.

* Book-It Reading Program
Turn in your March reading logs on April 1st. The Book-It program ends after March, so you will not receive a reading log anymore, but please keep reading 20 minutes every night!

Future Dates

* Thursday, April 10th: Cupertino Library Field Trip
Remember to bring your blue library cards on this day. We will be walking to the library in the afternoon. Please memorize your 4-digit PIN number!

* Monday, April 14th – Friday, April 18th: NO SCHOOL
Enjoy your spring break!

Have a wonderful weekend! I will be attending a conference Wednesday through Friday next week, so Mrs. Seema will be the substitute teacher. Please remind your children to be on their best behavior and to try their best!

Friday, March 21, 2008

March 21, 2008

Upcoming Week:
Monday, March 31st to Friday, April 4th

* Traffic & Parking Lot Duty
Our class is in charge of traffic/parking lot duty during this week. Please sign up to help during one or more of the 20 minute time slots (before school 8:45-9:05 or after school 3:00-3:20). The sign up list will be outside our classroom door next week! We need help every day! Thank you!

* No Spelling or Vocabulary Homework
During this week, we will not be sending spelling or vocabulary homework. However, your child will still be getting a packet of worksheets to complete. Homework will continue after this week.

* Book-It Reading Program
Turn in your March reading logs on April 1st. The Book-It program ends after March, so you will not receive a reading log anymore, but please keep reading 20 minutes every night!

Future Dates

* Thursday, April 10th: Cupertino Library Field Trip
Remember to bring your blue library cards on this day. We will be walking to the library in the afternoon. Please memorize your 4-digit PIN number!

* Monday, April 14th – Friday, April 18th: NO SCHOOL
Enjoy your spring break!

Thursday, March 06, 2008

March 6, 2008

* Friday, March 7th: No School – Staff Learning Day
Teachers will be coming to school to work on writing strategies. In the afternoon, we will be going to Hicklebee Book Store to pick books for our Eaton Library.

* Thursday, March 13th: Cupertino Library Field Trip
We will be walking to the Cupertino public library in the afternoon. Remember to send your child’s blue library card to school and have him/her remember the 4-digit password. Your child can check out 2 books. Please return them directly to the library on your own.

* Friday, March 21st: Report Cards Go Home
Today is the last day of the second trimester. I have assessed your children in all the subject areas and will be sending home report cards on the 21st.

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Dear Families,

Here are some highlights from the week:
Star of the Week: Amit
Poem of the Week: What the Rain Said
Song of the Week: Penguin Song
Kindness is … trying your best
Story of the Week: Jessie Bear, What Will You Wear?
Vocabulary of the Week: Transportation 1
Word Wall: been, evening, far, forest, goes, hungry, near, soon
Next Week’s Sharing: Regular – your favorite book
(at least 4 lines memorized and bring something to show)

• Language Arts: Theme 6: Animal Adventures – Week 3
• Stories: Red Eyed Tree Frog
• Strategy and Skill Focus: Predictions and Inference
• Word Families: -ay
• Sounds: vowel pairs ai and ay
• Grammar: Naming Words for One or More

• Math: We worked mostly this week on addition and subtraction for numbers up to 20. This is slightly more challenging for students because we are in the higher numbers. I am seeing many mistakes and am reminding students to work carefully.

• Writing: Most students have finished writing the sloppy copy for The Mitten story. Some students have finished the final edit and a few students have even finished their illustrations. Great job!

• Science: We are starting a new circuit in first grade. We will be teaching the HLAY – or Here’s Looking at You – program about keeping safe from poisons, drugs, or alcohol. This week we learned more about penguins and how there are many different kinds. We found out some facts about several of the penguins, including African Penguins, Rockhopper Penguins, and Emperor penguins.

• Social Studies: Sunday was Dr. Seuss’ birthday! On Monday we talked about Dr. Seuss and how his stories are unique. On Tuesday, we had a special volunteer from the Cupertino Rotary Club named Ms. Colleen. She read two Dr. Seuss books to our class and even donated Green Eggs and Ham for our classroom! This was a fun treat!

• Music: First graders are continuing to learn all the songs for our end-of-the-year musical. I have been looking for participation levels during music. Each student will be responsible for singing all the songs and performing one dance. Save the date: Friday, May 2nd at 1:30pm.

