Finally Friday!

We have made it through the first month of school.  I can hardly believe it went by so quickly.  When we return to school on Monday we will be entering the month of October.  In October we begin working on addition and subtraction facts and many other exciting things.

Newsletters, field trip forms, and book club forms, and new homework sheets went home this week.  I know it is a lot to keep up with, but with a little help from home we can teach organization skills to our future. 

On Monday we have extended specials from 8:55 - 10:15.  This does make for a long afternoon and we will be doing several activities to keep everyone moving and involved in learning. 

PTA is still trying to get more parents to join.  If you are interested in joining and have not done so, please click here for an application.  The PTA does a lot of wonderful things for our students during the school year.  Their Math Super Star Program will be starting next week and it is a wonderful way to extend the math we learn at school and challenge students to think outside the box.  In addition, students who complete the sheets can earn some extra prizes. 

Book-It!  will also be starting next week.  This program is sponsored by Pizza Hut and offers a free personal pan pizza to students who complete their reading log for the month.  No extra forms will need to be completed, just the reading log on the back of the homework sheet.

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask. 

Enjoy your weekend!

Thursday

Today we had another fire drill at school.  We have one fire drill a week for the first month of school.  This helps boys and girls to learn the routine and proper fire drill behavior.  We are getting much better at lining up for the fire drill QUICKLY and QUIETLY.  This is often hard for first grade to remember, but safety is the most important thing to learn. 

Homework is due tomorrow.  It would be helpful if parents check behind the first grade students to see if they have completed all of their work and have included their names on their papers. 

October homework will go home tomorrow and the September logs will be collected.  Please take note that we are now asking that the five rhyming words are in ABC order.  This is a change from the month of September.

New specials calendars and lunch menus will also be going home.  Hopefully, we won't miss any more days for a while.

Our first student of the week paperwork will be going home tomorrow with one lucky student.  I am looking forward to learning more about each and every student.  Please make sure to help your child complete the paperwork and return it to school on time. 

Upcoming Events

We will be sending home Field Trip Permission Forms tomorrow.  First grade will be visiting Westmoreland Berry Farm in mid-October.  We will need parent chaperons to join us.  Please send a note if you are interested in joining us. 

School Pictures will be taken next month on October 5th.  These are also the pictures that are used in the KGES yearbook, so even if you do not wish to purchase a picture package for yourself, please keep in mind that these pictures will be representing your child in the yearbook. 

We will also be having an early dismissal next Friday October 7th, so please make childcare plans now.

Have a great night!

What is in a snack?

Each day our class has snack at 11:00.  This is before students go to the lunchroom for lunch.  Several students have brought money to buy a snack from the cafe' however it is not possible for students to visit the cafe' at this time to buy a snack.  I do not have the ability to purchase snacks to keep in our classroom for students who do not bring snacks from home.  PLEASE send snacks with your children so they have something to eat at this time.  Everyone's brain and body needs a refill by this time.  Some healthy snack ideas include popcorn, goldfish, fruit, wheat thins, or fresh veggies.  Please make sure to send spoons, straws, ect. with your child.  Mrs. Burrell (from the cafe') does not allow students to get spoons from the cafe' during our snack time.  Students are able to get water from the fountain if they do not have a drink. 

If you are sending snacks for birthdays or any other reason, please make sure they arrive at school early in the morning so they are ready for us at snack time.  Our schedule is very tight and we quickly move from one activity to another.

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to let me know right away.  My school email is up all the time, but it often sends parent emails to the spam folder.  If I don't write back within a few hours, try leaving a comment here and it will show up in my personal email which does not usally move stuff to spam.  I check it often as well and will respond as quickly as I can.

Happy Birthday Johnny Appleseed

Today we celebrated Johnny Appleseed's birthday.  According to the book we read by Steven Kellogg in the year 1774 John Chapman was born.  Today we know him as Johnny Appleseed.  We enjoyed reading the tall tale about his life and talked about how the truth is stretched in tall tales.  After the book our class enjoyed some apple slices.  Yum!

In math we finished Topic 1 today with a test.  I hope to get them graded tonight and returned tomorrow, but no promises.  As I walked around the room during the test, it looked like everyone did a great job.

We enjoyed being outside for recess today.  Hopefully we will continue to have nice weather for a few more weeks.  Please know that we go outside for recess as long as it is not raining/snowing and the temperature is above 40.  I highly encourage all parents to send their children in appropriate shoes everyday so no one gets their toes injured on the playground or in our classroom.  In addition, flip-flops are not permitted per the school dress code. 

