Trip Tomorrow

Last minute reminders, sorry to post late.

Please remember that the GP School food policy still applies on trip days. Therefore, please make sure to send a healthy breakfast and a healthy snack. If food is sent that is not allowed, it will be taken away and your student will not have any food to eat. Make sure to send enough food for the whole day. We will be gone from 9am - 2pm, so there will also be no ordering.

Also, remember to send your student in the appropriate uniform.

There is no buying, so please do not send money.


Thank you! I am excited for our trip and so are the students. I think we are going to have a lot of fun!

Homework - This Week

I have changed the math homework. I noticed that we fell one day behind. I taught the lesson today for the homework page that you completed on Thursday, so we need to hold off on the math work for one day.


For the reading log:
1. The 3 week calendar page should stay in the reading log always. I expect to see it in class every day, so that when I meet with your student's reading group, I can check that they have been reading.

2. The reading reflection page is due on Sundays. You can keep it at home until it is time to turn it in. Make sure to complete both sides. When you send it to school to turn it, please send it in the reading file, not the homework file. 

A few clues to help with the nouns, verbs and adjectives. In class we say:
noun: a person, place or thing
verb: an action word
adjective: a word that tells the size, shape or color. A word that describes a noun. This is new and they just learned it last week, so you may need to provide more guidance than usual when you help them with this.

Thank you! Please let me know if you have any questions or are confused about the reading log.

-Miranda

Tomorrow

Students can come out of uniform tomorrow. If they do, we would appreciate it if you would send them in Egypt colors as we are celebrating Revolution Day and Al Muled Al Nabawy.

Thank you.

Field Trip Reminder

Just a reminder that the money for the Field Trip must be returned tomorrow. Make sure to send it with the permission slip! We will not accept the money after tomorrow.

Also, if you do not pay for your student to attend the trip, they will need to stay at home.

New Reading Homework

The new Reading Log will be coming home today. It is very different from before. We are going to test it out for now and see how it works for us.

There will be three parts in the reading file.

1- A stapled packet that gives instructions for filling out the Reading calendar (the reading log) and two example pages of the Reading Reflection sheets.

2-The actual Reading Log Calendar. We are moving to calendar format so that we don't get a new sheet every week, but rather every three weeks. There is an instruction sheet for this in the packet. Basically, you just need to have your student read for 100 minutes each week, Sunday-Saturday. I will check it every Sunday to see if the prior week had at least 100 minutes. This way,  you can choose which days of the week work best for you for reading. You can choose to read 5 minutes one day, but then maybe Friday, spend 30 minutes reading. It is up to you how you work it, just be sure to read at least 100 minutes between each Sunday through Saturday. Please let me know if this is confusing.

3- A Reading Reflection page. It has two sides. This is essentially two pages of homework. They should not be completed in one night or on the same book. Again, with this, you can choose which days you want to complete it. I will collect them on Sundays. So, if you want, it could even be weekend homework pages. For now, we will start with just these two and only do the two each week. If this is working, I have two more pages that work on different skills that I will send home. That would bring it to four Reading Reflection pages each week, but you would be able to choose which days to complete it, instead of me telling you to do one page on Monday, one on Tuesday, and so on. It will be up to you and you will have the whole seven day week, to complete four pages. For now, we are starting with just two pages to see how it works.

The reflection pages DO NOT need to be completed on the Leveled Reader book that I send home. It can be any book that you or your student reads at home. In fact, in some cases, the Leveled Reader book won't work for the Reflection pages.

These reflection pages will also provide Writing practice for your students, so it is like homework for both Reading and Writing.

Please let me know if there are questions or if anything is unclear.

You can email me at mrs.benfer@gmail.com    The school email is not working again. 

Field Trip

Please remember to get your field trip permission slips in by this Wednesday.

Thank you!

Also, the date has been changed to Tuesday Jan. 29, rather than Wednesday, Jan 30. 

Notification

There will not be a reading log coming home today. I was out of school today so I was not able to prepare the new reading log to send home. I should be back in tomorrow, so I will try to send the reading log home then.

For tonight, please just focus on making sure to read at least 15 minutes.

The usual Journeys and Math homework will still be sent home.

Grade 1b News Jan 13-Jan 17

Reading- We learned about verbs. Student's learned that a verb is an action word. We also made the connection to complete sentences. Every complete sentence will have a verb and a noun. We learned the sounds of the short o, like in log and rot and the short e sound like in bet, set and vet. We also practiced the sounds of "y" and "w" and the sound "s" when it is at the end of a word, like ducks, books, kids. Miss Miranda also started working on Reading Level reassessments to check for any progress.