• Art: This week, we did a lesson on what a landscape is. We learned about warm and cold colors and made a picture of things from nature. We drew mountains using the warm and cold colors and learned how to shade pictures using crayons.

• Computer: We added pictures to our kindness journal. We drew two pictures to add to our February entries. You can see our newly updated journals on our website kindness.pbwiki.com or through our classroom website.

ANTS!!!!! Please wash your child’s lunch bag!!! This week started off with a few ants here and there, and today, ants were all over our lunch basket! Please make sure that all food is closed inside Tupperware or a ziplock bag! Some students had to get hot lunch because there were ants in their food. Yucky! I have cleaned up most of the ants, but let’s try to prevent them from coming back again!

Wednesday, March 05, 2008

February 29, 2008

Upcoming Dates
* Monday, March 3rd: February Book-It Reading Logs Due!
Please turn in your February reading logs. I will be sending home March reading logs too.

* Thursday, March 6th: Last Day of Second Trimester
Report cards will be given out on March 21st. Grades will reflect your child’s progress from November to this date.

* Friday, March 7th: No School – Staff Learning Day
Teachers will be coming to school to work on writing strategies.

* Thursday, March 13th: Cupertino Library Field Trip
We will be walking to the Cupertino public library in the afternoon. Remember to send your child’s blue library card to school and have him/her remember the 4-digit password. Your child can check out 2 books. Please return them directly to the library on your own.

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Dear Families,

I hope everyone had a wonderful vacation last week! I went to San Diego and Mexico on a cruise. It was very relaxing and I ate a lot of food! We visited Cabo San Lucas, Mazatlan, and Puerto Vallarta.

As we return back to school, I have been spending extra time reminding students of the classroom and school rules. I ask students to evaluate themselves for their own behavior to see if they tried their best or not. Please actively continue to have conversations about doing the right things.

Here are some highlights from the week:
Star of the Week: Nasrin
Poem of the Week: Plip Plop Raindrop
Song of the Week: Penguin Song
Kindness is … eating healthy for your body
Story of the Week: What is the Sun?
Vocabulary of the Week: House 6
Word Wall: cow, door, house, now, there, though, wall
Next Week’s Sharing: Spring Poem
(at least 4 lines memorized and bring something to show)

• Language Arts: Theme 6: Animal Adventures – Week 2
• Stories: Eek! There’s a Mouse in the House
• Strategy and Skill Focus: Question / Noting Details
• Word Families: -eat
• Sounds: long e, vower pairs ee, ea
• Grammar: Naming Words for Things and Places

• Math: We finished our chapter on Geometry, Fractions, and Probability. This week we have been reviewing everything that we have learned since the beginning of the year including money, graphs, place value, and problem solving.

• Writing: Many students have finished their rough drafts of the Mitten story. Some students are writing their final copies and some students have even begun illustrating their stories. This project encourages students to be independent workers.

• Science: We went to Mrs. Chou’s class on Tuesday for circuits. We talked about wind and the rainbow. We made kites using rainbow colored strips of paper and yarn. This week, we did an activity on nutrition since it was our Kindness Journal topic of the week. We brainstormed different fruits and vegetables that would be healthy for our bodies.

• Social Studies: We are continuing to learn more about penguins. We are reading stories and this week we watched a video about the life of a penguin. We also did an art project of a penguin.

• Music: Mrs. Stauter was sick this week, so we did not get a chance to have
music with her. We are continuing to prepare for our first grade musical. I am looking for participation!

• Art: Mrs. Blakeslee is starting an art unit about ink and painting. We started today practicing making different strokes using authentic bamboo brushes. We learned that some pictures have changed from written language and characters.

• Computer: This week we did an activity in KidPix on fractions. Students had to show 1/2, 1/3, and 1/4 of circles, squares, rectangles, and triangles. They drew the lines and filled in the fractions.

• Assembly: We had an interesting assembly today called Pioneer Living.
We watched an introduction to the assembly video on Thursday afternoon that explained how to complete different activities. For example, there was a station where you could use soap and pretend to shave like the pioneers did. Or another station where you could mine for gold. This was a great hands-on experience for the kids!

• Buddies: Today we saw our buddies and worked on measurement. We made inch rulers and centimeter rulers. Then we started measuring different parts of our bodies or objects around the room. You can keep these rulers because in a few weeks we will be doing measurement in math!

Welcome back and Happy March!