Welcome to my first blog post of the 2019-2020 school year! It's a bit later than normal because lucky me had to get a partial root canal right after school today. I have to get is finished in a few week. That was a lovely start to a new year. Enough about poor me..... This blog is my newsletter. It will give you an overview of what we are doing in first grade and give you upcoming events, announcements, concerns or celebrations. If you are using your phone it's nice to scroll to the bottom click "web version" that way you can see the right side bar that has information like "spelling words", "schedule", etc.
Here are this week's happenings:
- I sent our first August reading calendar home last week. Remember that the only "homework" I expect is ten minutes of nightly reading each school night. Please mark on the calendar how many minutes your child reads each night. At the end of the month, sign the calendar (don't forget your child's name) and return to school for a small treat and certificate. Right now reading can be from whatever books you can find at home. You can read to your child or they can read to you, but when the take home books start to come home I would like that reading to come from those books. Your child reading their take home book TO you not you reading to them. More information will come home after students are tested. Speaking of testing, we are starting our state mandated reading test tomorrow. It's called DIBELS and is administered 3 times per year. This test is diagnostic and helps us place our students into appropriate reading groups based on the results. It will also help his determine which reading level your child is on so that the take-home books will be an appropriate level for your child. The results of this test will be sent home in the next couple of weeks.
- Our sight word soldier will begin this Wednesday. A note a sight word list will come home with your child that day. This is a great way to motivate students to practice reading high-frequency words automatically. Watch for that on Wednesday.
- Today in your child's folder you will find a Starving Student Card. This is a fundraiser through our PTA. I buy one every year and it pays for itself after I've enjoyed Costa Vida a couple of times. This is optional, but this year they are having a contest for returning the most cards or money by class. The first class that gets either their cards or money for the card returned will receive a pizza party. We are competing with the other first grades and kindergarten. If you want the card, keep it and send the $ back with the order form in the envelope provided. If you don't want the card return the card as is again in the envelope provided. If you want more cards please stipulate that on the order form and send the extra money and then cards will be distributed.
- Another PTA fundraiser/party is the school Luau which will be held next Monday, August 26 from 5:00-7:00. Most of the games are FREE and tickets can be bought for food or games that are a bit of extra money. I think each year we've had this it's gotten bigger and better and it's fun for the students to come back to school and see their friends and teachers in an informal setting.
- We have started all of our curriculum. In reading we are reviewing vowel and consonant sounds. We have learned that vowel sounds are those where our mouth is open and air is unimpeded and consonant sounds have a part of our mouth that touches as we make them. We are practicing writing the letters that make those sounds and we will start learning about nouns and what makes a sentence this week. In our listening and learning portion we have starting hearing fables. Fables are short works of fiction that teach a lesson or moral. We heard The Boy Who Cried Wolf, and today heard The Maid and the Milk Pail. Ask your child the lesson of each of these fables. As we hear these fables and stories we will learn about characters, the setting and the plot. We will discover multi-meaning words such as "company" and explore new vocabulary words in each lesson. Today we "balanced" our books on our heads just like Peggy the Milk maid did in the fable.
- In math we just took a pretest on our first unit which is addition to 10. We will learn that adding is joining two numbers together to get a sum. We will learn about different ways to make ten (2 + 7 or 5 + 5 etc). We will learn about the commutative property of addition (3 + 1 = 4 so 1 + 3 = 4). We'll also use the terms addends and sum when referring to the numbers that are added together (addends) or the answer (sum). Students will be placed in WIN ("what I need) groups for Wednesday groups starting next week. Students that need more support will receive it, students who need more practice will receive it and students that need to be challenged will be. We are excited for this Wednesday math WIN time. Students will rotate and may have a different teacher during WIN time.
- Today we learned the last of our four classroom rules. Students came home with a little booklet that outline our rules. Please go over these with your child. We also started our behavior "clip chart". Students will come home with a Behavior chart every Friday. Please look over those charts each week and talk with your child about their behavior. Many students are struggling still to show appropriate behavior based on our four rules. Please encourage your child to show appropriate behavior at school and the importance acting appropriately and respectfully which is a key to success in life and in the academic setting. We have talked many times about what their job is as a student (to learn) and if they are talking while I'm trying to teach, or can't keep their hands to themselves or not following instructions they can't learn or they are impeding the learning of others. Unfortunately if students can't behave appropriately some of their privileges may be taken away like library, PE or computers. If your child is "red" at the end of the day on the clip chart I will call or text and let you know. Please follow up on that so that we can be a team not only with academics but with appropriate behavior too!
- Thanks to those that have supplied snacks for the first few days or school. That helps with the all-day transition to first grade. Thanks also for sending school supplies. As noted, some of those supplies are to be shared in our class. Some students didn't know that and didn't understand that we are sharing pencil erasers or dry erase markers. It's a distraction if students want to keep all of "their" pencil erasers in their own desks.
I hope that you feel free to contact me anytime with questions or concerns. Send an e-mail or a text through REMIND for the fastest response. You are also welcome to call the school and leave a message and I can call you back. Like I said at Back to School Night I love teaching first grade and I know how much you love your kids and I will do my best to help them feel safe and happy while at school.
Happy Reading,
Mrs. Armstrong
