23-29 May 2011
I guess you already noticed that I didn't even post anything last week. So sorry about that. We did finish the DRA2 Reading Assessments this past week. It's a very time consuming assessment and several students had to have more than one reading completed and scored. Thanks for your patience with my neglect.
This Week:
We'll begin our last story in the Reading Street series! Yes, our 30th story and skill set will be:
Title: Ben Franklin & His First Kite
Author: Stephen Krensky
Illustrator: Bert Dodson
Genre: Biography
Comprehension Skill: Theme
Comprehension Strategy: Ask Questions while reading
Study Skill: Encyclopedia (we use on-line versions here at school)
Spelling/Phonics: Prefixes un-, re- /Long I,& O
Language/Vocabulary: Multi-meaning Words
Grammar: More About Pronouns
Writing: Plan
Spelling Words:
1. unhappy
2. refill
3. untie
4. undo
5. repay
6. unkind
7. undress
8. retell
9. reopen
10. refund
11. different
12. carry
Students will begin taking the end of year test on-line. It has 60 questions. We will not take this test in 1 sitting. It will probably take 2, and even 3 sittings for some students. Even though Reading Street, our newly adopted Language Arts Textbook has been intense, the outcome with how the students are reading show them performing very well. Thank you so much for all your help with reading/recording/listening/and writing in their journals throughout the year. It wouldn't have happened w/o you! We'll conclude our End of Year Language Arts testing with a final writing sample about What I Learned in First Grade. Students will brainstorm, using a graphic organizer and compose a sentence for each idea. Handwriting, composition and overall organization and spelling will be scored using a 4 point rubric. We''ll sharpen up all our pencils and then we'll do some end of year kinds of things outside the text throughout the final days.
We are also completing our final assessments for the year in Math. We have one more Unit test that will cover addition, subtraction, time, calendar and problem solving using key words with subtraction and addition. The strategy used will be drawing a picture, writing and equation and labeling the answer. There are 20 questions, each one being weighted with 5 points.
We have 3 students PCSing and another student planning to attend a Grandfather's birthday, all with early departure in June. The rest of us will linger to the last day of school, a half day on Thursday, June 16th.
I plan to send all items home on Wednesday, 15th June. Please let your student bring an empty backpack on Thursday, the last day containing only a bottle of water. We'll have some last day fun and be on our way to summer.
Please keep these dates in mind:
9 June: Aviano Elementary School will be having field day on Thursday, June 9th. The events for grades 1 and 2 will be from 8:30 –10:30 and for grades 3,4,5 and multi-age from 12:00 – 2:15. Please consider volunteering to make this a successful event. WEAR APPROPRIATE SHOES and CLOTHING. Apply SUNSCREEN before coming to school.
Water....water.....water!!.and a lot of FUN!
Let's have another great week.
p.s. Thank you to Mrs. Hall, Aiden's mom for bringing us so much nutritious food on the day the power outage occurred! We're still enjoying some of them! :-)
Thursday, May 19, 2011
PARENTS: Your child LOVES Pixie! Check out this offer--... for a discount
Go to TECH 4 LEARNING WEB-Site: http://www.tech4learning.com/parents
To help keep K-5 students from forgetting what they learned in school this summer vacation, we are giving away guides for parents which include specific and practical Pixie activities across the curriculum to do at home with their child.
Each guide helps parents:
• Support learning at home through fun, curriculum-related activities,
• View important curriculum concepts covered at each grade,
• Build stronger relationships with their child with collaborative projects.
Explore the guides!
Special Offer for Parents
For a limited time, parents are also eligible for a nearly 50% discount on single copies of Pixie, Frames, Share, and ImageBlender! Parents simply visit our online store and select the products they wish to order and enter HUCLV100 as the discount on the checkout page.
We hope the Parent Guides will help you make this summer a perfect learning vacation!
PS – We encourage you to explore the guides yourself and forward this email out to parents!
Go to TECH 4 LEARNING WEB-Site: http://www.tech4learning.com/parents
To help keep K-5 students from forgetting what they learned in school this summer vacation, we are giving away guides for parents which include specific and practical Pixie activities across the curriculum to do at home with their child.
Each guide helps parents:
• Support learning at home through fun, curriculum-related activities,
• View important curriculum concepts covered at each grade,
• Build stronger relationships with their child with collaborative projects.
Explore the guides!
Special Offer for Parents
For a limited time, parents are also eligible for a nearly 50% discount on single copies of Pixie, Frames, Share, and ImageBlender! Parents simply visit our online store and select the products they wish to order and enter HUCLV100 as the discount on the checkout page.
We hope the Parent Guides will help you make this summer a perfect learning vacation!
PS – We encourage you to explore the guides yourself and forward this email out to parents!
Saturday, May 07, 2011
9-15 May 2011
Welcome back! If you're a mom, and you're reading this before Sunday evening, Happy Mother's Day! Your kids love you so much and they were so excited to give from their heart in all they did. Hope you have a wonderful day!
