Aug 24 2008
Week of August 25-29
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
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Ms. Gaverick,
What a wonderful use of your blog. I love how you have summarized what is happening in your classroom for you students and parents. This is a great example for the others teachers in your school, too. You have reviewed new things students will work on and taught a quick lesson for parents in phonics. Great use of this web tool.