Writing- We started our new writing unit on Personal Narratives. This unit will help students write stories about their lives and experiences. This week we learned about what a Small Moment story is and what it may look like. We read a book called A Chair for My Mother and talked about how the author took one very small moment about walking home from the store and stretched it into two pages by adding details about everything that happened, what she saw, what she talked about, etc. Over the next 5-6 weeks, we will continue mastering the skills needed to create a small moment story. Our stories will include a beginning, middle and end. They will include characters, setting, events, and a personal response, which could include the author's feelings during the events. We will also continue to develop the surface features of our writing, like spelling, punctuation and spacing. We are off to a great start, and after just two lessons, I can already sit a small improvement in your students' writing.

Math - We finished Chapter 7 about fact families. We also learned some algebra about following a rule. I might spend one more day working on fact families to reinforce the skills before starting our next chapter. We will start working on place value, number patterns and using a hundreds chart.

Science - We had a class discussion about different habitats. We talked about Forests, Oceans and Deserts. We thought about what kinds of animals we would see in each habitat and what kind of plants we might see. Then we used the computer and looked at pictures of each habitat on the projector. In each picture, we used our observation skills to talk about what we saw in the picture. What animals were there? Any plants? Is that what we thought might be in that habitat? This week and next week, we will start to draw pictures and create habitat murals in class with our table groups.

It was great to see ALL of you at the Parent Meetings on Tuesday. It was a great turnout and I really appreciate your involvement in your child's education. I am very excited for the trimester ahead! I can't wait to see how much your students progress! 

Last Minute Request

Please bring your student's report card with you tomorrow. If you see this message, it would be great if you could pass it along to other parents you talk to this evening.

Thank you very much!

Update

I have posted the homework on the homework pages with some updates. Please be sure to read it. The updates are right above the table with the homework.

Also, I know that students have complained about having the same books and wanting new books in their choice boxes. For a few weeks, the books will most likely be the same for everyone (some groups may get new books). Some students have read all of the books at their current independent level and at this point the only way for them to get new books in their choice box is by advancing to the next reading level. However, this is not a bad thing. It is a good thing for students to reread books that they have already read. It helps improve their fluency (how smoothly they read) and their ability to recognize new words. The more they read those stories, the more those new words will become familiar to them and no longer be a new word. I will probably re-assess for reading levels at the end of January so until that book, they may be reading books that they have read before. Please let me know if you have any questions about this.


Lastly, Grade 1b has a new student! Please welcome Dareen and her family to our class. Dareen is fitting in very well and the students are so happy to have someone new. Everyone has been so helpful in teaching Dareen our classroom routines.

Parent Meeting Schedule

Here is the schedule for the Parent Meetings on Tuesday. If you did not return the form, then I have schedule you in an open time. Please let me know if that time will work for you or if you would like me to move it to one of the other open slots. 

Just a reminder, there is no school for all students on Tuesday. 

In preparation for the meeting, please be sure you have looked over the report card that was sent home on Thursday. This way I can answer any questions you have about it during the meeting. Thank you and I look forward to seeing you!

Parents Meeting Schedule

Timing	Student Name
8:15 – 8:30	Salma
8:30 – 8:45	Zeina
8:45 -9:00	Omar F.
9:00 – 9:15	Eyad
9:15- 9:30	Gasser
9:30 -9: 45	Hashim
9:45 – 10 :00
10:00 -10:15
10:15- 10:45
10:30-10:45	Omar N.
10:45 – 11:00	Yassin
11:00 -11:15	Youssef
11:15 -11:30	Leena
11:30- 11:45
11:45-12:00
12:00- 12:15
12:15 -12:30	Ziad
12:30-12:45	Nour

Parent Meeting Confirmation

Please make sure to send in your Parent Meeting Confirmation slip tomorrow or send me an email tonight. If I do not receive the slip from you tomorrow, I will have to assign you a slot that is open on the schedule. If the time I gave does not work, please send me two other times that may work for you. Conferences are on Tuesday so I need to finalize the schedule tomorrow.


Sorry to post this so late. I hope everyone sees it. I wasn't able to post at school today because of the electricity issue.

Thank you to those of you who have sent it in already. Please disregard this notice.

Have a nice evening!
-Miranda

Welcome Back!

Hello!

I hope everyone enjoyed their winter break and had a Happy New Year!


There will be no homework this week, except to read for 15 minutes each night. I have sent home a leveled book with your child to help with this. I am working on making some changes to the homework and reading log this week, which is why I have not sent any homework home for the week.


Also, please make sure you have sent in your parent meeting confirmation, so that I have a scheduled time for you. Parent Meetings are Tuesday, January 15. I am still waiting to receive several of the slips. Please send them as soon as possible, or feel free to email me to confirm as well. It is best to email me at mrs.benfer@gmail.com for this week because the email and internet at school is down at the moment.


Thank you!
-Miss Miranda