Week 16: Holiday Festivities

Does anyone have the Polar Express DVD? We will have a Christmas day of festivities on Friday. There might still be some room to come help. Otherwise, you are welcome to come watch the movie with us.

Many classes are doing Grinch Day on Tuesday, so if you'd like, wear GREEN!

Making elves with 5th grade buddies

Learning will be ALL review of concepts taught over the last few weeks including review of letters and vocab taught, numbers and decomposing, etc.

Instructions for the Vacation project went out last week. There will be no homework packet going home on Wednesday. Please work on the project over break.

Week 15: The elf is coming....

I will be out of the classroom Monday. I will be working on NGSS pilot consensus. There will be an English sub who the kids have never had.


Looking ahead:  Friday, December 20 is the last day before break. We will have a full day of activities to celebrate Christmas. Winter project instructions will go home on Wednesday. That will be the only homework during the break.


Conferences went really well. I enjoyed getting to know each and everyone of you better and I hope that you got a lot out of the meeting.

We will be getting an Elf on Wednesday. I'm sure you will hear about all the fun and playful things he will do throughout the next two weeks.

Here are the topics for the week:

Language Arts:  This week is a review week. We will review the letters b, v, f, n, d and the sight words voy, tiene, este, ella, etc. In English, they will work on sight words and CVC words such as mat, bat, etc.


Math:  We will continue practicing ways of making the number 10.

SLD:  We will learn vocabulary words for clothing. There are two categories:  clothing for warm weather and clothes for cold weather.

Conferences and Holiday Festivities

Conferences

Due to conferences, school will have early dismissal at 12:15 everyday. Students should still bring one snack and a lunch. Please be on time to your scheduled conference; I have many conferences back to back. We will review the report card scores and any necessary assessments. This is also a great opportunity to ask any burning questions. Please do not bring your student with you because we will be speaking in English the whole time.

Holiday Festivities

You should be receiving an email shortly from Bonnie regarding our Holiday festivities that will take place on Friday, December 20th. We will need some donations and volunteers for our holiday party. Students can come in their pajamas that day as we will be doing crafts and will watch the Polar Express with popcorn and hot chocolate in the afternoon. It is usually PJ Day for the whole school that day.

These are the topics for the week:

Language Arts:  The letter of the week is 'f' pronounced 'efe.' The sound is /f/ which is the same in English. Students will learn about vocabulary that begins with 'f.' The sight word is "este" or "this."

Math: Topics vary this week but will focus on decomposing numbers to 10.

Week 13: Thankful Presentations

I will have a sub tomorrow, Monday, the 18th. I will be at a science leadership meeting. 


Thanksgiving presentations will start on Tuesday. Please share any digital projects with me in advance so I can review them and if you want, I can give feedback or edit them.


Family Lunch day is scheduled for Friday. Depending on the weather, it may be rescheduled so stay tuned for more information.


Language Arts:  The letter of the week is 'b' pronounced 'be.' The sight word of the week is "tiene."

Math: We will continue to work on decomposing numbers to 10, addition, and other math concepts with Thanksgiving themed activities.

SLD: The theme of the week is transportation in connection with places. We will learn vocabulary for different vehicles: ones with wheels and without, ones that move in the air, land, and water.

Week 12: Four day week

 I hope you enjoyed your three day weekend!

I will have a half day sub on Friday afternoon to pull kids so I can assess them one-on-one.

 

These are the topics for the week:

Language Arts:  The letter of the week is 'v' pronounced 'uve.'  The sight word of the week is "voy" which means "I will go" or "I go."

Math:  We will continue with review and assessments as well as Thanksgiving themed math problems.

Color:  The very last color is gris/gray.

SLD:  We will be talking about where we go during the week or weekend.  We will use the sentence frame:  Yo voy _______./I  go to ________. Yo use "a la" for feminine words and "al" for masculine words.

