May Update

The end of school is approaching rather quickly, and the teachers in Room C102 have been super busy trying to bring everything to a close. Please join us in celebrating the good things shown below.

Box Tops - We are the overall winners with 5, 921 Box Tops! Thank you for all of your efforts to help our school earn money...because of our dedication, our school will have money to spend on classroom materials and playground equipment. We also helped earn the school-wide pajama day and forced the Forest Creek principal to wear a BPE Wildcat t-shirt all day!

Math - One afternoon we used virtual dice to review doubles and doubles + 1. The children used the laptops to roll a special virtual die. Once they had the number, they were able to create doubles and doubles + 1. Ex: Roll 11. 11+11=22 and 11+12=23

Spring Book Fair - The Spring Book Fair was a success. As usual, our library was beautifully decorated to match the theme of the Book Fair. Thank you to our librarians and parent volunteers who make it all happen!

New Ladybug Friends

Our children have been fascinated by ladybugs ever since we learned about the ladybug life cycle earlier this spring. In case you haven't heard, our playground has been filled with ladybugs in "the wild." We have done our fair share of catching them, observing them, and then releasing them the same afternoon. This week some of our students actually found 3 ladybug pupae attached to leaves. We brought them inside and placed them in our ladybug land, hoping we have a second round of ladybugs in our classroom. Believe it or not...we have one new friend! We are still hoping the last two will join us soon.

Problem Solving

We thoroughly enjoyed learning about the new TI-10 calculators this week. 100% of our students were engaged as they explored all of the things our new tool will do. Many children made note that this is no ordinary calculator...it can act like a video game, a computer, or just a pretty special calculator. I think we have fun days ahead with these guys around!

A First Grade View of Interdependence

Today we read a book called, Who Eats What? by Patricia Lauber. The children were really interested and full of questions. We now know that all food chains begin with plants, and that certain animals for living things are usually at the top of a food chain. We also learned a little about food webs and how many lines can cross over one another.

We concluded our discussion/lesson by making a shared picture of interdependence on the Airliner. They did an awesome job! Watch out 2nd grade...here we come!

Conference Preparation

Parents,

We are getting ready for conferences. Your children have been working hard...preparing to lead their own Spring Conference. On the scheduled day, they will be the teacher and we will be the students. They will share the goals they set, how they can prove they met them, and where they will go from here. They have new goals in mind and are already thinking about summer opportunities. I think you will be impressed with them. I certainly am!

Mrs. W

Spring has sprung!

If you visit our classroom this week, you will see that spring has sprung. Mrs. Davis had the children work collaboratively to create giant flowers complete with roots, stems, leaves, petals, and seeds. The children not only created the flowers, but they also used rulers to measure the parts. This was an awesome project. It brightened our hallway as well as our minds. Enjoy!

Grass Head Guys

This week Mrs. Davis helped our children create "Grass Head Guys." We are learning about plants and are hoping this experiment will prove to be worthwhile. The "Guys" were assembled yesterday. This is what they look like now.

We'll let you know how it goes!

Ladybugs

We have been patiently waiting for our ladybug life cycle to be complete. Today as we entered the classroom, we found at least 8 new friends in our room! If all goes well, we will have 12.

Our ladybug larvae arrived shortly after Spring Break. We skipped the egg stage, as the company will only send us live larvae (which certainly leads to better results in the end). The tricky part with this is that we don't really know how many days our friends have been in the larvae stage when they arrive. Last Tuesday/Wednesday, the larvae climbed the sides of our "Ladybug Land" in order to prepare for becoming pupa. Our best prediction was that they would emerge from the pupal stage today. Unfortunately, they became ladybugs yesterday. We missed the excitement of seeing new ladybugs without spots! If only we could control the timing of nature... Maybe we have a few more that will surprise us during the day.

I will include some pictures soon.

Arts in Education Day

On the Friday before Spring Break, we celebrated Arts in Education Day. We were honored to host Dan Gibson (storyteller), Austin Flameworks (glass blowing), Don Harms (puppeteer), and Hey Lolly Productions (musicians). Here are a pictures from our big day!

Storytellers, Musicians, and Careers...Oh My!

This has been a wonderful week full of cultural learning experiences. On Tuesday, we had a visit from an engaging storyteller, Mr. Don Newsom. He captivated the 1st grade audience. You might have been able to hear a pin drop during his story if it hadn't been sprinkled with laughter. He shared a story about Hank the Cowdog. Mrs. Davis was prepared. She brought a Hank the Cowdog book from home to share with the class.

Today we had Career Day. We had the privilege of hosting Mr. Townsend, Mr. Mancilla, and Mrs. Matcha. We learned all about careers in construction, the life of a diplomat, and the experiences of an accountant. Our presenters did an amazing job of really sharing the skills and traits that make/made them good at their jobs. I think we were all honored to be in their presence.

