Grade 1b News-Celebrate Literacy Week

Celebrate Literacy Week was a very fun week full of lots of fun activities!!!!

During our Literacy block we had so many fun events throughout the week. Each day at 8:30 we did Stop, Drop and Read where we stopped what we were doing, left our mess and Miss Miranda read a story to us! We also had mystery readers come to read to us during Stop Drop and Read. On Tuesday, Mr. Raymond came to read us a story. He read us Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss. We were SOOO excited to have him come visit us! After Stop Drop and Read, we would all sit down and read our own book, even Miss Miranda and Miss Sarah would read their own books!

We also had the Library Club come surprise us during Math one day to do some buddy reading with us. Also, on Thursday we met with our buddy class, Grade 4a, to do buddy reading. We loved having older students read us stories and some of us even read stories to them, too!


In Math, we learned that 2+3 has the same answer as 3+2. We also learned how to write a vertical addition problem.

In Science, we practiced using our sense of sight and sense of smell. Miss Miranda put some mystery things in a cup and poked holes in the lids and we had to use just our noses to try to guess what was inside! Most of our guesses were correct!

In Art, we did Where the Wild Things Are paintings in honor of literacy week and Maurice Sendak.

On Thursday, we wore our costumes for Dress Like a Book Character Day and had a costume parade. We did a great job making sure that our costumes were of book characters and we had some great homemade costumes!

Here are a bunch of pictures from the week!

Sitting watching the parade

Parading Around

WOW! 100 books read in only 4 days!!! Go Grade 1b!!!!
 

Everyone looking fabulous in their costumes!

Grade 1 and 2 Teachers dressed as Goldilocks and the 3 Bears

Conferences

Thank you to the parents who confirmed their conference time or gave me two other choices.

If you have not yet, please send the conference form signed to school tomorrow so I can schedule you a time that works. If I do not receive it from you tomorrow, I will just assign you a time that works for me. You can also email me to confirm or to tell me a better time for you.


Tomorrow is Halloween. Costumes are allowed but please keep any weapons at home. Guns, knives, swords, etc are not allowed at school. Thank you. 

Parent Conferences

Today you will be receiving a note in the Home Folder with a scheduled time for your Parent Conference. If the time on the paper works for you, please sign it and send it back to school. If the time does not work for you, please either email me or leave a note in the channel book with two other alternate times that would work for you and I will try to accommodate you as best as I can.

Also, if your child has a sibling, please let me know and I can try to coordinate with that teacher to set up times that are close together.


Please get back to me by Tuesday, October 30.

Thanks for your cooperation!

Again, Happy Eid!!! I hope you enjoy a nice holiday! 

Just a reminder

Tomorrow is Dress Like a Book Character Day! If your student doesn't wear a costume, please send them in proper uniform.


Since there is not school on Thursday, please send homework and library books to school tomorrow.



Happy Eid!

Celebrate Literacy Week!!!

Hello Parents,

This week is Celebrate Literacy Week for all of Elementary. We are going to be doing A LOT of fun things to celebrate and enjoy reading this week. The one thing I want to talk to you about is that on Wednesday we are doing Dress As a Book Character Day and we will have a parade to show the school our costumes! The costume that your student wears to school needs to be a character from a book that they know about. This is not Halloween, so Halloween costumes are not acceptable. The costume MUST be of a character from a book! These will most likely be costumes that you will need to make on your own rather than just buy from the store. Please either send the book that the character is from to school or send a print out of the cover of the book so that your student can share the book with the class. Also, on Wednesday we have P.E. so the costume should be something that they can wear and still be able to participate in P.E. Of course, dressing up is optional. If your student decides not to dress up, then they need to come to school in proper uniform attire.

Characters like Ben Ten, Spongebob, Lightning McQueen are not acceptable. A general rule could be that if it was a book before it was a show or movie then it is fine. But if it was a movie before it was a book, then it is not acceptable. I have listed some ideas to help below.

Thanks for helping with bring our book characters to life and for supporting and helping celebrate literacy with your children!

Some ideas:
--The Cat in the Hat
--Arthur or D.W. from the Arthur books
--Thing 1 and Thing 2 from Cat in the Hat
--Curious George
--Dora
--Rapunzel
--Characters from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (Charlie, Violet, Oompa Loompa)
--Max or a Wild Thing from Where the Wild Things Are
--Little Red Riding Hood
--Disney Princesses
--Characters from The Wizard of Oz
--Horton from Horton Hears a Who
--The Lorax
--Tacky the Pengiun
--Pecos Bill
--The Very Hungry Caterpillar
--Winnie the Pooh Characters
--David from the David books (No, David!)
--Any Dr. Seuss Characters (Red Fish, Blue Fish, Sneetches, Cindy Lou Who, The Grinch, Ten Apples Up on Top, Sam I am)
*****For more ideas, you can do a Google search for "Dress as a book character day ideas" or "Dr. Suess Dress Up Ideas" or anything along those lines. There are TONS of ideas out there! ****

To Clarify

Homework still needs to be completed weekly. Complete the assigned homework each night and send it to school on Thursday (or Wednesday if there is no school Thursday).