Week 11: Assessments and Gratitude

Upcoming Events

Monday, November 11:  No school.  Veteran's Day

Assessments for Report Cards 

It is crunch time and we only have a few more weeks before our first benchmark period ends.  I will be doing a lot of assessments to determine report card scores and data for the parent conferences.  Here is a list of some of the things I am and will be testing.  Reinforcement of these skills at home one-on-one, by practicing quizlet, and reviewing what's on the work folder will all help your child improve on the assessments. 

Here is a recording of me saying all the letter names and sounds on the work folder: Sonidos Iniciales

Language Arts: (5 vowels, p, m, t, s, l, d, n), reading basic syllables (ma, pe, la, to), 10 sight words.

Math:  Counting to 100 by ones and tens (to see how far they know), counting and comparing objects, writing numbers, identifying and describing shapes

Here is the Trimester 1 Checklist.

These are the topics for the week:

Language Arts:  The letter of the week 'd.'   The sight word of the week is "y" which means "and." We will also talk about sounds, instruments, and music and how those are made.

Math:  We will continue counting, writing, and comparing numbers.  We will be busy with a few report card assessments as well.

Color:  The color of the week is white/blanco.

NGSS Science:  We will be wrapping up the unit and will be finishing the entire pilot. They will learn about possible solutions to the flooding problem at Woodland Elementary. Patience will help me assess the kids one on one on how they understood both the playground problem and how the lamp model represents real life.

SLD:  We will be learning vocabulary for the different things we may be thankful for.  We will use the sentence frame: Doy gracias por _______. We will also be learning a song. These activities will help prepare them for their Thankful presentations.

Week 10: Halloween & Día de los Muertos

Here are the topics for the week:

Language Arts:  The letter of the week is /n/.  They will learn how to add details to their writing such as colors, size, and other attributes. We will work on describing animals. The sight word of the week is "ella."

Math:  We will  do some Halloween related math activities.

Color:  The color of the week is rosado o rosa/pink.

SLD: Students will learn about Día de los Muertos and will practice writing words with sentence frames previously learned.

NGSS: We will discuss the flooding model that we observed to figure out why one school is flooding and not the other, even though both got the same amount of rain. We will talk about how we could change the design of the playground.

Home-School Connection Projects

Instructions for the Giving Thanks project will go out on Wednesday. They can also be found in the homework section of this blog if you want to get a head start already.

Home-School Connection projects are a great way for you to work with your child on a creative project.  During the process, you also learn about what they have learned in Spanish.  Students should use what they have already practiced in class to complete the three sentences.  Please make the sentences as simple as possible by using the sentence frames that I provided.  If you are not sure if something makes sense when translated, I am happy to look over it before the presentation date. Remember that these projects are open-ended for a reason and it is always a joy to see the diversity. 

These presentations offer opportunities to develop 21st century skills such as communication, collaboration, creativity, innovation, digital citizenship, etc. (These skills are on the current Common Core aligned report card)

Google Slides

I no longer have Powerpoint software, so please use Google Slides if you want to make a slide presentation. It's free! You just need to share it to my email. Here are some examples: Connor's Slides, Reese's Thankful Project

Prezi

Here is a how-to video from youtube that explains how to make a prezi.  There is also a tutorial on the website: www.prezi.com.  The easiest way to make one is to use a pre-made template and just add text and pictures to it.

Here is a link to some Prezi's from past years: Brynlie's Thanksgiving Project; Parker's Thanksgiving Project; Gabriel's Thanksgiving Project

**I changed the instructions slightly from previous years, so please follow the most current guidelines.

You can use a combination of text, pictures, and video to make a presentation.

*There are lots of other ways to present, and if you have any other ideas, please share :)  If you choose to use one of these resources.

Sharing the project with me:   Click the share icon (it's a square with an arrow coming out of it) and share it via email to pbarcellos@lsusd.net.  You can also share bigger files through dropbox and Drive.

How to involve your child in a tech project?

1) Let them type the words themselves.  They may need a lesson on how to put spaces, periods, and capital letters.

2) Let your child pick the template, font colors, pictures, videos etc.

3) When it's done, have your child practice presenting it by click on the arrows and navigating through the presentation.

Arts and Crafts: