Our Last Full Week of School!

So the pictures of our classroom firefighters finally made it on the blog after numerous attempts, and many errors, but 1 hour and 28 minutes later - HERE THEY ARE!!!  There has to be an easier way....

So, it's June and we are entering our last full week of school.  This week we will do our last entry into our Weekend Writing Journals.  Over the past couple of weeks, the writing in our classroom has been unbelievable!!  We are talking multiple pages unbelievable - like 10-12 pages.  We have so many talented writers in our room!  We couldn't be prouder.  We will also be writing about our Summer Bucket List.  What do you want to do over the summer!!  There are so many fun things to do, but what is at the top of your list??  We will also be learning about and discussing the Summer Olympics.  We will talk about when the Olympics began, what events are in the Summer Olympics and what the Olympic flag stands for.  We will be making our own Olympic torches, olive leaf crowns and gold medals.  It will be very interesting and a lot of fun!

This Friday is our field trip to the Franklin Park Zoo.  Please pack your child a peanut free snack and lunch in a brown paper bag and don't forget a water bottle.  Please make sure your child wears shoes that will be comfortable enough to handle a lot of walking.  Sneakers are preferred.  Also, since we will be outside for a couple of hours, you may want to apply sunscreen before your child comes to school.  If you will be meeting us at the zoo, I will be sending home a notice telling you what time to meet us there.  I am thinking 10:30, but I will send a note home just to be sure.

Have a wonderful week!!!
Mrs. M
Mrs. Cataldo
Mrs. Fiore

Firefighter Pictures!!!!

16 Days To Go....

I hope you all had a chance to spend some time outside over the weekend.  What fantastic weather!  I had to break out the sunscreen and my vegetable garden is up and running.  Great weekend all around!!

Last week, we were lucky enough to have Mr. Lopresti come into our room to discuss fire safety with our class.  The kids loved it!  They all got a chance to try on all of Mr. Lopresti's fire fighter equipment and uniform.  We also had a few volunteers to demonstrate some first aid techniques.  I have a lot of pictures that I will be posting on the blog.  Keep watch!!  Thank you Mr. Lopresti!!!

This week is going to be very exciting!!  We have Spirit Day on Tuesday.  Please have your child wear red and white clothes and we will enjoy all of the festivities Ms. Brown and the parents will have set up for them.  And, of course we will be having our big kickball game - 5th graders vs. teachers.  If you would like, your child can bring a beach towel to sit on when they watch the game.  GO TEACHERS!!!!!  :)  I'm just hoping I don't hurt myself......

A sneak peak at the week ahead -

ELA -
This week our phonics focus is the vowel dipthong ou and ow.  Our story in our anthology is "Ebb and Flo and the Baby Seal".  Our comprehension focus will once again be story elements and we will be monitoring our comprehension by making inferences.  Our grammar focus will be using am, is and are.  During writer's workshop we will be writing about "If I Were a Butterfly.....".   Where would you go?

Math -
We will be reviewing subtraction, fractions and time to the half hour.

Science -
Our caterpillars are in their chrysalises.  We are a little over a week away from having butterflies.  We will be watching another video about the life cycle of a butterfly and making observations.

Have a wonderful week!

Mrs. M
Mrs. Cataldo

Happy Mother's Day!!

I hope all of you had a wonderful Mother's Day!  The weather was gorgeous and I didn't have to cook.  Just wish there was someone else to do the food shopping and laundry.....
A sneak peak at the week ahead:
In ELA - This week our phonics focus will be long vowel i - concentrating mostly on igh.  We will also discuss the contractions 'd, 've and 're.  The story we will be reading in our anthology will be "Blast Off" and we will be discussing the story elements - characters, setting and beginning, middle and end.  We will also continue our discussion on verbs in the present tense or as Storytown puts it...verbs that tell about now.  A little confusing...
In Math, we will begin our week with a review of concepts taught throughout the year with our end of year assessment on Tuesday.  Over the next couple of weeks we will be reviewing chapters we felt needed a second glance at such as fractions, time to the half hour and double digit addition.  We will also focus some time on word problems.
In Science, we will continue discussing the life cycle of a butterfly.  We were very excited (and surprised) to see that three of our mealworms had turned into Darkling Beetles this past week.  I know some of you had a chance to see one of them at the open house.  The students were very excited.  We are anticipating our caterpillars to build their chrysalises this week and we will be waiting patiently for our butterflies!!  This week we will be making our own model of the life cycle of a butterfly.  Thank you to the Sousa and Constantino families for sending in some model magic clay for this, but we still need a little more.  If you have any green or white model magic floating around, we could use some for our science projects.  Thank you!!!!!
We are in the midst of year end assessments with our writing assessments done last week - boy did they all do a FABULOUS JOB!  Mrs. Cataldo and I have been saying all year how we have a classroom of great writers.  Math assessments will be done this week and we keep plugging away at DRA's.  We are very proud of the progress each and every one of our students has made.  They work very hard and it shows in their work.  Kudos to you and your children!!!!

