September 8-11, 2009

WOW and THANK YOU SO MUCH!! I have never felt so loved and special as I did this past birthday. All of the gifts, flowers, cards, and candy were so sweet, just like everyone in our class! Thank you so much for remembering me!

I hope everyone enjoyed the long Labor Day weekend. Hopefully everyone is ready to come back to school, well rested and ready to learn!

We are still practicing our rules, routines and procedures. By the end of the nine weeks children should be well established in how our classroom runs. We will continue to work on all of these over the coming weeks. I don’t think I can say it enough, it's EXTREMELY important that these rules, routines and procedures become second nature to the children because this will help create a calm, predictable and organized environment where lots of learning can take place, and some fun along the way.

*Please keep this in mind, first graders receive real grades for conduct, not G’s and S’s as they may have in Kindergarten. Children receive tickets as a consequence for not following directions and/or rules that we have been learning and discussing since the first week of school.

SMALL GROUP READING AND WORK STATIONS
I assuming that everyone received the letter I sent with details of our reading program and homework information. I didn’t have any questions or requests for clarification.

We had a full week of small group reading and work station rotation last week, except for Friday. As I expected, the class caught on quickly to the rotation, just need to work on staying on task for the 25-30 minute period, and working quietly if they are working with a partner. Warnings and reminders are given once, before a ticket is given.

Our whole group sound for this week is /d/ as in dinosaur. We will be doing activities related to that topic.

ACCELERATED READER
I have had several children asking me to take an AR test, however if I didn’t get a sticky note from you saying that you have read to or with your child I don't allow them to test. If children take a test unprepared and make below a 60, it’s very hard to get their Average Percent Correct up. So, right now, I’m not letting anyone take a test without a parent note. Also, children can’t exchange books from the library until they have tested on it. Unless they have by mistake gotten a book that is not on their level. The children now have library cards that tell them exactly what level books they should be getting right now. Of course, as they become better readers, I will increase the level book they can get. Books can be kept up to a week without an overdue notice being given. So when your child continues to bring the same book home each night, it’s because they haven’t tested on it or they haven’t asked me to go to the library. Library books should be brought home and back to school every day!

MATH
We will continue working on Chapter 4 this week. Children can be working on chapter 4 in their Math Practice Workbook. Look for lessons 4.1, 4.2, 4.3 etc. We will test on this chapter at the end of the week, so look for the Test Review workbook page to come home the night before the test.

LANGUAGE -(DOL)
We have covered rules 1-3 and 5 so far.(Skipping #4 for now) These rules can be found in the take home notebook. The class did really well capitalizing the names of friends and pets for Rule 6. We will continue rule 6 along with rules 1-3 and 5. Be sure to look in the Keep at Home side each day for DOL papers ~look over them Thursday night to prepare for Friday's daily DOL grade.

MISCELLANEOUS INFORMATION AND REMINDERS

*Library Day September 8th- make sure your child brings library book to school.
*Please be sure to initial daily conduct calendar EVERY night. I've noticed several notebooks with no initials. There is a page in the folder that explains how to use the folder.
*Make sure your child has enough money in their lunch account to cover Gatorade and/or Fruit Roll-Ups. You might want to make a plan with your child as to how many days a week they can purchase or pick the day or days they can purchase.
*If you haven't joined PTA, please do so as soon as possible. Due to
proration, teachers will not receive their usually $500 state allocation for classroom supplies so the PTA had graciously agreed to give each teacher $300 to help out. This money is coming directly from PTA memberships so get your grandparents, aunts, uncles and family pets to join so we can reach our classroom goal of 150%. Our class is currently at 133%, so we only need 3 more memberships to reach our goal of 150%.

Thought for the week:
Forget your mistakes, but never forget what they teach you!

Have a super week!

Hugs!!