Back to School 2012-13

Welcome to 1st Grade!!  I am so excited to meet a new group of amazing children and their families.  WOHE is looking great inside (thanks to our amazing custodians), and I have been busy getting the room ready for another year of fun and learning.  Enjoy the last couple weeks of summer, and I will plan on meeting each of you at Meet the Teacher night on August 14th!  See you then.

Thank You Parents

I just wanted to take a moment to thank each of you for taking time out of your busy lives to come spend an hour with your child at school. We had a wonderful turn out for the Student Led Conferences this week! I hope you enjoyed the time just half as much as your child. :-) They have all been so excited for this opportunity to show you what they have been doing at school. I thank you, and more importantly, your children thank you!


A big Shout Out to the Following October Apple Winners:
Red-Academic Apples: Logan and Jayden
Yellow-Improvement Apples: Gloria and Emma
Orange-Behavior Apples: Nicholas and Claire
Green-Teamwork Apples: Caleb and Isaac

Up-coming News: We will be beginning a big "addition and subtraction" unit in math. This unit will take up all of November. Be asking about "strategies" to help us add and subtract.


In writing, we will be starting to organize our thoughts into a good sequence for a story. Then we can begin to think about writing a good beginning and using good "juicy" detailed words. We, of course, will continue to focus on using good conventions (Capital letters, punctuation, and sounds in a word).


Finally, we will be combining some math and science skills as we study, measure, and explore pumpkins.


Thanks again for supporting your child, and have a great weekend.

Mrs. Newman

Raz-Kids!

1. Have you heard your child talk about Raz-Kids? This is a new reading site the students were introduced to this week. It is a wonderful tool to practice reading, fluency, and comprehension. Each child at WOHE has an "account" which they can access both at school and at home. Attached to this newsletter is a copy of your child's log in information. Once at the site, the children should know what to do. They may read a book (on their level), listen to a book read to them, or take a comprehension quiz. Each task will earn them stars that they may use in the rocket room to purchase things. If you have internet access outside of school, please take advantage of this wonderful site.

2. The Orchard Hills 5K race is coming on October 22! New information came out today, that if our class has 100% participation of at least one family member from each family either be in the race or sign up and come volunteer to help with the race, then our class will win a free IPad. Wow, I would love to have an Ipad for the students to work on! Please, if you are able, sign up to enter the race or volunteer to help. Call the office to find out more.

3. Has your child purchased their ear-buds for the classroom? We are using the classroom computer to work on our Raz-Kids reading, but we don't want to share ear germs. :) You can either send in a set of ear-buds from home, or send in $2 and we will get a set for your child. Once your child has ear-buds, then they have access to Raz-Kids in the classroom. Thanks

4. Can your child tie his/her shoes? This is one of those life skills that is next to impossible to teach at school. It is an individual skill. If you could take just a few minutes each night helping your child learn how to tie shoes, it will really give your child a boost of self confidence and independence.

5. Finally, Parent-Teacher Conferences with the 1st quarter report card are coming up. WOHE is doing the student led conferences again this year. This is a wonderful opportunity for you to come spend 45-50 minutes at school with your child, letting him/her show you what they know! Attached is a form for you to choose your conference time. If you would please pick 2 times that would work well for you, I will do everything I can to accomodate your preferences. If you have other children at WOHE, please indicate their name and teacher at the bottom of the form, so we can try to coordinate the times for you.

Thanks for reading. Have a great Fall weekend.

The End of September

Hello, parents. Can you believe it is the end of September already?? Time really does fly by. I have a few items of interest for this week.

First of all, I am sending home (I hope) a print out copy of the 1st grade blog site at WOHE. This is a great resource spot. There is information and child friendly website links on this page. Please check it out. Go the the home page for Willard R-2 Schools, then click on the WOHE site, from there click on the 1st grade classes link, and then you can also click on my page link. On my page, I hope to add a weekly update on what is happening in our class. I will try to always print out the first page of our class page and send it home also. This way, hopefully we can all stay informed. :-)

I would like to congraduate the following students for receiving the first "apple awards" of the year at our Tiger Pride assembly on Wednesday:
Red Academic apples - Camryn and Claire (great writers)
Orange Character apples - Grace and Logan (great responsible behavior)
Yellow Improvement apples - Bryson and Jordin D. (great readers)
Green Team Work apples - Jayden and Jordan W. (great "bucket filling" friends)
Way to go to all!! Remember, parents are always welcome at our Tiger Pride Assemblies. Check the calendar link on the WOHE website for all the dates for the year.

