career projects

Remember the career dolls that were decorated and facts researched? Well, we FINALLY had time to do something with it! We started our posters today...we will probably finish them tomorrow.

Happy Spring!!

All the right karma existed to make this happen...1st grade aide absent again, 2 rounds of TPRI testing and a broken copy machine!!! The children are thrilled. Enjoy. :-)

simple research

The children have had the opportunity to read about many careers. Today they narrowed it down to 1 career they would like to know more about. We started our research by reading for information.

Math-a-Letics

Today we had a special visitor from the curriculum department here in HISD. Carolyn White observed our classroom during our math rotations and had a fabulous time. The children considered her a "celebrity" because she is one of the characters we've seen on Math-a-letics, a math program seen on HISD Instructional Media Television. She was impressed with our class and how well they worked independently. Well done!

student-led conferences 2

Our conference day was very successful...almost 100% !!! Thank you for taking the time to come after school and making that happen! The children did a fabulous job. I saw confident leaders being knowledgeable, reflective risk-takers as they went through their agendas with pride and ease! Well done!

Bag Project

Our class participated in the Earth Day Groceries Project. It is an easy, cost-free environmental awareness project that teams up youth and grocers across the United States to spread the message of Earth Day! We borrowed paper grocery bags from a local grocery store and the kids decorated the bags with environmental messages about reuse, recycling, wildlife, etc. We returned the bags to Whole Foods today, and on Earth Day, April 22, customers will receive their groceries— along with the message that kids around Houston created about their wishes for the environment— in the decorated bags! Be sure to visit Whole Foods on Earth Day!

Ozone theater

Today we had another exciting visitor...from Ozone Theater. We learned all about air pollution through an interactive theatrical game and hands-on activities. The production was interesting as well as informative...I think they learned a lot about what causes air pollution and how it affects our health. Be forewarned...the kids may ask you to walk to school instead of drive!!!

Boy Scouts

A Boy Scout leader come speak to our class about the joys of Scouting. Be on the lookout for a flier in this weeks red folder telling of a informational meeting on Thursday at 6:30PM.

Where We Live

We built houses and apartments out of milk cartons today to represent where we live. The kids LOVED creating these! Next week we will build a community with these houses and the places from our community we built earlier in the week from paper bags. It will be awesome!

career dolls

Well done! I love the career dolls that came back to school this week! We will be using these next week to make a visual aid to go along with our presentations.

Junior Achievement

Mr. Tran is our assigned Junior Achievement representative this year. He works with computers at Pricewaterhouse downtown and will be volunteering his time in our class once a week for half an hour for 5 weeks. Today he introduced himself and talked about how everyone has a job within their own community. Fits PERFECTLY with our current planner!

boys vs. girls

Sometimes it is painful to see the difference between boys and girls...even at this age!

Can you guess which is the boys and which is the girls? :-)

Community Places

Today we brainstormed different places within our community. We randomly drew a destination and was challenged to create it with only construction paper and a paper bag... each child putting their own twist into their creation. They did an AWESOME job! Tomorrow we will build our houses and apartments!

new planner

If you haven't noticed...we are starting a new planner, "How We Organize Ourselves." It's gonna be a short one! Our central idea is people with different jobs work together to organize a community. We will inquire into different types of jobs, goods and services and the interdependent nature of jobs in a community.

Fact Triangles

Today we cut out a set of 36 "fact triangles" in class to practice and review addition/subtraction facts at home. Fact triangles are a "new and improved" version of the old-fashioned flashcards we all remember from our own childhood days! The 3 numbers on the cards helps your child understand the relationship within their own "fact family."

student-led conferences 2

It's that time of year again...our second student-led conference is scheduled for Wednesday, April 15th. Last week sign-up time slips were sent home in the Tuesday folders. I appreciate getting back so many in a timely manner. If you have misplaced yours, there is also a sign-up sheet outside our classroom. You can also email me your selected time. We have 3-3:30 and 4-4:30 open...I will try to go to my own daughter's conference in between our two scheduled times.

Career Project

If you read this blog regularly, it's your lucky day! Your reward is having a couple of days advance notice on a small project for next week! (They are due Thursday, April 9th). Spread the word...

1. Choose a career - Be specific. (i.e. What kind of doctor?, What kind of teacher, What kind of scientist?)
2. Research - Find your facts by looking on the Internet, reading a book, or by giving an interview.
3. Decorate your “person” according to the career you chose.
4. Write - 5 solid facts (not opinions) telling about your chosen career in complete sentences. I will be looking for sentences that make sense, are capitalized/punctuated and written neatly with no spelling errors.
5. We will use these facts/decorated dolls to make a visual aide next week for our presentations on April 17th. Be prepared…there will be a question & answer session afterwards about your chosen career.

clues!

