Dear Parents, August 19, 2013
Happy first full day and full week of school!
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 work beginning with our number line and adding one more and subtracting one less.
Social studies finds us working on unit 1 – School Days.
Science finds us previewing our science books, beginning our science journals, and visiting the lab.
In Religion, we are learning that Jesus is our special friend.
Music will be on Mondays and Wednesdays and P.E. will be on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The children are to come dressed in their P.E. uniform on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We will visit the library and the computer lab throughout the week.
As you learned from last week there is a red homework folder and daily planner that go home daily. Please return the daily planner and the red homework folder to school every day. In addition, please check the planner for homework and sign in the comment section. When there is homework or any correspondence from me or other notes to be sent home they will be placed in your child’s homework folder. There will be homework this week. A reading log (found in the red folder on Monday) 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.
If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact me. I am really looking forward to a wonderful year with you and your children!
Ms. Manning
