FIRST GRADE FOOTNOTES


Dear First Grade Families: 11/13/09

We had another busy, but productive week in 1st grade. While we all enjoyed our long 5-day weekend, it was tough for some to readjust to school and the class rules and routines. This week:

LOST TEETH: Alexis lost a tooth in class on November 4th. Not her first, but fun to celebrate anyway!

Speaking of celebrating . . .

Our class won the Music Banner for best behaved class. We’ve been proudly displaying the banner for the past week. We hope to win it again real soon!

We’re all very proud of our Fire Prevention Poster Contest winners: Chenoa Yelle, Karlee Quenzel, Madison Holtz, and Chloe Gerstenbacher. All of our students did a great job on the posters. I’m glad I wasn’t asked to judge them!

MATH: This week we learned about patterns, what makes one and how to draw and continue one, odd and even numbers, and continued to did more practice with nickels and dimes. The students are learning to tell what an even or odd number is by making pairs and looking for number patterns (0,2,4,6,8 = even and 1,3,5,7,9 = odd). We had fun counting and pairing Smarties and then eating them! It was fun to watch the math concept “click” once we brought out the candy!!

LANGUAGE ARTS: I am happy to report that most students scored a 100 or got only one wrong on the “All That Corn” reading test. This was especially exciting because this was the first test the students had to read on their own. They certainly rose to the occasion. I’m also proud to say that most students scored a 100 on the Posttest after completing our first Reading book theme, Guess Who. Next week we will start our 2nd (out of 5) Reading books, Catch a Dream.

We have also begun to create a class book that will showcase each student’s writing. This week they wrote about what they are good at in school and out of school. This book will be on display for all to see as we continue to work on it.

SPELLING: This week we reviewed our high frequency words and had a Spelling Bee. Next week’s spelling words will be /e/ words: hen, pen, men, end, send, set, all, call, very, that; bonus words are: day, every, her, said, was, with.

ART: This week the students created a harvest bag under the direction of Mrs. Holtz – Madison’s Mom. The students just love to have guest “artists”.
Make sure you stop by and check out our Thanksgiving bulletin board. The students wrote what they are thankful for on our huge turkey and what food they liked best of the Thanksgiving meal.

CONFERENCES: It was great to meet with you all during our conferences. As I said to most of you – your students are off to a great start in 1st grade. It’s hard to believe we’ve only been together 44 school days!!

UPCOMING DATES:
11/25 – 1:00 Day
11/25 – 11:00 Annual Thanksgiving Day Soccer Game – Staff vs. 3rd and
4th Graders
11/25 – 12:00 Thanksgiving Holiday Party
11/26 & 11/27 – School Closed

We hope you enjoyed the Book Fair and PTA PJ Story time. Thanks to all of the parents who purchased books for our class. We are enjoying reading them together!

Have a great weekend!

Mrs. Mahoney/Mrs. Johnson