Geer Park is participating in a fundraiser. This will benefit the classroom and the students. Information will be coming home with your first grader tomorrow. It will be in their blue Take Home Folder.
The kids did great last week. They completed their NWEA testing, we learned 4 types of workstation rotations, and all of our Developmental Reading Assessments are finished. They were also the best behaved, well-mannered grade level during lunch, so they earned ice cream on Friday. Yay! I am so proud of them.
Please encourage any of the parents you know from our classroom to sign up for this blog. Again, it is my main form of communication for the week. https://iblog.dearbornschools.org/kortej/2022/09/25/weekly-newsletter-for-september-26-30-2022/
Please be sure to check the weather and temperature in the morning. It has been pretty chilly lately to start the day. Then, sometimes it warms up in the afternoon. It would be a good idea to have your first grader wear a coat in the morning. We can always take it off if the temperatures warm up.
Starting the first week of October, I will be sending home a composition to practice spelling words every week. This week, we will do all of the practice in the classroom. That way, the kids and you will know what I expect for the practice. This will help expand their vocabulary for writing and reading.
This week’s words are: ran, can, fan, pat, bat, hat, had, mad, go, the, see, she. There will be 3 cold words on the spelling test that will apply the understanding of how words rhyme. For example, if your child learns how to spell: ran, can and fan, then they can spell tan, man, and pan.
Again, no spelling homework this week. It will begin the week of October 3.
We will be starting to use our chromebooks in class soon. I worked all weekend on the schoology page. It has quick links for the students. I worked on their assigning usernames and passwords too. We are almost set. I have a few technical difficulties that I am working through. For example, I purchased a licence for the students to use a reading program. It is not working. I’m a bit disappointed because it was expensive. I hope I can either get it working or get my money back. I am hoping for the best.
As soon as everything is set. I will send home username and password information to you. Thank you for your patience.
Throughout the school year, we will have formal writing instruction: Writer’s Workshop. We will be writing a narrative for the first time to get a baseline assessment of what the students know this week. After this week, I will have writer’s workshops sessions.
I have finished our Developmental Reading Assessments. We will start reading groups soon. I will see how they fit into our day. When the book bag comes home in your child’s backpack, please let your child read to you. Sign the literacy log card. Send them back the next day.
The rhyming words have a short a vowel sound and 5 high frequency words. High frequency words are words that appear most often in print. The goal is for your child to recognize them immediately when reading instead of “sounding them out”.
We have a topic quiz on Monday. This will be on adding to find the sum and also figuring out missing addends.
Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday your child will be identifying the greater number in a number sentence and then counting up or counting on by 1, 2, or 3.
We will have another topic quiz on Friday.
Topic quizzes are formative assessments that test your child’s understand of mathematics concepts in small chunks.
Last week, we learned about rules at school. Then we talked about rules at home. Some are the same. All rules help us to get along with one another. This week we will learn about the word consequence. We will discuss consequences at school and consequences at home. Then we will learn about the concept of Power with Authority and Power without Authority.
Power with Authority = people who have the right to make the rules and enforce the consequences. (Mom, Dad, guardians, principals, teachers, etc.)
Power without Authority = people who do not have the right to tell you what to do. (Bullies, strangers, sometimes your peers.)
The resource we use for our English Language Arts is called Benchmark. The first 20 days are a review for success. We are finishing up this review in the next 2 weeks. We will pause our review on Monday and Tuesday, because we are going to take our Reading and Math NWEA. Please encourage your first grader to take their time. I will do the same. Remember, I cannot help your first grader, but we can use the results to guide our learning this year.
By the way, if a form for free lunch came home in the blue take home folder, please send it back as soon as possible. Thank you.
We get to go to the library this Monday. To check out a book, your child must have all their borrowed books returned. There are a few first graders with books out from the summer. Please take a peek around your house. These are the titles checked out by a few families.
We will be taking the Reading NWEA on Monday. We will try our best on this fall assessment.
We will be reviewing the letters Kk, Hh, Bb, Uu, Rr, Gg, Ee. We review the sounds and how it is written. We also connect the letter and sound to a real item.