The monthly chart on the homework page is simply for you to have an idea of what will we be doing for homework over the next few weeks. It is not definite, it will most likely change as sometimes we work faster or sometimes we work slower and homework will need to be adjusted to reflect that.

The chart is not for you to see the monthly work and only send homework at the end of the month. It is just an overview for you.

Please continue completing homework as you have been and sending it to school on Thursday. But as before, the reading file with completed reading log, will be sent every day.

If your student does not send homework on Thursday, then they receive a zero or a "missing" in the grade book. I grade all of the homework on the weekend. If you wait to send it until Sunday, then it is late and I will not have time to grade it. Please keep this in mind. Of course, if your student is absent on a Thursday, then sending it on Sunday is acceptable.

Thank you for your cooperation. Please email me or send a note if you have any questions or need further clarification.

Monthly Homework

During open house, some of you had asked that I post the homework month by month.

I have added a table on the homework page to give you an idea of what the homework will look like for the next 5 weeks.

However, as I said in open house, please still check it regularly because I may need to change it periodically. It is hard for me to predict exactly where we will be in 5 weeks so this is just a general idea of the homework.

If I make changes, I will let you know.

Grade 1b News - Oct 13 - 18

It has been a great week in Grade 1b!

Literacy: In Literacy we continued working in our guided reading books and the students are getting very comfortable with their group members and getting very comfortable with reading books at their level. We also started Writer's Workshop this week! The students were very excited to get to be writers and write stories using strategies just like real writers!

Math: In math, we have started a unit on addition. We have learned about the + and = sign and we learned what happens when we add 0.

Science: In science we continued working on our five senses. We took a walk around the school to use our five senses. Before we left, we made predictions about what we might hear or see or smell around the school. As we walked around, we were very quiet so we could talk about what we could hear. When we got back from our walk, we checked to see if our predictions were correct! We did a very great job! We heard almost everything that we predicted.

Social Studies: In Social Studies this week, we talked and learned about ourselves and we started to learn about our families. We talked about who is part of our immediate family and who is part of our extended family.

Art: In art this week, we made Jack o' Lantern pictures where we practiced our cutting and gluing skills.

On Thursday, we took a field trip to Sitara Theatre!!! Before we went, we learned about how a good audience should act and what actors are and what a play is. At Sitara, we watched a play called, "Ali Baba and the Four Thieves." The students were very interested and they were a GREAT audience at Sitara. We had so much fun!

Follow Us!

I have added a new gadget to the blog. It says "Follow Our Blog by Email." If you put your email in here, the website will send you emails to let you know when I have made a new post. This may be an easier way for you to keep up with the blog instead of having to check it all the time.

You can find this on the right side of the page. Just put your email in, and you should start receiving updates!

Field Trip to Sitara Theatre Tomorrow

Tomorrow is our first field trip of the year to Sitara Theatre. The Grade 1 and 2 students are very excited!

Just a few reminders for tomorrow:
- The healthy food and uniform policy is still enforced on trips, so be sure that you send your student a healthy snack and lunch like you have been doing already! :)

- Be sure to send enough water for the whole day

- We will be back from the trip by 12:00 so tomorrow will be treated as a normal day. Please send homework tomorrow and everything that you normally would.

-There is no buying at Sitara so please do not send any money with your student.



Thank you for your help! We are sure to have a great time!


**please send library books to school tomorrow as well.

Another quick reminder about water

Dr. Enas, the school doctor, has asked me to let parents know that the tap water should not be drank in any case. She says it is hazardous.

For this reason, please make sure to send enough water for your student for the whole day so your student will not run out.

Thank you!

Grade 1 and 2 Monthly Value Program

The Grade 1 and 2 classes are starting a monthly program to teach our students an important life skill or personal value that can help them be better students or just better people. The value will be different every month. At the beginning of the month, we will have a lesson on the value and after that, all of the Grade 1 and 2 teachers will be on the look out for students who are showing that value in the classroom, on the playground or around the school. If your student is seen showing that value, they will be given a value card by the teacher. All of the value cards are going into a box. We will have a Value Celebration twice a month where we will talk about the value and draw four cards out of the box. If your child's card is selected from the box, the reward is to have morning snack with Ms. Sanaa! During morning snack they will get a special treat of hot chocolate in the colder months and popcorn in the warmer months.


This month's value is Friendship so we are on the look out for students being great friends or showing qualities that good friends have!