Spelling is coming!!! Be watching for a parent note to come home on Monday explaining our 1st grade spelling program. We are excited to be using a wonderful spelling program that really teaches the students to be life long spellers. It is a little different than your typical weekly spelling test programs; but I LOVE it.

Finally, in class the last few weeks, we have really been working on: learning and then applying reading strategies to help figure out tricky words, beginning addition and story problems, writing sentences/stories so that others can read them, and learning to do our part with our behavior and great ACTIVE listening so we can learn all that we can. It has been a great start to the school year.

Oh, one final note: I would like to say hello, to Emma (our new student) and a sad good bye to Macie (today is her last day).

Have a great weekend.

Welcome

I would like to welcome you to first grade. It has taken me a little time to get to my blog this year. I apologize for that. I will try to update it and send home weekly news as to what is happening in our classroom so you can stay informed. Please check back. :)

As to what has been happening so far this year: We have all been working very hard on learning the rules and routines of a new classroom and a new teacher. We have also taken some time to get to know one another. We know that if we all work our best and treat each other with respect, then we can have fun while we are learning LOTS this year! Here is a little general classroom information that you might find helpful.

Classroom Rules:
1. Follow directions the first time
2. Be nice and polite
3. Be safe
4. Be a good listener

I hold the students to a high expectation in regards to their behavior. I know the students can do it; so then when they themselves see that it can be done, they have an enormous sense of personal pride!

Daily Schedule:
8:20 Morning jobs and activities
8:40 Pledge and roll call
8:45 Read to Self with Guided reading groups
9:10 Whole group reading lesson
9:45 Restroom Break
9:35 Writer's Workshop
10:20 Word Work/Poetry notebook
10:45 Work Station with Guided reading groups
11:05 Special Classes (M-PE, T-Library, W-Art, TH-Music, F-Computer)
11:57 Lunch
12:22 Restroom Break
12:30 Calendar time
12:45 Math
1:35 Theme time
2:05 Read to partner with teacher conferring with readers
2:35 Recess
3:05 Pack up and chapter book read time
3:30 Dismiss

NOVEMBER

As I sit and think about November being half over already, I am reminded of all of the things I have to be thankful for. One of those being such a wonderful group of first graders this year. As the year progresses, I feel like I really begin to get to know each of your children; and I love what I learn and see each day. Thank you for allowing me to be with your child this year.

I do want to tell you about a few happenings in our class lately (I realize it has been a long while since I updated the blog). We had a unit of fire safety. This is a unit which is near and dear to my heart because of a personal connection with house fires. I hope your child came home a few weeks ago and talked with you about what they would need to do to stay safe if they were ever in a burning building. I also hope they had you check your smoke alarms for working batteries. I can tell you, smoke alarms do save lives!!

We are now in a unit of study discussing the first Thanksgiving, map skills, and how things are the same and different from long ago and today. We will continue this unit through Thanksgiving.

In math, we are working on our second chapter of addition and subtraction skills. In this unit we are thinking of and practicing strategies to help us be able to add and subtract quickly and accurately. You can work on this at home just by giving your child oral addition or subtraction problems and let them solve them.

Thanks again for raising such great children and Happy Thanksgiving!

Handwriting Work

Happy fall, everyone! Time just goes way to fast. I wanted to give you a quick update on the happenings in our classroom:

We have been working hard on handwriting lately. Have you noticed? We have been practicing the correct way to write letters and numbers. We have also talked about where those letters and numbers go on the lines on our paper. And finally, we have talked about how important it is to slow down a little when we are writing so we can write neatly so others can read what we write. Please stress these points at home when your child is writing.

We have also been working hard on listening to the sounds in a word, counting those sounds, and then putting a letter with the sound and writing the letter. This is the first step in spelling words. Listening to the sounds!

Speaking of spelling; we are starting our first spelling list today. Most Monday's, your child will bring home what we call our "word preview" paper. This is the list of this week's spelling words for your to practice at home. Our spelling words for the year are not necessarily hard words, but they are frequently used words, and words that we can use to learn other words. We will be working alot with word families and unusual letter combination for new sounds with our spelling words this year. So, just because the list doesn't "look" hard, don't worry, we will be doing plenty with the words all week long.

Finally, please check the home page to the 1st grade blog. We have added links to this page. Some of these links are for the parents, some are for the teachers, and some are for the children. We will be using the sites this year. I will be going to the blog to pull these websites up to use, so don't be surprised if your child ask you to go to the 1st grade blog to find a game to play or a book to read.

Remember, if you subscribe to the 1st grade blog and to my individual class page, you will get an email anytime something is changed, added, or updated. It makes it easy to watch for new information.