 Don't forget:
Class pictures are tomorrow, May 14th.


Enjoy the last few hours of this wonderful Sunday!!!!


Mrs. M
Mrs. Cataldo

I'm glad I didn't put my winter coat away....

My son had two baseball games this weekend and I FROZE!!  Here it is the end of April and I was wrapped in my winter coat and wishing I had brought a pair of gloves.  Crazy, crazy weather.  But I do love watching him play - GO RED SOX!!!

We are on the home stretch of First Grade!!!  Can you believe it??  We are entering assessment time again - writing assessments, DRA's, math assessments, DIBELS....whew!  Lots of work to do.  We also will be getting ready for our open house on May 10th.  This week we will begin writing our autobiographies.  We've been talking about this project this week and the students seem really excited to share all of their information about themselves.  You will be able to see the finished project at open house.

This week in ELA:  Our phonics focus for the week is long vowel u (u-e as in fluke). We are on our last book in our anthology series and the story we will be reading this week is "Amazing Animals".  Our comprehension focus for the week is alphabetizing and using graphic organizers.  We have used a couple of graphic organizers in the past but this week we will be using a graphic organizer that lists the animals in our story, their special feature and how it helps. Seeing information in a graphic organizer makes it easier to remember and understand.  Our grammar focus for the week is verbs.

This week in Math:  We just finished up our unit on money and I was so proud at how well everyone did on their test on Friday (they will be coming home on Monday)  Money is difficult to learn, especially coins, when most people are using debit cards to pay for things.  It was really important for us to incorporate real coins into our math centers for the students to hold them, see them and notice the differences between a  penny, nickel, dime and quarter.  This week we will begin our unit on measurement using non-standard units of length.  This unit is going to be a lot of fun.  We will be using paper clip chains and yarn to measure things in the classroom.  We will be using our feet as a unit of measure as well.  This unit gets the kids up and moving and being creative with what items they will choose to measure.  Which item was biggest?  Which one was shortest?

This week in Science:  I'm sure you've heard by now the bugs are in!!!  We have our mealworms and thanks to Dr. Sidell we have a really cool handheld digital microscope to use via the SmartBoard to see them up close and personal.  We were able to count how many segments they have and we were able to see their legs moving.  We began discussing what makes a bug an insect.  We also started talking about the life cycle of a mealworm.  What does the mealworm turn into when it comes out of its pupa?  This week we will be taking the mealworms out of their containers to watch them move across a paper plate and we will use what we are learning in math to see if our mealworms are longer or shorter than a paper clip.

Have a wonderful week everyone!  

Mrs. M

Mrs. Cataldo

Mrs. Fiore

April Showers Bring May Flowers...

Only one more week until school vacation but who's counting?? Even though March was a long month, I feel like the time is flying by. Before you know it, we'll be wrapping up our year!!

A look at the week ahead:
In ELA - Our phonics focus this week is long vowel o or o-e words such as smoke. The story we will be reading in our anthology is a non-fiction story called On Saturday. We will learn different ways people spend their Saturdays. What do you do on Saturdays? Our comprehension skill of the week is drawing conclusions and answering questions. Our grammar focus is using describing words that end is -er and -est. During writer's workshop this week we will write about what we like to do on Saturdays.
In Math - we will begin our unit on Money. We will be discussing pennies, nickles, and quarters and how many different ways you can come up with a specified amount using different coins. We have been talking about coins since the beginning of the school year during our Morning Math Calendar so I have a feeling the students are going to do really well.
In Science, we will be talking about wind. We will be looking at bubbles and kites and how the wind effects their movement. We also are expecting our shipment of mealworms this week - after April School Vacation we will beginning our unit on Insects!! Dr. Sidell bought each classroom a handheld digital microscope that we will be able to hook up to our Smart board. It will be perfect to look at the mealworms as they go through their life-cycle!!