Well, our school not only 'passed' our accreditation Standards, but we rated a top category on 2 of the standards. I want you to know that we did not do this on our own. Your children were a part of the process as well. The Advance Ed team met with the staff after school on Thursday to outbrief the results. It was so exciting and it was fulfilling to receive re-accreditation for the next five years.
This week's work will include:
Reading:
Story Selection
Title: Simple Machines
Author: Allan Fowler
Genre: Expository Non-fiction
Comprehension Skill: Main Idea
Comprehension Strategy: Summarize
Study Skill: Parts of a Book
Spelling/Phonics: -oi, -0y suffixes -er, -or
Language/Vocabulary: Homonyms
Grammar: Pronouns
Writing: Explanation
Spelling Words:
oil
soil
voice
point
boy
boil
coin
oink
toy
joy
against
heavy
We continue to work on addition and subtraction to/from 18. We've taken a few more timed fact drills and some are moving into success with beating the clock. We're also beginning to have each student read for their last individual oral/silent reading assessment called the DRA2. This test is given as an end-of-year/summative assessment for 1st grade. This shows how much growth they've accomplished and where they are in fluency, word recognition/problem solving, comprehension, including story retell w/sequencing events, identifying characters, setting, the problem and solution of the story, then I'll also do a reading interest survey on them. Please include these kinds of questions after they read their books in the evening. This test is the one used to measure grade level expectations for the end of year.
Keep them writing, also. We'll have one last writer's workshop, where they'll write from a prompt, and I'll use a scale (rubric) to score their sample to insert in their reading record. This scale will include expectations concerning writing conventions and composition for a first grader. These include: sentence composition, capitalization, spelling, punctuation, descriptors, beginning, middle and end and overall quality of written expression. We'll use a graphic organizer to write from and hopefully they'll be able to score a 3 or 4 on this last assignment.
With 27.5 days of school remaining, we've still got a lot to accomplish! No reason to postpone any longer.
Thanks for all your continued vigilance and help with homework.
Have a wonderful week!
Mrs. Petty
Welcome back! If you're a mom, and you're reading this before Sunday evening, Happy Mother's Day! Your kids love you so much and they were so excited to give from their heart in all they did. Hope you have a wonderful day!
Well, our school not only 'passed' our accreditation Standards, but we rated a top category on 2 of the standards. I want you to know that we did not do this on our own. Your children were a part of the process as well. The Advance Ed team met with the staff after school on Thursday to outbrief the results. It was so exciting and it was fulfilling to receive re-accreditation for the next five years.
This week's work will include:
Reading:
Story Selection
Title: Simple Machines
Author: Allan Fowler
Genre: Expository Non-fiction
Comprehension Skill: Main Idea
Comprehension Strategy: Summarize
Study Skill: Parts of a Book
Spelling/Phonics: -oi, -0y suffixes -er, -or
Language/Vocabulary: Homonyms
Grammar: Pronouns
Writing: Explanation
Spelling Words:
oil
soil
voice
point
boy
boil
coin
oink
toy
joy
against
heavy
We continue to work on addition and subtraction to/from 18. We've taken a few more timed fact drills and some are moving into success with beating the clock. We're also beginning to have each student read for their last individual oral/silent reading assessment called the DRA2. This test is given as an end-of-year/summative assessment for 1st grade. This shows how much growth they've accomplished and where they are in fluency, word recognition/problem solving, comprehension, including story retell w/sequencing events, identifying characters, setting, the problem and solution of the story, then I'll also do a reading interest survey on them. Please include these kinds of questions after they read their books in the evening. This test is the one used to measure grade level expectations for the end of year.
Keep them writing, also. We'll have one last writer's workshop, where they'll write from a prompt, and I'll use a scale (rubric) to score their sample to insert in their reading record. This scale will include expectations concerning writing conventions and composition for a first grader. These include: sentence composition, capitalization, spelling, punctuation, descriptors, beginning, middle and end and overall quality of written expression. We'll use a graphic organizer to write from and hopefully they'll be able to score a 3 or 4 on this last assignment.
With 27.5 days of school remaining, we've still got a lot to accomplish! No reason to postpone any longer.
Thanks for all your continued vigilance and help with homework.
Have a wonderful week!
Mrs. Petty
Sunday, May 01, 2011
1-9 May 2011
Happy May Day! Spring has got to be the most beautiful time of year here in Italy. The students are enjoying the outside time at recess and have earned another 'extra' recess, so they'll be enjoying that on Friday after our AdVance Ed visit is completed.
It will be another busy week as we begin the last 41 school days of the year. Please encourage your student to make a habit of bringing their book bags home. There are only a few who continue to leave them at school over the weekend and throughout the week. Here is an update of our current status with
Reading Counts quizzes:
Reading Counts Points: 346 points class total (Dakotah has over 100!)
Average Reading Lexile: 308 (Impressive!)