Today we read clues to figure out what is done at different places within our community. Some were tricky and some could fit in multiple places which lead to a very interesting discussion! Many had no idea what really goes on at a bank! Who knew?

Machine Work

The kids had a great time with Mrs. Norris taking apart their machines. Ask your child what they found. They were looking for pulleys, levers, wheels, axles, and inclined planes. BEWARE: they may want to do this at home, too! Look around...chances are that you have something to take apart! :-)

Well Done

It was nice to see so many of you support Science Fair Night.

Arboretum Field Trip

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

A great time was had by all! Thank you for all the help and support!

volunteer anyone?

Would anyone LIKE to wash/fold our field trip bandanas? We will be needing them again in a couple of weeks. They are a huge help to me! Thanks in advance!

Science Fair

Today we completed our class science Fair project, "The Great Boat Race." The concept was simple but fun! We hypothesized what shape boat could float the best. We tested our theory and came up with a conclusion. With that knowledge, the children were challenged to each build their own boats with a single piece of aluminum foil. We got a good dose of the Scientific Method and a good time was had by all! In cooperative groups they tested their creations by seeing how many unit cubes could float in their boat before sinking. The results were astounding...from 0 units to 171 units...way to go EG!!! FYI...all the science fair projects from all classes k-3 and all 4th and 5th graders will be on display tomorrow evening from 6:00-7:30pm.

weekly update

By popular vote, the children did not want to wear our usual white shirts for the field trip tomorrow to the Houston Arboretum. Instead, they voted to wear red! Thanks to Renea and Anne for volunteering the use of their rolling coolers.

Be sure to check backpacks for Tuesday folders. Not much in there...I was swamped with Science Fair (our class AND Maggie), testing and getting report card grades turned in! FYI...report cards go home tomorrow.

You will also see that the Stanford scores have arrived. I thought they were pretty good but they are down from last year. All schools in all subjects in all grade levels went down...something about the norms. A letter was supposed to go out, but didn't. You can direct your questions to the office. :-)

I put a 100's chart in the red folders for help with homework. They can be a very useful tool...we use them all the time!

I administered the "high frequency word" test Monday. It is part of our promotion standards and children must pass to go on to 2nd grade. I don't tell parents this in the beginning of the year (because it would freak them out!) but I don't teach the sight words. This concept is introduced in kindergarten and I feel a better way to learn them in 1st grade is within our day integrated in all subject areas. One year I taught summer school to a bunch of kids that didn't know their sight words. I drilled them every day until they knew them perfectly. I found out the hard way...they knew them by sight on flashcards but not within text in a book! :-(

art a la carte #5

Friday afternoon, Priscilla Kennedy and Sarah Baker explained the concept of the Still Life to our class. They discussed different examples through the ages and focused on the concepts of subject, medium, focal point, collage, overlap and abstract art. Some of the works they discussed are here. The following is fun site from the National Gallery of Art that allows one to graphically manipulate different still life paintings. This link provides puzzle pieces that when brought to the canvas will fit together to form still-life masterpieces. the children chose one of several examples of still life subjects that were provided (both classic and contemporary), sketched them out and then colored their masterpieces.

If you would like to continue the lesson at home...look through magazines to find pictures that represent them (or let them choose from a large variety of things already cut out). Look for pictures that describe who they are, describe their hobbies, favorite foods, games, animals, colors, clothes, music, etc. Cut out the images and arrange them on the paper to form a still-life collage of objects that reflect who they are or their personalities. Remind them to think about the emphasis of their collage. Try to keep in mind...What is a collage? What does overlap mean? What does this collage say about their personality? If they were going to paint a still life from real objects, what items would they choose and why?

They discussed Cezanne as he is considered to be the perhaps the greatest master of the Still Life Painting of any era. Coincidentally, CBS Sunday Morning featured a Cezanne exhibit opening in Philadelphia today. It sounds like these parents did an amazing job Friday. I know your kids enjoyed Friday afternoon as much as Priscilla and Sarah did!

class pictures

Class pictures are Monday. Please wear regular school uniform. Mrs. Morgan reported that y'all had a great day! I can't wait to hear all about art a la carte!

Cookie's Week

Where in the World did Cookie go for Spring Break?

This kids were biting at the bit to share their Spring Break adventures they had with our dear friend, Cookie! It sounds like everyone had a fabulous break whether it was spent in town or far away. It looks like a lot of memorable family time was the result and now you have your memories forever!

Arboretum Field Trip

We are going on a field trip to the Houston Arboretum next Wednesday, April 1st. The cost is $11. Mrs. Stryker is in charge of this field trip and I will let you know as soon as I find out more information about chaperones. Look for a sign-up sheet outside our classroom. We will leave at 8:40 AM and expect to come back to school at 1:30

Announcements

Be on the lookout in the red Tuesday Folders tomorrow for announcement assignments! Our class will be doing announcements all week this week! We will need 2 speakers and 2 flag holders each day. Thank you to ER, MM, HM and KH for their last-minute assignment today... they did an awesome job!