Tomorrow is Take-Home Tuesday.  The white envelopes we have had in years past are no longer being made, so please take time to look at the papers that come home in the Blue Flower Folder tomorrow.  We are still trying to locate another company that makes a similar product. 

Enjoy your night and possibly an apple to celebrate Johnny Appleseed!

Newsletter Link

If you want to check out my newsletter before Monday, please visit my website http://www.mrsrichard.org/ or click here.  Hope your weekend is great.  Feel free to try to squeeze some extra reading time with your child.

Finally Friday

What a week we have had in first grade.  I was out of my classroom yesterday afternoon and most of the day today.  I was able to give the reading test and the spelling test before going to my meeting today.  However, when I got back to my room at the end of the day, I found my newsletters had not gone home today.  I hope to post my newsletter on my web page later tonight.  The paper copies will be going home on Monday.  Sorry. 

Thankful Thursday

Thankfully today held no extra excitement or drills.  Thankfully my students came in ready to learn.  Thankfully my class was on thier best behavior.  Thankfully it is Thursday.

We did a trial run with our para educators for our reading groups.   It will be an busy in our classes first thing in the mornings, but I think we can get it done.  It will be VERY important for students to be at school on time in the morning and in our classroom.  Our push in reading groups begin at 8:55.  Every student will be in a reading group with an adult for the first 25 minutes of our day.

Today was busy and I left for an appointment at 11:30.  I am positive that my class did a great job this afternoon.

What A Day

What a day we had today.  Bus evacuation drills, fire drills, our first extended special, rain... need I say any more?  I am not sure why everything got scheduled on the same day, but it did.  We tried to make the best of it.  I know that not everyone had a good day for behavior, but I am thankful that we all survived :-)

If you child didn't have the best day today, I am hopeful that a more normal schedule tomorrow might help everyone to stay on GREEN!

We did finish our PALS tests for all students who were in school.  My class is doing an amazing job completing these tests.  As soon as I finish the testing I will send home the results.

What's New at School?

Today we continued to work on completing our PALS testing.  We are almost finished.  I really hope to finish them tomorrow so that we can get back onto our regular classroom activities. 

Some parents are probably wondering what is all that talk of PALS tests and what does it mean for my child?  The PALS test has several parts.  There is a spelling test that is given to the entire class at the same time.  The rest of the parts of 1st grade PALS are given one student at a time on the computer.  Yep that is right, on the computer.  I call one student at a time to the computer and check letter sounds, sight words, fluency, and comprehension.  I have been really lucky to have one of our para educators help out with the rest of the class while I am giving each student my full attention at the computer. 

Students also got to enjoy the computer lab today and practice some typing skills (so we can log on to the computers faster).

Please don't forget if you have any questions about our class send a note or email and I will get back to you right away.  If you don't hear back within 24 hours it probably means that your email got caught in the school's spam filter.  Leave a comment here and I can contact you directly.

Thanks for all those who are checking out my blog!

Busy Monday

Today was a very busy Monday in our classroom.  We began PALS testing today.  Everyone who was in school today took the PALS spelling test this morning and were checked on sight word knowledge.  Some students were also checked on letter sounds.  Those who were not checked on letter sounds will be checked tomorrow.  Students will also be checked for fluency and reading comprehension tomorrow. 

We began our new story in our reading book called Sam and the Bag.  It is a fun story about cats.  If you did not read it yet, plan to do so before the week is out.

In math we practiced making numbers to 12 using a 10 frame and two color counters.  Please help your child to improve their one-to-one correspondence at home by having them count objects and touch them at the same time.

We also have two classroom birthdays to celebrate this week, a fire drill planned, our first extended special is planned for Wednesday, and tons more :-)

Newsletter

Here is the link to last week's newsletter in case you didn't get one in your child's folder last Friday.  I will be posting more about our school day today later tonight.

Newsletter

Technical Difficulties Repaired

My apologies to my all parents who are checking out my blog.  I have been experiencing a lot of difficulty getting an Internet connection at home this week.  I think it has repaired.  The culprit was my new laptop that I got this summer did not like the cable router/modem.  I think all the parts are working and communicating as they should, which should make it much easier and for me to connect and upload to my blog. 

This week we have PALS testing starting up, an extended special on Wednesday, and I have to be out of school Thursday afternoon for an appointment.

