Thank you for your help in making the first week of school a smooth transition for the students and myself.  I am very impressed with the progress I’ve seen in just one week.  A few reminders for this week:
•    Please return the green take home folder EVERY day with your 1st grader.  Please initial the calendar inside the folder and assist your 1st grader in completing the nightly homework.

•    Lunch money needs to be placed in an envelope with your child’s name and the days that they will be eating lunch for the      ENTIRE week.  It makes the money collecting process much easier if I only have to collect money one day of the week.  Thank you for your help and consideration.

•    If you have not returned the school forms, such as lunch, emergency, etc., please do so as soon as possible.

•    The snack schedule for September asks that boys bring in snacks for the month of September.

•    School fees are $85 per year.  Please see that you pay the school fee as soon as possible.  Again, please place the check in an envelope with your child’s information.

This week we will reinforce routines and procedures with daily practice.  I will assess the students using observations and pretests.  Last week I also started to introduce the Reading Workshop (also called the Daily 5) by allowing students to practice “read to self”.  The students learned that they could read the pictures, as well as the words and also have learned that they can retell a familiar story.

This week we will start our author study on Kevin Henkes.  We will read the books “Shelia Rae the Brave”, “Julius, Baby of the World”, “Jessica”, “Chester” and “Chrysanthemum”.  We will learn the following poems and add them to our poetry journal: “1, 2 Buckle My Shoe” and “Five Little Speckled Frogs”.  In Phonics we will work on recognizing rhymes, matching words to spoken words, and locating first and last words in print.

This week I will introduce the writing workshop.  We will learn how to care for special writing supplies, how to write independently, telling stories using illustrations and drawing hard to make ideas.  We will also start our handwriting program.  The students will learn about how to hold their pencil and good writing posture.  We will begin practice on capital letters.

In math this week I will introduce the calendar and we will create a birthday graph.  We will practice working in small groups and writing the numbers 1, 2, 3 and 4.  We will use the number line to locate numbers and learn the game Penny Dice and Top It.  We will start the FOSS science program this week and begin the unit “Solids, Liquids and Gases”. We will look at several different solids and we will create a word bank to record properties of solids.  Have a super week!