Quote for today: "Once you choose hope, anything’s possible." ~Christopher Reeve

Cookie's Week

Today we read a simple story titled, Cookie's Week. Just like Cookie, all of us will have an adventure over Spring Break whether we stay home or travel away from Houston. Write 1 sentence each day of the week accompanied with a picture telling what you did. Be sure to take at least 1 picture of Cookie on your adventure next week (kind of like Flat Stanley in kindergarten). You may bring real photos or email them to me. We will share our adventures on Wednesday. Have fun!

cooperation

Today I divided up the class into 6 cooperative groups and gave each group 1 poster board and 8 pieces of colored paper and told them to build a map using only glue markers, scissors, paper and the poster board. It was great to see them communicating (and sometimes not!), risk-taking, thinking, having an open-mind and thinking about how to get the assignment done together peacefully. This was done in 30 minutes!

treasure maps

This week we learned about grid maps and coordinates. Unexpectedly, a lot of the kids already knew about them from playing the boardgame, Battleship! To make it fun, we made treasure maps and wrote written directions to find our treasure.

Map of our Hearts

After reading My Map Book, we water colored our own beautiful Map of our hearts. Come check them out...they will make your heart melt!

good news for HISD

It's great news when the President of the United States is so impressed with what HISD is doing that he praises us in a major speech. Apparently yesterday, President Barack Obama outlined his plans for education reform in a speech to the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. In his remarks, he commended HISD's use of a growth model to determine how much academic growth a student makes from year to year, to identify strengths and weaknesses so that our teachers can build on strengths and intervene early on to turn weaknesses into strengths. Cool.

Dice Roll sums

Today we played a "game" where the children roll a pair of dice (they will play anything involving dice!) and recorded the sum of the dice dots. We observed why which sums occur most often. Ask your child why there wasn't a one on the list of possible sums on the record sheet. I also noticed this game went MUCH FASTER for those that have been playing Math Magician to help with their math fact memorization...hint, hint.

map makers

We spent some time creatively building our own city maps today. It was interesting to see what types of stores, places, businesses everyone chose to add to their map!

last chance...

If you didn't make it to the Bash or never got around to the party tables...you have another chance to sign up! I am having a swim party at the YMCA on Friday, May 1st at 4:00pm for $25 (sorry, I forgot to tell y'all or the kids!) and Mr. Bogler is selling 8x10 black and white portraits of the children for $20. I believe the sign-ups will be in the front hallway every day this week before and after school. Of course, all proceeds go straight to Mark Twain!

BASH

I totally hope to see all of you at the Bash tonight!!

rumors...

Ike is ALIVE and well! The kids are convinced he is dead. When I was out on Wednesday, he decided to molt...just means our dear little hermit crab is growing! I came back to find a "skin" in the cage and a leg that looked as if it had been dismembered. I took a picture for the non-believers...

Because of Winn Dixie

Although we have 2 chapters left and I anticipate finishing Because of Winn Dixie next week, we saw the movie today! If we had waited and watched it next Friday I would have been afraid some would miss it due to leaving for early Spring Break plans! It was a delightful movie and enjoyed by all!

woof, woof

" dog art" inspired by artist, George Rodrigue

new dictionaries

Have you heard the news? Ask your child about his/her new dictionary! Now that we know how to legibly write complete sentences that are correctly spaced, capitalized and punctuated to express our thoughts...they can now ask for words they cannot sound out correctly. It's fun to see what words they ask for. RH wanted to know how to spell microbiology !!!

geography

The kids did great on their first geography quiz last week! From now on their green geography folders need to go home for review on Thursdays (unless otherwise I say different) but MUST come back on Fridays. All but one folder came back. We use these every single day.

map builders

During groups today the children had the opportunity to build a map of the classroom using Kapla blocks and attribute blocks. They chose to either make their own or work in cooperative groups. No one chose to work alone...what sweet kids! Of course, we loved how they all looked different!

measuring in inches

During our independent jobs and reading groups the kids were instructed to measure items in our classroom with rulers and parts of their body with a measuring tape. It was tempting not to measure in centimeters!

Me on the Map

Room house street city state country world... we all have our own place in the world!

art a la carte # 4

EG's mom came to class today to teach us a little about emphasis and focus. The kids enjoyed her examples and creating their own art showing what they learned!

Constellations

As we learn about our map of the sky ...the kids made their own constellations today!

we need glue!!!

Next time you find yourself at Target, Walgreens, grocery store, etc...please get a bottle of glue for your child. We are critically short of glue!!