Hello, and welcome to First Grade. My name is Karen DeCarolis, but your child has probably already referred to me as "Mrs. D." DeCarolis is a mouthful, and I don't mind at all if the children call me "Mrs. D". I am hoping you will feel comfortable enough to call me Karen. This is my 32nd year of teaching (I took 5 years off when my only child (Emily) was born), and I am feeling very lucky that I have such a sweet group of children this year. Right now, our numbers are low (12), so I am hoping we will be able to make a lot of academic growth during this year while having some fun, too.
We have a family "new" to Crescent Park School with us this year, so I would like to welcome Britney Howe-Hughes, Curtis Hughes, and their daughter Olivia to our Crescent Park family! Actually, Britney and Curtis apparently both went to school here when they were kids, so I guess it's really "Welcome back!" Sophie Simard and her family moved at the end of the summer, so she is NOT in our room this year. :(
I will be sending these newsletters out every Monday (I take the weekend to work on them) in an attempt to keep you informed about what is happening in our classroom. This newsletter is always the opening page of my blog "Mrs. D's First Grade" which can be found at:
www.mrsdgr1.blogspot.com .
At least for the first few weeks of school, I will continue to send this newsletter home, but my hope is that you will all eventually not need a paper copy as you will be checking out my blog every Monday afternoon via computer. Maybe we can save a few trees that way. If you do not have computer access at home, please let me know so I can continue to make sure you get the paper copy. I want you to know what's happening in your child's classroom, after all.
There are several different tabs on my webpage. The "home" tab is this newsletter. The next tab is called "Sites and Links", and contains a color-coded listing of 80 websites, divided by subject, that your child can use to practice skills he or she is learning in the classroom. Where possible, I have given you a quick blurb describing the website. These are all child-safe sites, and are all currently functioning, as far as I know. Should you come across a website that is gone or not working well, please let me know and I will update the list. As we go through the school year, I will try to add new websites. The third tab is "Homework". In first grade, your child is expected to do "ten minutes" of homework Monday through Thursday. Homework in this classroom usually revolves around a book to be read or practiced with an adult, and sight vocabulary cards to practice each night. I test the children on their sight word acquisition each Friday, and new cards tailored to YOUR child's needs come home every Monday (or first day of the school week). Please take a few minutes to practice these words every day, since every word your child knows by sight is one he or she does not have to "sound out". Reading becomes a LOT more fun when the majority of words can be recognized on sight. Research is also telling us that fluency with reading is a key factor in success in reading, and fluency can be promoted by rereading texts that are at a comfortable level. To that end, a reading sheet will be coming home periodically that will have a list of sentences that your child must be able to read to me fluently. Nightly practice with these sentences will aid in improving fluency in reading. Once a sheet is "mastered", a new (slightly harder one) will be given. Last year, fluency became a key factor in our reading assessments for the first time, and reading supports (like pictures) were not present on the new assessment materials, which made them much harder to pass. So, I am needing to adapt what I do with the children in order for them to have success on these new exams. **Homework may also include any materials started in class that your child was unable to finish during class time. It is due the next morning!** If work completion becomes a regular problem, we may have to meet to discuss alternative strategies for getting work done. The fourth tab is "Important Dates/Events" and is probably the link that will help you the most, as it will hopefully list things that will be happening at Crescent Park School long before they do happen. I will try to update the listing every week or two, but will also list anything that is happening in the upcoming week near the bottom of this blog message, too. The "Parent Info" tab contains strategies and information you might find helpful when trying to help a first grader learn. The last tab is our "Classroom Rules" written where all can see them and know what they are. That's my blog. Should you wish to see any information that is not readily here, please let me know, and I will see about adding it to my blog somewhere. There is also a link on the middle right to Mrs. Raymond's library blog, and an archive to back issues of this blog on the lower right. So, if you remember that you read something, but don't have the exact information, you can go back to an archived issue of this blog to find it.