Last week I gave out two value cards to Salma and Hashim. During math, Hashim needed two more counting blocks and he asked Salma nicely, "Can I have two from you?" and Salma gave him two blocks. This was a great example of how friends should share and talk to each other nicely!

The monthly value can also be a great talking point for you with your child at home. Talk to them about what being a friend means to you! Or what does being a good friend look like when you are at home?


Also, if your student is allergic to hot chocolate or popcorn or if you would rather they not have those treats, please send an alternative snack so we can keep in the office if your student should be chosen for the treat. Thank you!

Grade 1b News: October 7 - 11

I will start posting a weekly recap of our learning as per your request. This will be the first one. 

We have had a very busy week in Grade 1b. This week we finally moved away from working on routines and procedures and really starting working on our learning.

Math:  In Math we have continued to work on some KG review work. Some concepts we have studied are: more/fewer, recognizing numbers displayed in different ways, and greater than/less than. We also started working on listing numbers in order from least to greatest. This is a large concept for Grade 1 and something that we will continue working on throughout the year.

Literacy: In literacy, we learned some new sight words: said, look, see, his, her.  We also started our guided reading groups so each student can start working on reading at their own level. Our groups have gone very well! While I am meeting with small groups, the other students are working in literacy based centers. This week the centers I introduced were library reading, buddy reading, read the room, and art.

Social Studies: This week in Social Studies we talked about what a friend is and what it means to be a good friend. We watched a short video about friendship and then had a long discussion about it. Your students came up with lots of great ideas for how friends should act. Some of their ideas were being nice, sharing their toys or things, solving arguments because it's okay if friends fight, but they need to know how to solve the fights, helping someone when they are sad or hurt, and encouraging our friends to make smart choices and follow the rules instead of encouraging our friends to break the rules.

Science: In science we started a unit on the five senses. We watched a video about our senses and how we use them and then had a discussion about them. What can we hear? What sounds loud? What sounds quiet? What can we taste? What tastes sweet? What tastes sour? What can we feel? What feels soft? What feels hard? What feels cold? What feels hot? What can we smell? What can we see?

Art: Art is on Sundays and this week there was no school on Sunday, so we did not have an art lesson this week.

Field Trip Fee

Grade 1 and 2 are going on a field trip to Sitara Theatre on October 18.

Please send in the permission slip and the fee by this Thursday, Oct 11. We will not accept money after this day!

Thank you to those of you who have already sent in the requirements!

Reading Files and Homework

The reading files will be going home today. Inside the reading file will be a book at your student's reading level. It may still include some words that may be new for them, so if you are reading with them, it will be a big help.

The book inside the file is called a "Leveled Book." They are required to read this book each night for homework. Please be very careful with these books. I have told your children that when they are finished reading it, it goes right back in the file. It should not come to school unless it is in the reading file. If any of these books are lost or damaged, it is a 100le fine. GPS has paid a lot of money for these books, so please help us keep them in great condition for years to come.

The reading file needs to include the Leveled Book and the Reading Log. The reading file needs to be sent to school EVERY DAY. If it does not come to school, I can not give them a new book each day. The reading log also needs to be completed each day. I will check them off every day. Please be sure that you have your student complete the question, it has a parent initial that they read, and it is marked off for how they read.

If your student did not bring a book home, it is because I do not have a reading file from you yet. Please send on as soon as possible!

The homework file needs to include the homework only. It should only be sent to school on Thursday. Please be sure it is sent on Thursday. I grade the homework over the weekend, so if you do not send it on Thursday then your student was marked that they were missing their homework.

Homework/Reading Log

The homework for the rest of the week is posted and will be coming home today. I apologize that it did not come home yesterday.

I have included the reading log with the homework. For the first few months, the daily question will be a basic question. If your student has a hard time writing a sentence about it, they can just draw a picture. In a few months, after we have learned some reading strategies, the questions will change to include things like Main Idea and Making Connections.

I intended to send the following note home today, but it was not put into the mailboxes. It will go home tomorrow. But it is here so that you know today if you need.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Parents,

The reading log is coming home today. Starting next week, I will send home books at your student’s level for them to read at home. I apologize in advance for the inconvenience, but we miscalculated and I will need one more My Clear Bag to use as the reading file. The reading file will go home every day and needs to return back to school every day.  I would like to use Yellow for the reading file, but if you have an extra one at home in a different color, it is fine. You can just send that.

Again, I apologize for this mistake. If you could, please try to have the extra file to me by Monday, October 8. Thanks for your cooperation.

-Miss Miranda

Thank You for Coming to Open House

A big thank you to the parents who came to Open House. If you were not able to make it, I have sent home a copy of the presentation with your student today. If you have any questions, please send a note or if would like to speak more with me about it, you can schedule a meeting with me by calling the office.