Have a great week!

Shoe Tying and Word Families

This morning we continued to work on word families during our reading and language time.  We read a fun book about a little girl who wanted a pet bat.  Each time we heard a word in the -at family we had to stand up.  We got quite a workout standing and sitting, and we learned a lot of words in the -at family.  We learned that in word families everyone in the "house" has to have the same "last name."  Students also had to write one word in the -at family for each year they were old.  Some lucky boys and girls only had to write 5 words while some who were not so lucky had to write 7 words.  It was a real challenge for some while others were able to do it quickly without much guidance. 

A tip for the homework, the rhyming words should look something like -at family, fat, sat, cat, mat, chat.  If you are not sure what to do or need more help, please send me an email or give me a call so that I can help.

This afternoon we read a book called What Will I Do If I Can't Tie My Shoe?  In first grade students should be able to tie their own shoes without help.  If your child is not able to tie their own shoes yet, please practice with them at home.  One student (who has tie shoes) said "My dad says I don't have to tie because he does it for me.''  I must admit that as a parent, sometimes it is faster to do the tying and get out the door, please know that it is time consuming at school when 10 -12 students need shoes tied at one time.

Fire Drills and a Guest Reader

Yesterday our school welcomed our new Assistant Princpal, Mr. Scott Elchenko to KGES.  At out meeting with him afterschool he mentioned that he has taught K and 1.  This morning I saw him in the office trying to get moved into his office so I invited him to come read to our class.  He was very glad to come and get to know our class and read a wonderful book (The Giving Tree) to our class.  The students really seemed to enjoy getting to know him a little better and I know he probably enjoyed the break from all the meetings he has had to jump right into upon arriving yesterday. 

We also learned how to put poems into our Poetry Journals and how we can sort words and pictures in our Word Study Notebook.  These might sound like simple things, but it is important for us to learn these procedures now so that as we add more to these notebooks during the year everyone can do it quickly and correctly.

For math today, we were able to visit the computer lab for the first time this school year.  Thestudents got some instruction from Mrs. James (our computer whiz).  We learned appropriate ways to use the school computers.  It took many students quite a while to put thier numbers in and get started.  If your child cannot recite their login numbers to you from memory, they should spend a few minutes nightly practicing these numbers.  They don't have to write them, but must be able to enter them on a numeric keypad.  Calculators are great for this practice.

This afternoon we also were able to experience our first Fire Drill.  We did a great job lining up and getting to the blacktop quickly and quietly.  I hope we continue to do such a great job with this each time that we practice it this school year.

If you are interested in being a guest reader in our classroom, please send an email and we can set up a time for you to visit and read us a good book.

New Week, New Routines

I started this week with a great email from from a teacher in another state whose class found my class website with her class in a search.  What a great day to start the week.  I love to hear about people who check out my website and this made my Monday morning.  They even sent me a link to a really neat money link.  I can't wait for the money unit to start so we can use it!

We began to use our Reading books this morning.  This is a new experience for our class and they rose to the challenge.  We also learned about our student dictionaries.  We spent a long time this morning looking for our words we learned last year.  We also looked for our new High Frequency Words in our dictionaries.

Homework went home today in our Blue FLOWER Folders.  If your child did not bring it home, please send a note right away.  I also sent home some old social studies books that you can keep at home as a extra something to read if your child forgets their reading book at school.

Week One and a Newsletter

Well, we didn't quite finish the first week of school the way I had wanted to, but I did enjoy the extra day off getting things organized for our journey that will really begin this week.  I am thankful that no one was terribly injured as a result of the flooding in the area.  I am also thankful that we only lost our power for a brief time from this storm.

If you haven't checked out my website yet, please try to do that this week.  It has a lot of information about our classroom and everything that goes on there.  I was able to spend most of today updating pages and getting it ready for this school year.

If you have an email address you would like me to have, please take a few minutes to complete this quick form if you haven't done so already. 

I am also including a link to my newsletter which was to go home on Friday, but will now go home tomorrow.  I hope it is helpful and answers some of the questions you might have.

I am hoping that this week brings no new natural disasters to the state of Virginia.  :-)

Learning the Rules

Sometimes learning new rules is hard work.  Sometimes even with warnings we don't always have our best day.  It is important to remember that there is always tomorrow.  Today was one of those days. 