Last week was really a "getting to know you" week in our classroom. However, things were going smoothly enough by Friday that I was able to get the assessments of your child's sight word knowledge done for the whole class. This coming week, I will be trying to determine your child's DRA reading level, so that I can begin reading groups the following week. This year, reading groups will be as much skill-based as reading level-based. Once the assessments are all over and the dust settles, I will be holding Reading Workshop starting at 8:00 a.m. (please be sure to have your child to school before 7:50--he or she is marked tardy after this time each morning). We will do some whole group learning of basic skills, share a few books, and then rotate through centers/ written work/ skill groups with Mrs. D. We will also read to ourselves, to a partner, and I will share a chapter from a chapter book with the class each day. We started The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner last week. Although Emma and Kristine heard this book last year, they were perfectly willing to hear it again. It is a powerful book about the strength children can have when they rely on one another. I have read it for years, and the children have always loved it. It will take us 26 school days to finish it, because there are 26 chapters. If your child enjoys this book enough to want you to read another, the same children are featured having adventures in the 72 books by the same author (and her daughter)! Most chapter books I read to the children will have a sequel or more for you to read to them, if you so choose. As you can tell by the books coming home for homework right now, I think it is very important that children have at least a basic understanding of fairy tales and folktales, as they are the basis for much of the material your child will be exposed to as he or she grows in the world of literacy. Right now, YOU may be doing the reading, but in just a few weeks, that role will be taken over primarily by your child. Presently, I just want reading to be pleasurable and part of each day for both of you.
Last week, we worked as a whole group on distinguishing capital letters from lowercase letters. We talked about how in Kindergarten, they were able to use either capital letters or lowercase letters when they wrote. However, one of the things we have to learn in First Grade is that we SAVE capital letters to be used under "special circumstances", and that most of our letters will be lowercase. This is a problem for children who confuse "b", "d", "p", "q", or have directionality issues in general. That's okay--they have the whole year to work on directionality, and I will help. We separated letters into consonants and vowels, and matched pictures to consonant sounds. This coming week, we will work on recognizing and sorting pictures and words that contain the various short vowel sounds, focusing heavily on C(onsonant)V(owel)C(onsonant) words. For strategies, we will learn predicting, retelling the sequence of story events, understanding "author", "illustrator", "making connections", and "opinion". In Math, we have already started learning about the numbers from 1-10, various ways to represent these numbers (numerals, number words, tally marks, ten frames, subitizing numbers to ten) and making patterns with colors and shapes. Right now, we can recognize and make ABAB patterns. Within the next few weeks, we will be able to do the same with patterns of : AABAAB, ABBABB, ABCABC, ABCDABCD, and will learn the "growing" pattern like ABABBABBBABBBB. At the same time, we are learning about the calendar, how it is built, where the month, year, and days of the week are located physically on a calendar page. We have two songs to help us remember the days of the week, and one song to help with the months of the year. By October, we will need to know this information quickly and easily. In writing right now, we are "sharing the pen" to write sentences, and we are learning that every sentence has a subject (a someone or something) and a verb (doing something). We are learning to write our first and last names correctly, and practicing the formation of numbers. Our Social Studies has centered around the need for rules in our classroom and in our society. We are studying Citizenship for the month of September. For any of you who spend a good deal of time outside, we are also looking for a few MONARCH caterpillars in the hopes that we will be able to observe their life cycle. No, not just any caterpillar will do--because most of them go into the pupa stage for the winter. Monarchs go through their entire life cycle in the fall, and then fly down to Mexico for the winter. Unfortunately, monarch populations are dwindling as their food source (milkweed plants) are being cut down. We have been unable to find any monarch caterpillars for the last several years. If you find any, we would love to "borrow" them until they become butterflies, and then we will set them free for their flight to Mexico. Thanks!!!!
IMPORTANT DATES: There is an "Open House" on Tuesday, September 15, from 6-7 pm for YOUR
CHILD to show you around the school. I will be there to meet you and
take pictures, but will not be doing any presentation. This is also not the appropriate time to discuss how your child is doing, since I am there to greet ALL families. This is your
child's time to show you his/ her classroom(s), and anything else that
is important to him/ her. Our first Parent-Teacher conference will be in early November, I think, but I am around at least on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays after school, if you feel the need to meet earlier than November. Our fall NWEA testing dates are: Thursday, September 24 at 8:00 and Wednesday, September 30 at 12:10 pm. Please discuss the importance of your child's "best efforts" on these exams, make sure they get plenty of sleep and a good breakfast, and have them here ON TIME, especially on the 24th. School pictures day is in October, as is Grandparents' Day. On October 9th and October 12th make for a long weekend for your child, as there is a workshop school on Friday, 10/09, and Columbus Day is 10/12.
That is all the news for this week. I will try to keep these newsletters shorter. Have a good (though hot) week!
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