Dates to remember:
Popcorn day - April 12th. If you would like your child to have popcorn on Thursday, please send in $1. Thank you!

Have a wonderful week and a fabulous vacation!!

Mrs. M
Mrs. Cataldo
Mrs. Fiore

Well, it is only March....

Boy were we spoiled by the weather the past couple of weeks! 70's and 80's in March? The kids have been acting like its the last couple of weeks of school - they've been so excited. Now the heat is back on in my house and we will have to suffer through "seasonal" weather this week. UGH!

A look at the week ahead:
In ELA - Our phonics focus this week will be long vowel a and a-e words. We will review the job of King Ed (silent e) as we work on -ake and -ate words. The story we will be reading in our anthology is "Flake, the Missing Hamster". This story is a play and we will talk about the characteristics as well as the different parts. We will be focusing on fluency and expression in our reading groups this week as well as problem/solution and summarizing. Our grammar focus will be using describing words to tell how many.

In Math - we will begin our unit on graphs. We will look at bar graphs, picture graphs and how to interpret data from a graph.

In Science - we will begin our unit on Wind.

Report cards go home tomorrow. Please review, sign the back and return to school after going over how wonderfully your children are doing in first grade!! Kudos to all!!!

Have a wonderful week....

Mrs. M
Mrs. Cataldo
Mrs. Fiore

We Are In For Some Great Weather!!

This week looks great in the weather department!! We are all going to have spring fever! I can't wait.
A look at the week ahead:
In ELA - Our phonics focus this week is long vowel e. We will be concentrating on -ee and -ea words. The students will "Read the Room" in search of -ee and -ea words and write them down as they go. We will also be discussing contractions - 've and 're. Our comprehension focus this week will be Cause and Effect. The story we will be reading in our anthology will be "Little Rabbit's Tale", a folktale by Wong Herbert Yee. Little Rabbit gets hit in the head by a falling apple and rushes off to tell his friends that the sky is falling. Cause and Effect - What caused Little Rabbit to think the sky is falling? What caused Little Rabbit's friends to be upset?
Our grammar focus will be describing words: color, size and shape.
In Math - We will start the week off by looking at making ten to add. If our addition sentence is 8+6, what strategy could we use to help us figure out the sum? We could make 10 by taking to away from 6 and adding it to 8....now I have 10+4 and that is 14. We will be using manipulatives and 10 frames to teach this skill. It is a difficult concept to pick up and by using a kinesthetic approach it helps the students make the connection and remember the skill. We will also discuss doubles fact families and relating addition and subtractions facts to 20.
In science: This week we will continue with our weather unit by talking about clouds. What different types of clouds are there? What words can you use to describe clouds?

Dates to remember this week:
Thursday, March 15th is CRAZY HAT DAY and popcorn day. If you would like your child to have popcorn for snack on Thursday please send in $1.
Thank you!

Have a wonderful week!!!
Mrs. M
Mrs. Cataldo
Mrs. Fiore

I Can't Wait for the Spring Weather Later this Week!

I watched the weather today and I heard it is going to be in the 60's by the end of the week! That is going to be wonderful!! A few extra minutes at recess time will definitely be called for...
The children have been working really hard practicing for our concert this Thursday night. I'm sure you've all heard the songs we will be singing by now....especially Sweet Caroline. They sound great - I can't wait to see them on Thursday!
Things we will be working on this week:
In ELA, our phonics focus is going to be ow and oa words. We will be reading two stories in our anthology this week, Snow Surprise and The Snowflake Man. Snow Surprise falls in the genre of Realistic Fiction while The Snowflake Man is Non-Fiction. We will be using a Venn Diagram to compare and contrast the two stories. Our comprehension focus this week is Author's Purpose/Point of View. Our Grammar focus is homophones - a difficult concept for the students.
In Math, we will review adding three numbers. We have learned three strategies to help us add three numbers together easily - making 10, doubles facts and doubles plus one. If I know these facts really well, it will help me figure out my sum when I add three numbers. We will also go over adding 10 and beginning to discuss related facts with sums greater than 10.
In Science, we will continue with out Weather theme and talk about Measuring Temperature. We will talk about thermometers and discuss Celsius and Fahrenheit scales.
As a reminder, Wednesday and Thursday are early release days. Dismissal will be at 12:30. Lunch will be served.
Thursday evening is our Hoover Winter Concert.

