2013 First Newsletter

NANCY'S NEWSLETTER
Weeks of September 3rd-12th

We have had a wonderful start for the new school year! The children have quickly learned many of the new routines and are already making new friends. I will be sending home a newsletter every Friday in the weekend folder. I hope it will be a starting place for conversations with your child about what is happening at school, as well as informative for you. We have been focusing on our routines and on how we will live together as a class community. We have been discussing ways to treat each other and our materials with respect. I have introduced our most important rule, "The Golden Rule": Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. We are all noticing times when friends follow the Golden Rule. I will refer to this rule all year. We are also building community each day when I expect children to: I start each day with a special greeting so that we learn each other's names. I also start the day with our poem of the week. I read a poem to the children on Monday, and then we re-read it together each day. By Friday most of the children will know it. This means that the language of poetry is internalized. During the week we may read the poem in different ways, such as with motions or in groups. When possible, I make time for the children to illustrate the poem. This is also something that can be done at home. The poem of the week is a very important part of my language arts program. Every Friday, the weekly poem will come home in the homework folder. I encourage you to save the poems in a special place so that you can return to them many times. I suggest a special folder or notebook. Weve had a lot of fun with our second poem. In connection with the poem, Ive read some books about fishing, such as Gone Fishing, by Earlene Long. I read to the children every day and then we share our reactions to the story. Sometimes the book reminds children of something that happened to them. Sharing our personal stories is a very important part of our classroom. These stories help us to know each other, and can also become future writing topics. During the year I will introduce numerous word chunks. This week I taught the word chunk ay, which was in two words of our poem (way, day). We brainstormed a list of words that have this sound and then practiced writing words with this chunk on dry erase boards. It would be helpful for you to keep a list of these word chunks so that as you read with your child you can reinforce these newly learned skills. I also introduced the idea of sight words, which we will call heart words. Each child has a word box in their book basket where they will keep their heart words. These are words that students can read quickly from sight, not words to sound out. We will add two new heart words each week. This week we began with two easy ones. I and a.
I am teaching/reviewing the formation and placement of the lower case alphabet letters. I also review the sound of the letters. The children work in a handwriting book as well as on individual sheets. I have a special handwriting practice time each day. Please keep and refer to the alphabet chart in the folder, as it illustrates the letter formations I am teaching. During the first two weeks of school I have introduced the children to Reading Workouts. During this time children read to themselves. I call this time Read to Self. Expectations during this time are generated from the students and teacher. We began by trying to build stamina while reading and following the expectations for a few minutes. On the first day of school, the children amazed me and read for 6 minutes! The children are so excited about this. I will tell you more about this process, and organizational system for reading time at Curriculum Night. (September 26th at 6:30.) I taught the first lesson of Second Steps Program. I will use this curriculum to teach lessons about empathy, impulse control, and problem solving and anger management. Research tells us that children who learn and use these skills are more likely to get along well with others and do better in school. The first lesson introduced the children to the idea of feelings. We made a list of many different feelings, and different situations that could make you feel a certain way. We also began to talk about what self control is. For our beginning math, we have explored a variety of materials and talked about size, color, shape, and number. The children have enjoyed working in small groups to discover new things about these materials. I also introduced the children to the Singapore Math program. The first unit focuses on reviewing the numbers one to ten. Each day I begin math with a Number talk, which encourages children to share their thinking while doing mental math. Each day I "highlight" a material available to the children at our activity time. We discuss its properties and how it might be used.
On Thursday during math time we made a class graph showing how each child comes to school (bus, walk, car). We made observations by looking carefully at the data we collected. If you are in the building, look for the graphs on the bulletin board next to our classroom. The drawings that the children did to accompany these graphs are terrific. Everyone has been so involved at our activity time! We now have some beautiful art work on our walls. Other children have made various structures with the blocks, manipulative materials, clay, and a variety of materials in our gluing area. I try to share the work of one or two children each day, so that their efforts are celebrated and other children can get new ideas about how to use a material. Our library time is on Thursday. I hope you enjoy reading the library books and help to take good care of them. This week the books are staying in the classroom, while we practice being responsible for our books. Beginning next Thursday your child will bring
home his/her library book. Please return the books by Thursday so your child can sign out a new one. Please see our weekly schedule in the weekend folder. Many thanks to those who have sent in snacks, tissue boxes, markers, and masking tape! If you want to send in a fresh snack, I will serve it on the day it is brought in. It is nice for the children to have fruit at least once a week as they get tired for crackers and pretzels quickly. I will periodically let you know when we are running low on snacks so that you can send more snacks in. I GREATLY appreciate the letters you have written about your child! They help me see your child as a unique individual and will certainly aid my teaching. THANK YOU!
WEEKEND REVIEW: SHARE THE POEM- Return the comment sheet about the
poems in the homework folder. (I do not necessarily expect the children to be able to read the poem on their own; some can and others may have memorized it, or know some of the words). WEEKEND folders are returned every Monday. PLEASE NOTE: Please try to have 2 dice and a deck of cards available at home. Your child will be learning math games which they will be asked to play at home using these materials. SAVE THE DATE: September 26thrd is Curriculum Night. I will describe my program on this night, so I hope all of you can attend. I will speak from 6:30- 7:15. I would like to send home a class list with telephone numbers. If you DO NOT want your phone number included, please let me know by Wednesday 18th. I welcome and appreciate parent volunteers in the class! Please see the volunteer sheet in the homework folder, fill it out and return it to school. It will be a few weeks before I begin having you volunteer in the room. Please feel free to call me with any questions you have.

2013 First Newsletter

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

2013 First Newsletter

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

2013 First Newsletter

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

NANCY'S NEWSLETTER

Weeks of September 3rd-12th

You might also like