I hope you have made plans to attend our small group conferences that we will have on Tuesday and Thursday of this week. The First Grade Team feels this is the best way to explain to you how we do things in our classroom, what the expectations are, and give you a glimpse of what our day is like. We will also cover in detail the curriculum your children will be learning. This is an informal meeting that I hope will answer and/or clarify questions you may already have. You will only need to come to one; they will both cover the same things. The small group meetings will take place in our classroom. We will begin on time and finish on time. Please remember that this meeting time if for parents only. Also, this is not the time to discuss your child specifically, we can schedule a conference to address those questions and concerns separately. If for some reason your schedule does not allow you to attend either of the meetings, please let me know so we can work out a time convenient for you.
We will continue this week practicing our expectations, procedures and routines. However, on Wednesday I will be out of the class for the first part of the day. I am a member of the DIBELS Testing Team and will be pulled from my class three times a year. The children will be divided among the remaining first grade teachers and my promises that they will be just fine!
READING
I am in the process of looking over our Read Well data to begin placing children appropriately in their reading group. We will also begin learning about the different centers in our classroom and what our behavior should look like while engaging in the centers. I hope to begin Reading groups after Labor Day!
WORD WALL WORDS
Please begin practicing the word wall words found in your child's take home folder. If you child can read them within three seconds, you may want to begin writing them. We will review them daily during our morning work. A daily reading grade will be given three times each nine weeks so it will be of importance that they know them.
LANGUAGE
The children are completing DOL (Daily Oral Language) sentences each morning as part of their morning work. Last week they were introduced to our first grade lined paper and we learned how to head our paper starting with our name then our date. We also learned that a sentence is a complete thought and it begins with a capital letter and ends with a period. They began copying sentences from the board onto their paper. We will continue copying sentences this week. Starting next week, the children will be expected to edit the sentences from the board. The sentences will not have a capital letter at the beginning and the children will have to copy the sentence correctly. The paper will come home each day for you to reinforce the skill being taught as it will be taken for a grade each Friday. The children will be encouraged to correct their papers using a red crayon so you will be able to identify their mistakes.
MATH
We begin our math each day with a calendar lesson. There are so many skills and concepts that are taught from this so we usually spend 20 minutes of our math time on the calendar. After Labor Day, the children will receive a notebook to record the calendar information I have been modeling for them.
SCIENCE/SOCIAL STUDIES
Science and Social Studies will be covered in class mostly during Read Well. However, we do have several guest speakers waiting to come and talk with us on different topics each month. Of course, we love having our very own AVIATOR moms and dads share with us their jobs that always interest the children so please do not be shy about sharing with us! We would LOVE it!!!
REMINDERS:
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I am still missing some paper work from some children. Please check through your stack and make sure you have not left anything out. Once I receive the Media Release From from everyone I will be posting pictures of all the fun learning that has taken place so far!
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If you have not already joined our wonderful PTA, please consider doing so. They do so much for our children and our school.
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Also, I know times are tough, but our JUST GIVE campaign is a wonderful opportunity to help support Blount. And the best part is that fundraisers will not take place during the year if our goal is met! Yahoo!!!
