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!