We are still trying to get everyone back into school mode.  We read Splat the Cat this morning and we wrote some sentence on the white board about what we learned from the stories.  If you haven't checked out any of the Splat the Cat books, you might consider looking for some at the library.  Spat and his pet mouse have a lot of adventures that many first grade students can relate to.  After we wrote the sentences, we looked at the capital letters we used to begin these sentences and talked about how letters and numbers fit on the lines on our papers.  When you are working with your children at home it is important to remind them to start their first names with an upper case letter and use lower case letters for the rest.

We also enjoyed Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse.  We talked about rules and why we have to follow them and when we don't follow them we get ourselves into trouble.  My goal is to help boys and girls learn to make good choices during our school day.  We made an owl book about making good choices.  Hopefully good choices will soon start to become second nature to our first grade students. 

Tomorrow is Friday which means that we will have made it through 4 school days.  Look for a newsletter to come home in your child's Blue FLOWER Folder tomorrow.  Homework will be starting next week.  Spend some time this weekend getting a place ready for your child to work on homework.  It will make homework a whole lot easier.

Routines...

I have always been told it takes 20 days to build a habit.  We are on day two of learning some first grade routines.  It is always challenging at the start of year to help our new students learn the routines of a new classroom and for some of a new school.  We practiced a lot of our routines during these first two days of school.  Not because they are fun and exciting, or because they are super educational, but because learning them now will help us to have more time to learn later this school year. 

We continued to learn about Chester from The Kissing Hand.  Today we talked about the setting of this story and how we could relate to some of the feelings Chester had about the first day of school.  We read a second book about Chester today.  This book was called Chester and the Big Bad Bully.  Our class will continue to talk about how we can be a good friend to one another.  We have some other books that we will read during the school year to reinforce friendship.

We also began to do some of our beginning of the year assessments.  Our school is very lucky to have a number of para educators who can assist the classroom teachers in getting these assessments done in a timely manner.  Please don't be alarmed if your child tells you they had to take a test at school.  We are not taking them for grades, but to help us to learn where to begin with instruction.

First Day in First Grade

Today I got to meet all of my new students.  I am happy to report that all of my new students made it to school and stayed on green all day.  I hope to be able to report that everyone stayed on green everyday during this school year.  It was also really nice to see some of my students from the last few years stop by and say hello.

We spent some time today getting all of supplies put away and labeled.  We also read the Kissing Hand and made Chester puppets.  We will be working on some retelling of this story in class later this week.  Please ask your child if he or she can tell you about the Kissing Hand.

Homework will begin next week and more instructions will be coming home about how First Grade Homework is handled will also be included in the packet.  If you really want to get your child into school mode, pull out their Kindergarten sight words for them to practice right now.

Lots of forms need to be turned in to the office at the start of the year.  I know that it is not any fun to fill out all the papers, but it really is helpful to get all of this information from parents right now.  If you child does not know their lunch number yet, it is important to practice it each night. 

If you have questions, please feel free to send a note or email me yrrichard@kgcs.k12.va.us

Giveaway

One of the teachers I feel like I know has the most amazing blog.  She always posts wonderful ideas and is always willing to share her creativity with the rest of us.  She is also quite the bargain shopper and because of that she has decided to do a giveaway.  If you are interested in entering check out her blog - http://bainbridgeclass.blogspot.com/  and see for yourself what an amazing mind she has.  I am really hoping that I can win, but I know that whoever does will enjoy them.

New Math

While it might be the weekend, a teacher's work is never finished.  While driving to the eye doctor yesterday, I worked on organizing some of the new math teacher's materials into the very nice folders provided by the company.  It looks like there are a lot of materials provided to make a teacher's life easier and make learning more fun.  While I won't know what the kids really think about it until we actually get started, I know it looks like they had teachers in mind by making the teacher books small and light. 

I also know that some of the materials I found while stalking some teacher blogs this summer are going to make learning really fun.  Let the learning begin!

New Roses

Yesterday I got to meet many of my new students at the King George Elementary School Open House.  It was great to see so many familiar faces and some new ones as well.  I also got to see a lot of my students from last year who stopped by to say hi!  One even brought me an adorable hedgehog to add to my ever growing collection.  :-)  I know it is going to be an amazing year and we are going to do wonderful things together.

Today I am going to get name tags out on all the desks and try to assign numbers to my students.  Elizabeth (my daughter) is going to come by and help to put away all of the supplies that the students brought to school yesterday.  I hope to even get a chance to explore our new math series.  It is going to be a busy day here, but I know it is going to be a great school year!