FIRST GRADE FOOTNOTES



Dear First Grade Families: 1/8/10

Happy New Year! I trust all of you enjoyed the holidays with your families. Check out our new bulletin board, “It’s SNOW Secret We Make a Great Team!” The first graders (and I) have settled into our routines and are getting back on the learning track!

INCENTIVES: We have many positive individual and group incentives first graders can strive for. Each student has a star chart and earn stars for random acts of kindness, good work, great answers, suggestions, and being caught doing the right thing. Once their star chart is full, they receive a free snack in the cafeteria.

This week we instituted a class incentive “gum ball” machine. When the class is on the right track they earn a gum ball (a colored dot sticker) to place on the empty gumball machine. Once the gumball machine is full, the class will vote on their reward. Such suggestions have been: a PJ day, pizza party, movie day, dance party, “Alvin and the Chipmunks” dance party, and being allowed to chew gum in school for a day. We’ll have to convince Dr. Berkowitz about that idea! I’ll be in touch to solicit some parent volunteers for the reward party!

Of course we still have the green/yellow/red day incentives and students continue to strive to stay on “green” each day. Some days this is easy, some days it’s not, but every day is a new day!

MATH: We have added a daily word problem to our Math lessons. The students enjoyed working on word problems about seals! This week we finished up a review of Unit 3 and had our Unit 3 Assessment. This review and assessment covered the topics of adding and exchanging money (nickels, dimes, pennies), frames and arrow problems, telling time to the ½ hour, odd and even numbers, and making number sentences. While half of the class earned A’s, many of our students need more practice at home with these skills. Suggestions for extra practice: have them count your spare change; use counters such as macaroni, cereal, M&Ms, etc. to make addition and subtraction number sentences; have them tell you the time to the ½ hour (8:30, 9:30, etc.), ask them whether a number is even or odd (remember: 2,4,6,8 first graders are really great!)

LANGUAGE ARTS: Our non-fiction story this week was “Where Do Frogs Come From?” From our reading, we learned about the life cycle of a frog, what each stage looks like, and what the frog eats. We were able to tie in Science as the students made a frog life cycle paper chain for our Science bulletin board.
To allow for more individualized instruction, the class was split in half this week –half reading the story with me and the other half independently completing workbook pages and a writing assignment (with Mrs. Johnson’s assistance). This is an ongoing goal and challenge for me! Next week’s story is called, “Try Your Best.” Feel free to have your child bring home their reading book every night to practice the current story and future stories.

**Several of you have asked about improving your child’s comprehension strategies. I will be sending home some information next week to help you help them in this critical area. **

SPELLING – The students (and I) are enjoying using the electronic whiteboard to enhance our lessons. This week we practiced spelling our words many different ways, looking for patterns, and phonetically spelling words we didn’t know, which will enhance their reading skills as well. Next week’s spelling words are r-controlled /or/ words: or, for, corn, cork, fork, more, hang, ring, two, from; bonus words (or high-frequency words for the weekly story): be, good, Mr., need, our, right, saw, time, try. Each week our list of words will include several review words and high-frequency words;

BOOK BAGS: The book bags are finally ready to go home. Hooray! (Now you know what I did over my Christmas vacation). Each Friday your child will bring home a bag of books geared toward their reading level. They are to read and reread these books to you over the weekend and return the bag on Monday. Read/Reread/Return/Repeat! A new set of books will be sent home each Friday. Please note that each book has a sticker with a letter on it. The goal is for first graders to read independently at Level I by the end of first grade. The goal was to leave Kindergarten at a C or D level. Some did, some didn’t. Please work with your children as they continue to improve their reading skills. Those at the higher reading levels are also responsible for completing a short book report on their book bag books.

WRITING: We continue to work on our class book that showcases each student’s writing. We will display our “masterpieces” during the next Parent conferences. At the end of the school year each student will get to take home their own pages to keep as a souvenir of their first grade accomplishments!

ART: HELP!! Our art schedule is completely open for the rest of 2010. Our Art time is scheduled on Wednesdays from 2-3 pm. If you’re interested please see me, email me, stop me in the hall, etc. The students sure do enjoy the break from my teaching and love to have guests in the room. Thanks to all who helped with crafts over the Christmas holidays!

UPCOMING DATES:
1/18 – NO SCHOOL – MLK Holiday
1/25 – PTA Skating Party
2/8 – PTA Gym Night
2/11 – Jump Rope for Heart (parent volunteers will be needed; details to follow)
2/24 – Appel Farm Assembly for students

If you have any questions, comments, concerns, please feel free to email me at dmahoney@elmerschool.com, call me at school (7:45 am – 3:45 pm), send in a note, or stop by the classroom.

Have a great weekend!
Mrs. Mahoney/Mrs. Johnson