Mrs Sarafa's Class Blog

Field Trip Reminder:
Our field trip to the farm is this Thursday, April 26th. Please be sure to send your child to school with a completely disposable lunch with your child’s name written on the bag. We will not be transporting lunch boxes to and from the farm. Please do not send any food which contain peanuts. Remember to check the weather and dress your child appropriately, as we will be outside walking around all day. We look forward to having a great time at the farm!

Picnic and PBIS:

Our school wide picnic was initially scheduled for this Friday; however, due to the pending/changing forecast it is being moved to Monday and will be combined with our PBIS, which is Art in the Park. For the picnic, we encourage your child to pack a sack lunch. If not, they will be able to buy a lunch before heading outside for the picnic. They may bring a beach towel or small picnic blanket if they would like to sit on outside.

It’s time for the Dime challenge!

This week, we are continuing our endangered animal adoption project. We are reusing milk jugs to collect money for adopting a wolf through the Detroit Zoo, and we need your help!

We are asking for your help with our “Coins for a Cause” challenge.

Bring in as many extra dimes as you can to help fill our jugs! At the end of the week, we’ll count up the totals and announce our winners!

Did you know???

A wolf pup’s eyes are blue at birth. Their eyes turn yellow by the time they are eight months old.

Please come and join the first graders as we celebrate the ending of our Economics unit with Market Day! Market Day is all about determining wants and needs, producing goods and services and trading. Family and friends are invited to help celebrate the world of producers and consumers by shopping at our market from 9am-11am on Tuesday, April 24^th. All goods will range from .10 cents to $1.00. All Haigh students will have the opportunity to shop at our market, so if your child would like to purchase something, please send them to school with money. Hope to see you Tuesday!

Thanks for your support,

The First Grade Teachers

What We Did During Our Week:

Language Arts and Writing:  This week we talked about both opinion and narratives. Our opinion writing revolved around democracy – see below to find out more about our writing on that. We also read the Three Billy Goats Gruff and wrote some great retells of the story! We read a book called ‘Tsunami’ where they wrote about the characters, the problem, and the setting. We also wrote about our star student, Mariam!

Next week’s spelling words are: from, went, him, cub, rub, sub, tub, club, and stub.

Social Studies: We spent some time talking about democracy! We learned the jobs and responsibilities that the president has. We also learned how people vote, why they vote, and how they vote. For example, our decisions need to be informed. So, we got to vote on our favorite cookie! The kids wrote a pro and a con for each type of cookie in order to have an informed decision. Afterwards, they got to enter our private voting booth to cast their ballot and receive their voting button! Frosted cookies were the winner by a landslide! Of course we had to celebrate on Friday with actual frosted cookies!

Math: We spent some time on math word problems. They got to create their own math word problem with Pete the Cat. We also got to tally up our results from our cookie ballots, graph our results, and analyze our results to see which had the most, and which had the least. They had a blast with this math!

Next week’s math test is -4.

Science: We read a scholastic news article, “Tip-toe to the Pond” where we learned about a pond habitat and animals and plants that are at the pond! Next week we start our ocean unit. 🙂

Other: We had an ‘oceans in motion’ assembly on Tuesday, which will help kick off our new unit, which begins next week. We also got to look at some shells, shark teeth, and puffer fish!

For buddies on Friday we read “Michael Recycle” and they got to write a poem regarding ways to help keep our Earth clean. Happy Earth Day!

Please come and join the first graders as we celebrate the ending of our Economics unit with Market Day! Market Day is all about determining wants and needs, producing goods and services and trading. Family and friends are invited to help celebrate the world of producers and consumers by shopping at our market from 9am-11am on Tuesday, April 24th. All goods will range from .10 cents to $1.00. All Haigh students will have the opportunity to shop at our market, so if your child would like to purchase something, please send them to school with money. Hope to see you Tuesday!

Thanks for your support,

The First Grade Teachers

Upcoming Events:

Thursday, April 26th – field trip to Domino Farm

Monday, April 30th – Art in the Park PBIS

Wednesday, May 16th – Late Start

What We Did During Our Week:

Language Arts and Writing:  This week we continued with main idea – we looked at images and decided what the main idea could be based off of these. They are still working on learning the difference between one detail in the story and what the story is mostly about. We did a lot of fun opinion writing this week! We read a book “Hey, Little Ant”, where a boy is contemplating on killing an ant or letting it go free. The students got to write their opinion on what should happen to the ant, and give a reason to support their opinion. I was surprised with how many wanted to kill it! Haha We also read, “Duck! Rabbit!” For this book, the students got to decide whether they thought the animal was a duck, or if it was a rabbit. Afterwards we graphed our results, and duck just barely won! We also wrote about our star student, Ali!

Next week’s spelling words are: little, have, us, dog, log, jog, hog, blog, frog

Math: We rolled out new math centers….

• April’s count the room

• Making numbers with tens and ones

• Spring graphing

• “Adding more” raindrops

• Flower addition and subtraction

Next week’s math test is -3.

Science: With the crazy weather we’ve had this week from cold to 70 – we read a scholastic news article, “What Do You Do in the weather?” Afterwards, they got to write about their favorite type of weather and what they like to do in that type of weather. Thursday we spent some time in the sun while we had it. 🙂

Other: For buddies on Friday they each got an animal puppet and while the big buddies made a PowerPoint slide for facts about the animal – the kindergartners drew a picture of the animal and wrote about one of the facts that they learned about with their big buddy. It was a hit!