Total Words Read: 135,368 (unbelievable!)
We can always do more though,so I'm counting on your support.
IXL Math also has statistics such as:
Over 200 hours of work with all student totals added together
25, 278 problems attempted
95% Student Participation last week. (Isha has completed 1st grade and moved on to 2nd!)
We will be working hard on our Reading Street Selection:
Title: Dot and Jabber and the Great Acorn Mystery (How will they solve it?)
Author: Ellen Stoll Walsh
Genre: Informational Fiction
Comprehension Skill: Compare/Contrast
Comprehension Strategy: Monitor/Fix-Up
Study Skill: Picture Graph
Spelling/Phonics: -oo /uh/ & inflected endings
Language/Vocabulary: Categorize/Classify
Grammar: How Sentence Begin & End
Writing: Answer
Spelling Words: Test now given on Friday a.m.
book
food
foot
good
look
moon
noon
pool
took
zoo
instead
another
P.E. day is on Tuesday. Please dress your child appropriately. If the weather is nice, on occassion, Ms. P. will take them outside for their activities. I am still requesting no open-toed shoes for students at school. They still use the equipment and we're trying to avoid foot injuries. Thank you.
End of the year advice. Even though the beginning of soccer and baseball has begun again, we must be vigilant with academic skills throughout the remainder of this last quarter. Your child should still be writing in the Reader's Response Log a minimum of 2 times a week, reading a minimum of 2 books/night. Hopefully NEW ones, not the same books that they are familiar with, and completing more work on the web-sites, especially IXL Math and Spelling/Sight Words with Samson. Even though your student will have access to these in the summmer vacation months, completing as much work as you can help to promote deeper problem solving in text, writing and math skills. Please get your schedule arranged, so that you PLAN to have them work when they are not at practice, or playing outside.
Wish our school success with our accreditation visit. We're ready for interviews and the process has made me reflect on the many inspections active duty parents have had over the last year, especially with the increased work load caused by more separations and deployments because of word conflicts. We look forward, as you do, we're certain when this can be completed and for us at school, it's Thursday after school.
Thanks for all your support this year. Our partnership is so valuable to me!
Have a wonderful week.
Mrs. Petty
Happy May Day! Spring has got to be the most beautiful time of year here in Italy. The students are enjoying the outside time at recess and have earned another 'extra' recess, so they'll be enjoying that on Friday after our AdVance Ed visit is completed.
It will be another busy week as we begin the last 41 school days of the year. Please encourage your student to make a habit of bringing their book bags home. There are only a few who continue to leave them at school over the weekend and throughout the week. Here is an update of our current status with
Reading Counts quizzes:
Reading Counts Points: 346 points class total (Dakotah has over 100!)
Average Reading Lexile: 308 (Impressive!)
Total Words Read: 135,368 (unbelievable!)
We can always do more though,so I'm counting on your support.
IXL Math also has statistics such as:
Over 200 hours of work with all student totals added together
25, 278 problems attempted
95% Student Participation last week. (Isha has completed 1st grade and moved on to 2nd!)
We will be working hard on our Reading Street Selection:
Title: Dot and Jabber and the Great Acorn Mystery (How will they solve it?)
Author: Ellen Stoll Walsh
Genre: Informational Fiction
Comprehension Skill: Compare/Contrast
Comprehension Strategy: Monitor/Fix-Up
Study Skill: Picture Graph
Spelling/Phonics: -oo /uh/ & inflected endings
Language/Vocabulary: Categorize/Classify
Grammar: How Sentence Begin & End
Writing: Answer
Spelling Words: Test now given on Friday a.m.
book
food
foot
good
look
moon
noon
pool
took
zoo
instead
another
P.E. day is on Tuesday. Please dress your child appropriately. If the weather is nice, on occassion, Ms. P. will take them outside for their activities. I am still requesting no open-toed shoes for students at school. They still use the equipment and we're trying to avoid foot injuries. Thank you.
End of the year advice. Even though the beginning of soccer and baseball has begun again, we must be vigilant with academic skills throughout the remainder of this last quarter. Your child should still be writing in the Reader's Response Log a minimum of 2 times a week, reading a minimum of 2 books/night. Hopefully NEW ones, not the same books that they are familiar with, and completing more work on the web-sites, especially IXL Math and Spelling/Sight Words with Samson. Even though your student will have access to these in the summmer vacation months, completing as much work as you can help to promote deeper problem solving in text, writing and math skills. Please get your schedule arranged, so that you PLAN to have them work when they are not at practice, or playing outside.
Wish our school success with our accreditation visit. We're ready for interviews and the process has made me reflect on the many inspections active duty parents have had over the last year, especially with the increased work load caused by more separations and deployments because of word conflicts. We look forward, as you do, we're certain when this can be completed and for us at school, it's Thursday after school.
Thanks for all your support this year. Our partnership is so valuable to me!
Have a wonderful week.
Mrs. Petty
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