Tomorrow we are in for another treat...Cultural Arts Day. We have four presentations throughout the day. I will try to get a few photos to share with you.

Farewell to the Chicks

The time has come to say good-bye to our chick friends. Over the last 2 days, we had three escape artists in the bunch. They were eager to see what might be going on outside of their big galvanized bucket.

Brigid came this afternoon to take our chicks to the farm. She promised to keep us informed about their new life on the farm!

Hanging Out

Sleeping in a Huddle

Green Eggs and Ham

We began this week by celebrating Read Across America day and Dr. Seuss' birthday. The children were excited to have pillows, stuffed animals, and their favorite Dr. Seuss books at school with them. Thanks to Mrs. Barney we were able to end our day of celebration with a tribute to Green Eggs and Ham.

They're here!

Yesterday we had 10 chicks successfully hatch from their eggs. We are still waiting to see if the last little guy is going to hatch. Maybe this morning we will be surprised. Here they are...

The Chicks are Coming!

Today we can see and hear signs of life in our little incubator. Check out the video clips below.

Candling on Valentine's Day

On Valentine's Day, we had a visit from Brigid, our RRISD chick authority. She used a special light to allow us to "see" inside each of the eggs in our incubator; this is called candling. We are proud to report that we had 11 eggs with chicks growing inside of them. One of our eggs was removed because it was empty. I tried to take pictures that might show what we were able to see, but they definitely don't do justice to the process. We could see veins, eyes, and in some cases movement of a shadow-like figure.

The count down continues. We have 7 days to go!

New Classmates

Yesterday we had 12 possible additions to the population of our classroom. We are the proud recipients of an incubator containing 12 eggs. We are now doing our part to help 12 new baby chicks find their way into the world.

Since their arrival we have learned about all of the conditions and responsibilities required to successfully have chicks hatch out of these eggs. We've learned the appropriate temperature for our classroom, as well as the incubator. We've learned the life cycle, body parts, and even some new vocabulary (humidity, down, embryo, etc.).

I'm not certain that room C102 will have chicks 21 days from now, but I am absolutely positive that we have 26 children and 3 teachers who can't wait to find out. We'll keep you posted as things progress.

Welcome Mrs. Davis

Last Monday Mrs. Davis joined our class. She is off to an amazing start! She already knows the names of all 26 children in our class, has picked up our routines, and rewards positive behavior every time she can. She has joined our merry group without the slightest hiccup.

Please join me in welcoming Mrs. Davis. She is on her way to becoming an outstanding teacher and an asset to our kiddos!

It's great to be in 1st grade!

I have to apologize for not writing much lately. The testing has gotten the best of all of us!

Last week two really cute things happened...the kind of things that always make me realize how much I enjoy first grade. When completing morning work, one of our students really demonstrated the literal translation of vocabulary that we sometimes see. The problem of the day said, "Today is the 22nd day of the month and 22 is the number of two digit dates in January." I couldn't wait to see the range of solutions or examples the children would show. When I approached this student, I noticed a picture that didn't quite make sense to me. They quickly explained that two numbers were on a "date" sitting at a table. One number was a boy and one number was a girl. The second instance occurred during sight word assessments. Many students were commenting about words that had been on their spelling lists in the past (yeah!), but one comment was too adorable not to share with you. "Hey, wait a minute! I have these words at my house."

First graders are honest and amazing!

"SMART" in 1st Grade

Mrs. Glaspie and I made good use of our teacher work day on Friday. We rearranged, reorganized, and cleaned our classroom. In the middle of everything, we were asked to keep the new first grade technology equipment. We gladly made a place for it, and today we gladly put it to use.

Today our children were introduced to our new laptop, projector, document camera, and slate. We began slowly.

For morning work, we used the projector and laptop. The screen gave us the details for our number of the day. During math we played tic tac toe using the slate (basically a hand-held SMART board). The children were excited to play and will tell you that it took some time to get used to writing on the slate. Then we explored familiar activities from our first grade lives using the new technology. We did a making words activity (the big word was president). We colored numbers on a 100 chart, and we played an interactive game with base 10 blocks. We had a great time, and I think we all learned that the possibilities are endless for incorporating our new toys into our learning. We are all going to be "SMART" before the year is over!

Almost 2nd graders

I'm not sure what happens to 1st graders over the winter break, but something definitely happens. They come back to school as "almost 2nd graders." The quality of work improves. The quality of our discussions is light years better than before the break. Somehow they understand things that they couldn't before.

On Friday we read Diary of a Worm. I was a little concerned about the level of the humor in the book. They were laughing out loud and grinning from ear to ear (so was their teacher)!

Way to go, kiddos! You're almost 2nd graders.