1-7 February 2010
Here's our adjusted schedule for the month, so far! What a wild ride, we'll have:
4th-Report Cards Sent Home-Please sign the report & envelope-return both to school
8th-No School/Selected Parent Conferences
9th-100th Day Bottle Project and related assignments due
11th-100th Day of School-please send in your volunteer acceptance-8:45-10:30 AES GYM
*12th-Valentine Exchange-16 Valentines, bring to school in a bag @ 8:00 a.m.
15th-NO SCHOOL-Presidents' Day Observed
19th-Pizzeria Study Trip-Please send in Euro and permission
This is subject to change, of course! Check out the homework links and continue reading the books and sight words list in the take home Reading Bag.
Welcome to February! The 1st semester of First Grade is now history and we'll look forward to the last half of the year, which ends on June 17th. The students have shown a lot of growth and demonstrate all that they've learned throughout the days they spend at school. We are working very diligently on social skills and following directions to assist in quality and amount of work completed. We've added Reading Counts quizzes to their menu of center activities. These 10 questions quizzes assess their comprehension on stories they've read and help them to read with that purpose in mind.Student's must score a minumum of 7 out of 10 questions to score a point. This, added with Reader's Response Logs, RAZ-kids reading on-line, and Guided Reading Groups in school, will coordinate the kind of readers that will be ready to enter 2nd grade in the fall. Thank you for all your help.
Students are also beginning to read directions independently on daily work, tests, and during center time. During math, the word/story problems, also give them another opportunity to test their comprehension, but selecting appropriate strategies and developing a plan to show, explain, and solve the solutions.
Spelling continues to develop in their written work. We are using our word wall to monitor our spelling of the many sight words, and continuing to 'build' words using what we know about the rime part (rhyming end) of the words we've worked on. We will also practice generating a word list of those we can recall from our memory. These are basically 'words in our heads' that we retrieve without visual prompts. This is important to develop fluency in writing, and reading. Take 10 minutes and practice this skill. All you need is a blank piece of paper, a pencil, 10 minutes, then on your mark, get set, write! Count how many words were spelled correctly, and see how they improve week after week. This is not a copying exercise. It's a mental/mental exercise. A new spiral notebook could be something fun for them to have in their backpack, so they can experiment with words they know and also ones they need to work on.
Please return 1 signed copy of the report card in the envelope provided, and keep the other copy for your records.
Mrs. Petty
Let's have a great week.
