Summer Reading and Learning Fun!

Parents, the summer slide is not a fun playground activity!  It is the very common summertime loss of several months' worth of progress.  Please make sure your child is not a victim of this slide and can keep making progress even over the summer months.  You can find my summer iPad tips and activities here as well as links to Cannon and GCISD reading activities and fun challenges.

Link to Summer iPad Tips on my district webpage.

Have your child use iStation reading and RAZ-Kids on their iPads this summer.  iStation will present lessons, practice older skills, and give them an assessment the first time they log in each month.  Their login is usually first name last initial (iPads are set to remember this) and their password is the same as the login.  RAZ-Kids passwords are the standard district password (located in their contacts folder).  In RAZ-Kids students can listen to and read books on their level and then take a short comprehension quiz.  They can also make a recording for me and I will give them feedback.  

If your child ended the year reading at a level 18 or above, they are prepared now for 2nd grade.  To be sure they stay prepared, they need to read daily all summer for at least 15-20 minutes.  You can go to the public library and use books in RAZ-Kids on their iPads.  Students at these levels need to work on their fluency and deeper comprehension.  Talk about what they are reading.  Can they tell you the main events of a story?  Can they explain what a character feels or why they do something? Can they make inferences about things the author doesn't state directly? Have them read aloud to you.  They should be reading smoothly so the words are grouped into phrases (not word-by-word) and using expression so it sounds more like talking.  Working on iStation weekly will give them some lessons in new concepts and a variety of kinds of reading.  

If your child ended the year reading below a level 18, they need to continue reading and make progress over the summer.  They need to read daily all summer for at least 15-20 minutes.  They need to continue to work on iStation at least 3 times a week for at least 20 minutes!  (This is the expectation during school in class.)  You can also go to the public library and use books in RAZ-Kids on their iPads.  Students at these levels need to build their automatic knowledge of sight words.  They can use flash cards with you or one of our sight word apps.  They also need to improve their fluency (reading smoothly and in phrases instead of word-by-word).  Rereading books more than once helps practice their fluency.  They can also get on RAZ-Kids and read aloud while they listen to a book.  Talk about what they are reading.  Can they tell the main events of a story in order?   Can they tell how a character feels and why?  Can they predict what might happen next?

In addition to reading, students need to keep up their writing and math skills.  There are many great ideas on my iPad list.  Continuing to post on our class blog is a great way to write and keep in touch with school friends!  Starting a 2-way journal between parent and child is another way to make writing meaningful for young children.  Write to your child and have them write back to you.  

Play games with your family that involve words or numbers.  Dominoes builds counting by 5 and addition skills.  Hangman, Scrabble, and many other games are built on spelling concepts.  

If you have any trouble logging in or using iPad apps for learning this summer, you can reach me at my email and I will try to troubleshoot!  I hope you have a wonderful summer of fun and learning and that all our kids are ready for a new year in August!

Career Day

Friday we had some great presenters for this year's Career Day!  We got to hear from Jason Caillier (magician and professor), Clint Roberson (sales), Scott Vick (systems engineer), Kelsey Benford (Grapevine Parks and Rec), Katie Lemmon (chef), Valerie Kunhert (New Hope Equine Therapy), and members of Grapevine Fire and Police Departments!  It was a busy day!  Speakers told the students about what they do in their jobs, why they like their careers, how they got started, and what training and education is required.  Thanks to all of our presenters for a great day!

Plants

As we have been learning about plants in science, one of our projects has been to make a book about plants and their parts.  Students used the app Shadow Puppet Edu, which offers an excellent way to safely search for photos, wrote their text, and then recorded themselves reading their book.  Click to play some of their books below...

Isaac                Colin          Hailey            Isabella      
    
Madelyn          Ryan           Natalia          Ava Grace

Carolyn           Livia            Katia

Students did a great job choosing photos to match the ideas they were writing and deciding what the best sequence would be.  Then they wrote and edited their work to make it easier for their reader to understand.  Even though we all started out to share the same basic information, all of their projects turned out different and interesting!  Enjoy reading and listening!

Dallas Arboretum Field Trip

Last week 1st grade had a beautiful day at the Dallas Arboretum!  Students got to see many kinds of flowers, trees, and other plants!

Can you spot the bee on this flower?

Students explored how seeds travel and many other hands-on activities.

These students made hills and low valleys and then turned on the water to see what effect water would have on their landforms.

In our Tree Works class, students learned about the parts of the tree trunk and how they could tell the age of a tree.  Then they made their own paper plate "tree cookies".

We had a great time!

Engineering Cacti

One of the things we have been reading and learning about in science is interdependence - how plants and animals in an environment depend on each other.  First we talked about their suggestion of a forest environment and read a book called One Small Place in a Tree by Barbara Brenner that tells how a hole could form in a tree and the different forest animals that might make their homes there.  Then for a more unfamiliar environment, we have looked more closely at a desert.  I read the class two books:  Cactus Hotel by Brenda Z. Guiberson and Desert Giant by Barbara Bash, both of which describe animals that depend on the saguaro cactus for homes or food.  We used Google Maps to travel to Saguaro National Park and look around in street view at the cacti.  We also watched a short video clip showing many of the animals we had read about.  With all these resources we talked about what examples we found of animals making homes in the cactus or eating parts of it.

Now we are working on an engineering project to make a model showing some of the examples of interdependence we have learned about.  The model must have a 3D cactus that is between 3 and 6 popsicle sticks tall.  It must be able to stand on its own.  Then students must add three 3 D animals to their cactus and write an information card telling why each one needs the saguaro cactus.

Here are some groups hard at work on their plans:

Now we are hard at work to complete the cacti and animals:

I can't wait to see how these projects turn out!