Ms. Garverick’s Class

Welcome to the third week of school! We have been busy in our classroom taking pretests and reviewing some Kindergarten skills. The students in both classes wrote a short story about pets this week. I am going to conduct a Writer’s Workshop on Wedensdays during the morning and afternoon language arts classes. A half hour of our time will be devoted to the writing and editing process. Reading and writing go hand in hand, so I am really going to try and focus on teaching the students good writing skills. Right now we are working on the basics of a sentence. Does it start with a capital letter? Does it make sense? Does it have a period or a question mark at the end? These are the skills we will be working on during the first six weeks.

I am also going to start Accelerated Reader this week. I am going to get some books from the DTE library to send home. Please read these books with your child and review the events in the story. Discuss the characters, settings, and plot. When you child is ready for the test, send the book back to school with the card in it that lets me know your child is ready for the test. I have seen how well Accelerated Reader works, and the more books the students read the better readers they become! This should be something fun to help your child with.

First graders do not recieve a grade in Spelling on the report card until the second semester, but we are already working on some vowel rules. We are working on the CVC pattern right now. CVC stands for consonant- vowel-consonant. These words have three letters with the vowel in the middle (ie. cat, bag, man). The vowel sound is short. Practice making some CVC words with your child at home.

Our class schedule should be finalized this week. I am available for conferences between 12:00 and 12:30 each day except Wednesdays. I can also meet before or after school if that time doesn’t work for you. I also check my e-mail regularly, and can have phone conferences as well.

We are really off to a great start. The students have been very well behaved and come to school ready to listen and learn! Thanks for that! I will attach some more pictures tomorrow, when I get to school.

Let me know if you have any questions!

Ms. Garverick

We have been busy here in First Grade! I have been administering some baseline reading test to the students to determine their reading readiness. They have been doing quite well. On Tuesday, we had three support classes. The students have P.E. in the morning, and computer and art in the afternoon. Our schedule should be finalized next week, and once it is I will let you all know my conference times.

Also, I am going to put the homework folders together this weekend, so your child will be bringing home Language Arts and Reading homework next week.

Just a reminder- if you have not already done so- school supplies should be sent in by tomorrow. The most important item on the First Grade list is the chair bag, which can be purchased at the DTE bookstore. It is also very important for all students to have a backpack. The students have been so good this week, and I am really looking forward to a great year.

Let me know if you have any other questions!

What an exciting day for us here at Downtown Elementary! It was so nice to meet all the children and parents this morning. I am looking forward to wonderful year with this class. I have already noticed how polite and well behaved this group is.

We spent the morning getting to know each other during our first “Morning Meeting”. This is something that we do each morning, and is part of what makes us a Responsive Classroom. During the morning meeting we gather on the carpet, greet each other by name, share different things, and read a morning message that outlines our day ahead. It is a great way to start the day and really fosters a caring sense of community in our classroom.

It was an exceptionally exciting morning because during our meeting, Dr. Kriner Cash, the MCS superintendent, came into our classroom and listened as we shared our favorite parts of summer. Look for us on the news tonight!!!

After our meeting, we switched classes. I worked with the traditional class this morning, and will teach the optional class in the afternoons. We also had Music today with Mrs. Boggs. So as you can see, we were very busy! Enjoy the pictures, and let me know if you have any questions or comments in the comment section.

I hope this blog will help too keep you informed on all the wonderful things that are going on in First Grade at Downtown Elementary!

Ms. Garverick

And I have been so busy! I have had a sick computer at home, so I have not been able to post. But luckily, my good friend “Doubleclick” helped me out.

I have been trying to think of all the different ways I can effectively use this blog in my class. Because we are departmentalized at our school, I have double the amount of students. I think this blog is going to save me a lot of time preparing notes to send home about what is going on at school.

I went to a workshop last week about the new reading intervention program. DIBELS has been changed to AIMS!! It’s the same thing as DIBELS, but it has a better website and better methods of tracking student progress. Also, someone from the district is actually going to come in and test our children for the first benchmark.

I do love this time of year. I am always excited about going back to school, seeing my friends, working in my classroom, and meeting my new students. Two months of rest really does wonders for the mind. it’s awesome being a teacher!

We learned about podcasts this morning. A podcast is essentially a broadcast through the internet. The ways to use podcasts in the classroom are limitless. As a reading teacher, I would love to have podcasts of the students reading a story. That way, parents could access it and listen to their child. Also, it would be a very helpful tool when assessing a child’s reading ability throughout the school year. I don’t think it would be hard to get a podcast kit for my classroom. Scott gave us lots of good tips on how to go about this.

Yesterday was jam packed full of interesting sessions. I was especially interested in the de.lic.ious social bookmarking website and Google Earth. I cannot wait to use Google Earth in my Social Studies lessons. I always try to make sure the students know their addresses and phone numbers at the beginning of the year, and using Google Earth to show the students there homes would have a huge impact.

So I managed to create a new avatar for myself using www.bitstrips.com. I am going to work on it some more so I can personalize it a little bit. I also chatted with Linda last night using Skype. Pretty cool! I cannot wait to have some time to sit down and send some of my photos to Animoto. This website is so cool- you can send them a file of your pictures and they will set it to music and make an awesome slideshow for you.

Tech Camp has been awesome. I can honestly say it’s been the best workshop I have ever attended!

So far today we have learned about Smartboards and SmartTech software. I also just learned how to create a link to another website. Click on SmartTech to see if I did it right! Cindy showed us lots of different ways to use the board and the software. I am going to have to find a way to get one of these. Here are some more photos from today. I have learned so much today it is unbelievable!

First item on the agenda today was setting up a classroom blog! I am excited about having a blog instead of a web page because it will be so much more interactive. Parents, students, and friends can leave comments and ask questions.