Fifty-Second day of School

Today in Health, we discussed street and bus safety.

We will have a our second Math checkpoint test for chapter 2 tomorrow.

Reminder: October reading log is due tomorrow.

The annotations are not showing up for the responding to literature assignment on Benchmark Advanced for the "Writing Activities." Student responses have been visible, however. The annotations are as follows;

• Page 4 & 5, on the poem, label on the text where the author talks about the stages of a the insect's life. Use: larvae (caterpillar), pupa, and adult.
• Page 7, use the space to draw and label a diagram of the life cycle of an apple.

Fiftieth Day of School

In Science today, we made observations of a collection of liquids and came up with list of properties and developed the following vocabulary: visous, translucent, transparent, opaque, colored, and bubbly.

Forty-Ninth Day of School

In Visual Arts today, we took our knowledge of line outside to find subjects in our environment to reproduce with different types of lines.

In Reading, we focused on summarization while individual groups worked on either retelling or sequencing.

Note: our turn at the book fair will be Wednesday, November 01.

Forty-Eighth Day of School

In Writing we have been working on narratives we will read for the camera in November.

In Health, we discussed and reported on safety at home.

Test Results

Of the 21 students taking the first chapter 2 checkpoint test, 14 passed with an adjusted score of 8 or better. One student achieved a perfect score.

As for the written reading comprehension test this week, 8 students achieved a passing score.

Forty-Fourth Day of School

Today in Writing, we worked on the  closings to our procedural texts.

In Math, we took our 1st Chp 2 checkpoint test.

At-Home Project #1: Class President

Every year Room 11 has the tradition of electing a class president. This supports the government portion of our Social Science standards. Those students interested in running for Room 11 Class President 2016-17 will work on a speech at home to be delivered to the class on November 6, 2017. Speeches will be filmed using chroma key technology and saved to flash drives or hopefully school email accounts

Students who would like to have their videos edited, will make sure they are not wearing any shade of green or yellow in any part of their outfit.

On this day we will also try to film our expert interviews. Those students wanting their interviews to be edited will also need to remember not to wear green or yellow on that Monday. 

Forty-Third Day of School

In Writing today, we worked on introductions, a way to grab our readers' attention. We practiced starting with a rhetorical question or an interesting statement about our topic.

Forty-Second Day of School

In Writing today, we completed the basic sentences to complete the steps for the procedures.

In the afternoon, we completed notes to study for a our written Science and Social Science test this week. You should find these in our homework folder.

Tommorrow, you should find our review work for our first checkpoint test for chapter 2 in Math.

Forty-First Day of School

In Writing today, we added transitional words along with verbs in the imperative form for each step of our procedure.

In Social Science, we began discussing our last tested concept of comparing and contrasting the past with the present. Basically, 1st graders discover, discuss, and relate how life changes for people as time passes.

Fortieth Day of School

In Writing today, we selected our 'How-To' topic, touch and talked, then began our quick-sketch plan and diagrams.

In Science, we wrote conclusion statements about the most valuable material to make our towers tall for our 2nd engineering project.

A new very simple assignmnment has been posted to Benchmark. We have been using evidence from the text to tell about characters from our stories. For example:

What kind of character was Henny Penny?

She was not very smart.

How do you know?

An acorn hit her on the head and she thought the sky was falling.

We have also been summarizing narrative stories. A summary is different than a retell in that it is a very short statement which tells what a selection is about, usually no more than 2 sentences. The sentence tells where and/or when who did what and how without giving away the ending. Example: Once upon a time (when?), the Little Red Hen (who?) tends to some grains of wheat (did what?)  and bakes bread (how?) without help from her friends.

We will also write sentences about important events in a story. Example: The Prince placed a pea under 20 matresses and 20 quilts to discover if she was a true princess.

Please note: Children are able to annotate texts as they read with the tools in Benchmark. The site compiles comments and sends their remarks to the teacher. (So, parents are able to annotate as well.) There is also a button for writing a review of the books the children have read.

New fluency and comprehension scores will be posted  this week on the inside door of the classroom.

Ultimately, (for future testing sake) students will need to be able to compare and contrast 2 unfamiliar texts.

Thirty-Eighth Day of School

For Writing, we took the informational writing pre-assessment.

The online Benchmark assignment is due Wednesday.

Thirty-sixth Day of School

Today in Science, we went through our second round of engineering focusing this time on working from a plan to create a tower with various types of solids.

Yesterday in Art, we discussed 3 elements of art and practiced various types of line while observing and discussing works of art emphasizing line.

Chapter 1 Math Test

Of the 21 students taking the Math test 16 passed with an adjusted score of 16 or better.  Fifteen scored at least 20 and 1 student achieved a perfect score.

Thirty-Fourth Day of School

In Math today, we took Chapter 1 Final Math Test.

Tomorrow we will take our narrative Writing Assessment.

Two reading assignments have been posted on clever.com. Tomorrow your child will bring home their LAUSD email (mymail) account and password to enter the site. If you wish to change your child's password (the password is handwritten on your child's access card) you will need their 10 character ID (all ID's contain either the letter 'M' or 'F') their birthdate and their 4 digit PIN. All of this information will be sent home on their access card tomorrow. The card will be taped to the inside of their homework folder. If you decide to change your child's password, make sure they can remember it as they will need it to access their account at school. If you have difficulty logging in or locating the assignment, come seek assistance or ask a detailed question in the comment box. The reading assignments may be applied to your child's reading log for the month.