Dear Parents, August 20, 2012
Welcome to First Grade! This is a dynamic year of growth and learning. It is a year filled with fun, adventure, and challenges. Your child may come home exhausted from all the thinking done during our school day. There is so much to learn and every minute will count. Please try your best to make sure that your first grader comes to school on time every day and has a good night’s sleep followed by a healthy breakfast. It is essential for strong bodies and effective learning.
Our “normal” school day begins today! We are reviewing our letters and the sounds associated with the letters this week in language arts. We will practice printing them and working with words that begin with each letter. We will also start practicing our reading strategies this week through listening skills. The strategies we will use this year are 1) predict/infer. After listening to sections of our stories, we will make predictions on what might happen next. 2) Monitor/clarify – rereading sections that are difficult to understand. By making predictions and rereading what we have difficulty with we will be able to better understand what we read. 3) Question – good readers form questions as they read, wondering what will happen and question how various events affect the story. 4) Summarize – being able to retell the story in just a few sentences. 5) Evaluate – we need to be able to express whether we liked or disliked the story but, more importantly we need to include why. Our phonics focus this week is decoding the sounds associated with each letter in words.
In math, we will start working on addition.
Social studies finds us working on unit 1 – School Days.
Science finds us studying living and non-living things and we’ll start with a watercolor project.
In Religion, we are learning that Jesus is our special friend.
P.E. will be on Tuesdays and Thursdays and music will be on Mondays and Wednesdays. The children are to come dressed in their P.E. uniform on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We will visit the library on Tuesday afternoons and the computer lab on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursdays.
I have given each child a new homework folder that has been clearly labeled and a daily planner. Please check the planner for homework. When there is homework, any correspondence from me, notes, etc. to be sent home they will be placed in your child’s homework folder. There will be homework this week. Please return the daily planner and the red homework folder to school every day. The daily planner must be signed in the comment section underneath your child’s homework. In addition a reading log is to stay in your child’s red folder. As part of first grade it is important that we do as much reading as possible! Part of first grade homework is to read for 20 minutes every night and two times over the weekend. After reading with your child please fill out the reading log and sign.
All lunches and snacks must be in a container that seals (no paper bags). If your child chooses to bring a snack to school, it must be in the lunch box (even on hot lunch days). First graders take their snacks outside and eat it during recess. Please only pack one, small, nutritious snack, as they are quite anxious to play on the equipment and/or the wonderful field and our recess is only 15 minutes.
I am also asking that everyone send me a quick email so that I will have your email on file. My school email is firstgrade@sacredheartschoolventura.org.
If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact me. I know it can be overwhelming at first! I am really looking forward to a wonderful year with you and your children!
Miss. Manning