Chaperones for the field trip have been chosen! Thank you everyone – we had so many parent interests! We drew two names from a jar today and if you were chosen a note came home in your child’s green folder. I had never seen the kids so excited from a drawing. Haha

Saving an endangered animal: Haigh is raising money to help save a wolf. If you have any extra change around, send it in with your child and donate to our class fund to go towards saving the wolf! See more information below…

It’s time for the Penny/Nickel challenge!

This week, we are continuing our endangered animal adoption project. We are reusing milk jugs to collect money for adopting a wolf through the Detroit Zoo, and we need your help!

We are asking for your help with our penny/nickel challenge.

Bring in as many extra pennies or nickels as you can to help fill our jugs! At the end of the week, we’ll count up the totals and announce our winners!

Upcoming Events:

Thursday, April 26th – field trip to Domino Farm

What We Did During Our Week:

As I am sure most of you know by now, our class got hit hard this week with flu and strep throat. Majority of our class was gone for this week. So, rather than a sectioned newsletter I’ll just give you the main chunks! We did some vowel review, and we introduced ‘main idea’. This is something we will continue to learn about when we get back from break. We wrote about things that make us special and we wrote about our star students: Tyler and Bianca! We We had our spelling and math tests, when we come back from break, here are the new tests:

Spelling words: where, out, now, sip, lip, dip, slip, chip, dip.

Math test: -2

We did get to go outside with big buddies on an alphabet scavenger hunt. They each got a plate with the ABC’s written on them and they looked for things outside that begin with every letter of the alphabet.

Thursday was a busy day – we got to slime Mr. Short for doing well on our winter NWEA test, we had our PBIS game party, and had an ice cream social!

I hope you all have a fantastic break, and I hope to see everyone back at full health when we come back! 🙂

PBIS GAME DAY

This month our PBIS party will be all about games! Your child may choose to bring in a game from home or an electronic device to play on during the party. If your child does not have a game they want to bring to school, we have activities they may play with in class. If you do choose to send a game to school with your child, please label everything with your child’s name. Small items are easily lost, please think about what would be an appropriate game to send in with your child, as they will be responsible for whatever they choose to bring to school. Please send one game to school with your child on Thursday, March 29th.

Thank you!

What We Did During Our Week:

Language Arts and Writing: This week we wrote a narrative about a birthday party! We drew a story map as a brainstorming activity, then we wrote up our papers, then I typed them up, and they got to draw their final image for our book! These are truly impressive – be sure to celebrate these with your child when they come home next week. 🙂 We also finished up our vowel learning and have introduced the cvc-e pattern. For example, tim becomes time, hid becomes hide, slid becomes slide, etc. We will continue with this next week. We added a new fun center to Daily 5 – fishing for sight words! We also wrote about our star student, Ramez! And of course, as March is reading month we had many more visitors come to read!

Next Week’s spelling words are: did, what, mom, red, fed, wed, led, bed, and sled.

Math: We continued with our math centers and they took their first subtraction test – they all did great! Next week is -1.

Other: We had our Rain forest assembly! There were snakes, monkeys, and parrots. Hope some of you got to make it out to the evening shows! We read a book about Spring on Friday with big buddies and then they got to draw a picture to represent Spring! We cash in Dojo points every Friday, so this week we had our first lunch with the teacher! It takes 80 points to get lunch with me – that takes a lot of will power to not cash in. haha

Report cards came home today, please look over them, sign the envelope, and send the empty envelope back in their green folder.

PBIS GAME DAY

This month our PBIS party will be all about games! Your child may choose to bring in a game from home or an electronic device to play on during the party. If your child does not have a game they want to bring to school, we have activities they may play with in class. If you do choose to send a game to school with your child, please label everything with your child’s name. Small items are easily lost, please think about what would be an appropriate game to send in with your child, as they will be responsible for whatever they choose to bring to school. Please send one game to school with your child on Thursday, March 29th.

Upcoming Events:

PBIS and Ice Cream Social next Thursday

What We Did During Our Week:

Language Arts and Writing: This week we focused on the vowels. They mostly know these letters and that they have multiple sounds – but we made the explicit connection this week between vowels and consonants. From here, we focused on one vowel per day. We are leading into learning about the silent e pattern in the coming weeks. We read a book on pirate manners and wrote about ways to be polite. We also wrote about our star students – Noah and Dominic!

We had a few more readers come into our class, including the Dearborn High Football Team! Thank you everyone for taking the time to come in and read!

Next week’s spelling words are: that, did, but, had, bad, dad, mad, sad, pad

Math: New centers have been rolled out! We have…

• New themed count the room

• Number Bonds/Decomposing Numbers

• Pet shop addition cards

• Addition and Subtraction mixed into one center

• Addition with sticks of tens and ones

We are done with our addition test and moving onto subtraction! Next week’s math test is -0.

Science: We are learning about how animals interact within their environment; however, with it being St. Patrick’s Day this weekend, we spent some time learning how rainbows are made. We need rain and sun to make a rainbow and learned the ROYGBIV order.

Other: On Friday we got to make clovers with our big buddies filled with all the things that we are lucky for. 🙂

Upcoming Events:

Thursday, March 29th – Board Games PBIS (more information to come on this)

Popcorn week is next week!