We will be learning about syllables or word parts. Understanding how many syllables a word will help your child when reading and writing longer words.
We are working on writing without worries. I am modeling how to write about a topic. My goal is to get the kids to start writing about a topic without worrying about “how to spell” a word.
Math Vocabulary:
We will be analyzing number stories (word problems) and deciding how to solve them based on the information. I call them number stories, because calling them word problems can make them seem hard. They are not hard if you can then about them in a positive way and work out the answer step by step.
We will also be working on unknown or missing addends. We will know the sum and one of the addends.
Thank you for monitoring the math homework. It makes a huge difference in your child’s understanding of math. Remember, it must be written by your child.
We will start Social Studies this week. We just learned about the Constitution of the United States because Constitution Day was on Saturday. The Constitution is the highest law of the land. We wrote our own Classroom Constitution. It is the rules for our classroom. Our rules are to be respectful, responsible, and safe. We do that with integrity and honesty.
This week we will learn how rules help us get along with one another. We will also learn about power with authority and power without authority. We will learn about the different people who have power with authority (mom, dad, grandma, babysitter, principal, teacher) and the people who try to have power without authority (bully, strangers)
Hello first grade families!
I hope you had a lovely weekend. I was in Petoskey for a soccer tournament.
Thank you for subscribing to my blog. This is the way I communicate special dates, important events, photos of the kids, and our academic goals for the week. As of right now, we have only 7 of the 20 families subscribed. Hopefully, more of my first grade families will subscribe soon.
Thank you for all of the classroom donations of paper, tissues, disinfecting wipes, soap, and hand sanitizer. The paper is always needed.
The other items will help keep us healthy by keeping our room clean.
Thank you to all the families who attended Open House last Thursday. It was a wonderful opportunity to meet each other, for you to see our room, and for your child to show you around.
If you did not sign up for a parent-teacher conference, please email me and I will reserve a day and time for you.
Tuesday, September 13 – Wear gym shoes – your first grader has gym on Tuesdays. They will have to sit out if they are not wearing gym shoes.
Friday, September 16 – 12:05 dismissal (Half day of school) Teachers have professional development learning in the afternoon.
I have some cute photos of the first graders playing Shake those Disks. I will publish them as soon as I know which kids can be published on the blog. If you signed a form indicating that you do not want photos published, I will place an emoji smiley face over your child’s face.
We are still in our 20 day review before starting spelling. I am reviewing letters and sounds. We are blending letters together to make consonant vowel consonant words. We call them CVC words. They have a short vowel sound. CVC words will be our initial spelling patterns.
We are learning to write in our journals without worrying about “how to spell” a word. We are saying it and writing the letters of the sounds we hear. We call that hearing and recording sounds in words.
We are also learning to be responsible at learning stations. We call them workstations. Right now, we have 3. They are Reading, Writing, and Game/Puzzle workstations. We will add the Word Work and Computer workstations soon. These are important because they allow your child to practice a taught skill while I assess and teach reading to small groups.
We are learning about the commutative property in addition. For example, 2+3=5 and 3+2=5. The addends can be switched around, they will still add to the same sum.
We are also learning about all the ways to make an 8, 9, and 10.
We are working with ten frames, drawings with quick circles, and number bonds.
We went on a hunt with partners looking for living and non-living things. We will share them this week. We will start learning about plants and animals.
I hope you all had a lovely weekend with your first grader. We will continue to learn classroom routines.
We will be swapping back and forth with Science and Social Studies from week to week. We are starting with science. This week we will be learning about living and nonliving things.
Vocabulary
living = An organism (plant or animal) that grows, takes in nutrients, and reproduces.
non-living = An object that does NOT grow, does NOT take in nutrients, and does NOT reproduce.
nutrients = A substance that provides nourishment for growth and making energy
reproduce = To make another organism (plant or animal) like the first organism.
dead = Something that was once living, but is no longer alive.
food = A substance a living thing can take in to get energy or to help it grow.