Have a wonderful week!!
Mrs. M
Mrs. Cataldo
Mrs. Fiore

March is just around the corner...

Hello All!
I hope everyone had a wonderful February vacation. We had a lot of germs around before vacation and I was glad to see we had everyone back in school.
Once we got the furniture back into place Monday morning, it was right back into the swing of things. We are learning all about -le words this week. Whistle, jungle, wrestle.....what other -le words can you come up with? We are also talking about possessive nouns and pronouns. We talked about when to add 's and that it shows ownership.
Our story in our anthology book this week is a non-fiction story called Can Elephants Paint? We know that non-fiction stories give us true information and that the pictures in the story are real photographs, not pictures drawn by an artist.
In math, we are going back to addition and subtraction strategies, but we are concentrating on sums to 12. We reviewed our doubles and doubles plus 1 facts. We will also learn strategies on how to add three numbers.
In science, we will begin our unit on weather. We discuss the weather every day as part of our morning meeting but we will introduce the children to some other words that have to do with weather. We will also do a March themed weather project.
A sneak peak to next week:
In ELA - ow and oa. We will read Snow Surprise. Comprehension - Author's purpose/point of view. Grammar - homophones
In Math - relating addition and subtraction. Fact families.
In Science - Measuring Temperature.

Next week there are two half days, March 7th and 8th. Dismissal will be at 12:30. If we haven't spoken recently and you have any current concerns about your child, please email me to set up a conference time.

Have a wonderful week!
Mrs. M
Mrs. Cataldo
Mrs. Fiore

Happy Valentine's Day!

February is already half over......Valentine's Day is Tuesday and only one week until February
Vacation. Spring is right around the corner.
Last week we learned all about the digraphs qu and wh and the endings -ed and -ing. We learned when we have to double the final consonant before adding these endings. In our
anthology, we talked about biographies. What type of information do we find in
a biography? We read a biography about Tomas Rivera. We learned many details
about his life. As a connection to what we learned in this story, the students
wrote about what they want to be when they get older during writer's workshop.
During reading groups, after working on our phonics focus, our comprehension
focus was details, sequencing and asking questions. Our grammar focus was using
I and me. Is it correct to say, "Julie and me are going out to play?"
In math, we were
talking about numbers - greater than and less than. We did a Smartboard lesson
that showed the greater than and less than sign as an alligator mouth and the
open part of the alligator mouth always faces the bigger number because the
alligator chomps on the bigger number.
In science, we made
balloon rockets. We set up a baggie on fishing wire strung between two chairs
and placed a blown up balloon inside the baggie. Depending on how big the
balloon was, the "rocket" sped across the wire to the other chair.
Our groups tried many different ways of making our rocket move. One big
balloon, two small balloons, two big balloons.....and some friends had races.
How long did it take your rocket to get across the wire?
A look at the week
ahead:
In ELA - Phonics
focus - r controlled vowels: ur, er and ir and inflections -er and -est.
Comprehension - Main idea and summarize. Grammar - using he, she, it and they.
In Math - skip
counting by 2's, 5's and 10's. Patterns on a 100's chart. 10 more and 10 less.
We will not have
science this week.
Have a wonderful
week!
Mrs. M
Mrs. Cataldo
Mrs. Fiore

Will The Groundhog See His Shadow???

With the type of winter we are having, would we really be surprised if we have an early spring?? I'm still hoping for a snow day. We need to get a little sledding in, at least once.

Last week in phonics, we focused on the /ch/ sound. We wrote words that have the /ch/ sound at the beginning and at the end.

We also discussed adding -s, or -es to the end of words. Why would we add -es to a word? We talked about the sequence of events and our story this week was A Butterfly Grows. The students sequenced the life cycle of a butterfly (in a few months we will have butterflies in our classroom as part of our science curriculum).

In math, we continued discussing 10's and 1's. During math centers, we practiced our new skills while playing different games. We learned that 52 is 5 groups of 10 and 2 ones and it is also the same as 50+2=52.

In science, we made air and water fountains. We made bubbles by gently pushing air into the water in a bottle. We also used syringes to push air into a bottle which then forced the water out. We had to go outside for this experiment so we wouldn't have 11 "geysers" in our classroom.

A look at the week ahead:

In ELA - /ar/ Ann's Trip to the Stars. Comprehension - Author's purpose/point of view and summarizing. Grammar - Names of Holidays

In Math - greater than, less than and ordering numbers on a number line.

In Science - Balloon rockets.

This Wednesday is a half day and dismissal will be at 12:30.

We will be sending home an "at home" project for our 100th day. Keep a look out for the directions in your student's binder tomorrow.

Have a great week!

Mrs. M

Mrs. Cataldo

Still No Snow....

I can't believe it is January 15th and we haven't had any snow yet. I am actually prepared this year - my kids have a couple of pairs of snow pants, boots, snow boards, sleds and now it probably won't snow at all. Just my luck...

Last week in phonics, we talked all about sh words. We made sharks and discussed words that have sh at the beginning and at the end. Our story in our anthology was King Midas. We discussed what a myth is the setting of the story. We learned that the setting tells us not only where a story takes place but also when. We used the pictures in our story to help us figure out that King Midas happened a long time ago. We also began talking about Martin Luther King Jr. We read The Crayon Box that Talked which is a great story for kids to discuss how things are better if we all work together and get along. We also read Martin's Big Words: The Life of Dr. Martin Luther King. We will continue our discussion this week.

In math, we learned about fractions. We learned how to divide a whole into halves or fourths. We made paper plate pizzas where we had to add certain toppings to a particular fraction of a pizza.

In science, we began our unit on Air and Weather. We learned that air can move items. We used straws to blow items around our table and up in the air. We also learned how a paper towel in vial can stay dry when submerged under water. Air is all around us and takes up space. Ask your child how our experiments went.

A look at the week ahead:

In ELA: Assessments. Writing assessments and the beginning of DRA's. We will learn about King Ed (silent e) and review proper sentence structure.

In Math: Introduction to base ten and place value.

In Science: Continuing on with Air and Weather - Parachutes and Pushing on Air.

We have introduced our iPads into our first grade classroom last week. We will be working the iPads into our ELA and Math times as an iPad center where we can use educational apps and we can also use websites like Starfall.com for reading. We'll keep you posted as we go. If you know of any good reading, phonics or math apps, please forward them along. We are always looking for new things :)

Enjoy our short week!

Mrs. M

Mrs. Cataldo

Mrs. Fiore

Go Tebow!!!

Did you see the Pittsburgh vs. Denver game??? What a game and what an ending! I like Tim Tebow and was cheering for him the whole game. It's too bad he'll be losing the game next Saturday night! :)

Short weeks are always hectic. Especially after a vacation. In ELA we learned all about -or and -ore words. We read Sid Scores from our anthology and discussed the beginning, middle and end of the story. (do you see a trend here??) In writer's workshop we wrote about our favorite sport as a connection to the story Sid Scores. Sid plays all sorts of sports, skiing, hockey, swimming - what is your favorite sport?
In math we finished up with our geometry unit. We reviewed faces and vertices of our 3 dimensional shapes and discussed which shapes stack, roll and slide.
In science, we wrapped up our last investigation in Balance and Motion and what a doosy it was!! We made a roller coaster!! I'm sure by now you have heard all about. Please check back soon as I am going to be uploading some pictures of our class in action. Our cheering was so loud, the teachers around us asked what we did that was so exciting. It was a great way to end a great unit.

Looking at the week ahead:
ELA - phonics focus - /sh/ words. We will be making a shark to put all of our /sh/ words on.
comprehension - setting. We will read the story of King Midas and discuss the setting of the story. This will also be our focus in our reading groups.
Math - introduction to fractions. Halves and fourths. Review of addition. Please practice those flash cards. We will also begin doing Math Mad Minutes on Fridays. Math Mad Minutes are a one minute timed skill test of basic math facts. It is a great way for the students to be competitive with themselves to try to improve how many facts they can complete in one minute.
Science - We will begin our unit on Weather and Air - air as matter and even though we can't always see it, it is all around us.

Have a great week!
Mrs. M
Mrs. Cataldo
Mrs. Fiore