Hi families,
Today was day 39 of 1st grade! We are officially back in the swing of things! We are still fixing up and making adjustments from where we left off pre-strike, but it's so great to be settling back into our normal routine. This time of year tends to be a little crazy so please take note of our upcoming important dates section! Upcoming Important Dates November 27th - Originally a no attendance day for students but is now a proposed possible make-up day for students. Date will be confirmed as an attendance day by Nov. 20th. November 28th - No School (Thanksgiving) & Abigail S's birthday November 29th - No School (Thanksgiving Break) December 3rd - Picture Day December 13th - Quarter 2 Progress Reports Distributed December 17th - PreK-8th grade Winter Performance @ 8:30a (families are invited to attend this) / PreK-3rd Winter Performance @ 6pm (families are invited to attend this) December 18th - PreK-8th Winter Performance @ 8:30a (Students only) / 4th-8th Winter Performance @ 6pm (families are invited to attend this) December 23rd - Start of Winter Break Scholastic Book Orders Students will be sent home with Scholastic Book Magazines. You may either order online or with cash-- though ordering online is preferred. The books will be shipped directly to our classroom for free. I do not set due dates and have a rolling order date. Any submitted orders using our class code of PFCTF will be sent for approval to Scholastic through within 1-2 days that I receive notification that you've paid. There is also a larger selection of books online HERE. You may place an order the same way as the paper copies by using the class code PFCTF. Homework changes You will have noticed that there has been an addition to your child's reading homework. In addition to our weekly reading log, students are to complete 2 readers response entries from two days that they've read. At this time they do not need to write an entry at home every day-- just pick two days! This is not a new assignment for students to complete as we have been practicing writing about our reading every day since the beginning of the school year. This is a way for students to really practice what we've been doing in reading in class back at home. Added benefit is for you to see what we've been working hard on at school! As the year progresses, students will be sent home with their reading binder which will have their goals and reading strategy tools that we use in class. Their reading binder will help them as they continue to develop and grow as readers and write about their reading in their entries. Winter Assembly Show You may have heard your child singing a silly little tune called "It's A Hard Knock Life" from the musical Annie. Mr. Coulter has set this year's winter assembly music show theme to be songs from movies. We will be singing the popular tune from the 2014 version of Annie. You can find the *slightly adjusted* lyrics HERE. Normally Mr. Coulter requires students to perform in a white dress shirt, black dress slacks/skirt, and black shoes. However in order to really set the stage for the performance, I was thinking that maybe we could have the students dress down a bit to match the characters in Annie. Nothing too fancy! Overalls, aprons, handrags, clothing that may be a little too big and worn out, regular jeans. If you have any questions, please email Mr. Coulter at [email protected]. NWEA You will be receiving a PDF document from me that will be your child's Fall NWEA score and their student profile. I was going to print physical copies to give out during report card conferences last week, but the document ended up being 600+ pages. I'll be sending you the digital copy of the data for you by this week. Thanks for your patience with me on this. It takes a while to download the file, then separate and save by each student's information, and then send back out to the respective families. Birthday Treats Birthday treats are more than welcomed in our classroom! However, let's keep them as non-food related items. I am noticing that as of late there have been edible treats-- and though they are much loved and appreciated by the kiddos, we have classmates with food-related allergies. Let's limit our birthday treats to trinkets such as erasers, small toys, pencils, etc. A Peek into our Classroom We will be finishing up our math unit on numbers up to 1,000. This week we will be covering comparing numbers as greater than, less than, and equal to. There will be a test that is given on the different forms of writing numbers, skip counting starting at any number by 1s, 2s, 5s, 10s, 100s, and 1000s, and comparing numbers up to the thousands place. The test is scheduled to be on Monday, November 25th and I will send home a study guide on Friday. In spelling we are reviewing digraphs. After our last spelling test on digraphs, our students didn't do well so I am taking this week to slow down and review the digraphs a few at a time with this week focusing on "ch" and "sh." In reading we continuing to work on being cognizant of how we solve tricky words using various strategies. As great readers, we don't just rely on ONE strategy-- but we pull on multiple to double check and become stronger readers. We will also be paying attention to authors by reading like an author, trying different writing techniques we've read in our own writing, and noticing how an author connects parts of the story together to create an ending that can sometimes teach a lesson. In science, we are learning why certain animals behave in special ways and why certain animals have special parts of their bodies to help them survive (i.e. a polar bear having a white body). Thanks for reading this super long email and have a great week! Ms. Chin
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Good afternoon families-
My apologies- no idea if this is considered week 7 or week 10. Also have lost track of what day of school it is! Important Dates 2nd - Rex M's birthday 7th - Breyonna W's birthday 8th - No School (End of Q1) 9th - Kelly Y's birthday 11th - No School (Veteran's Day) 13th - No School (Report Card Conferences) 28th - No School (Thanksgiving) & Abigail S's birthday 29th - No School (Thanksgiving Break) (please note that due to the strike, dates may change) CPS just sent the proposed 5 instructional days that will be made up from the strike. These proposed days need to be approved by the Board of Ed who is meeting on November 20th. I want to share these days so that you can plan accordingly. Again, please note that these are not official- but just proposed. Wednesday, November 27th, 2019 Thursday, January 2nd, 2020 Friday, January 3rd, 2020 Wednesday, June 17th, 2020 Thursday, June 18th, 2020 Peak into this Week Reading - We will be backtracking this week to review what our expectations and reading strategies are and how to reflect on them in our readers' response notebook. We will also be moving forward in learning strategies of how to break apart difficult words to read them fluently. We will also be paying attention to authors by reading like a writer, trying the different writing techniques they've read in their own writing, and noticing how an author connects parts of the story together to create an ending that can sometimes teach a lesson. Math - I had originally planned on finishing up our place value unit up to the thousands and moving on to adding numbers up to the hundreds place. Unfortunately due to the strike, we are a bit behind. There will be a quiz this Wednesday, November 6th on place value of numbers up to the hundreds. Students should be able to write a number in standard form, word form, and expanded form. Students should also be able to name value of a number-- i.e. the six in 261 as sixty and should also be able to represent a number through base ten blocks. Report Card Pick-Up Conferences Please use the following link to schedule your report card pick-up conference with me. Report Card Conferences will be on Wednesday, November 13th from 11:00a-6:00p. Each time slot is 10 minutes and if we need to schedule for a longer time, please let me know so that we can extend it to another day. If none of the available times work for you, please let me know so that we can set up an alternative time/day. SIGN UP HERE. Sickness Going on in the Classroom We, unfortunately, have strep that is currently going around the classroom. If your child is feeling sick, please keep them home. The custodians and I will be deep cleaning the classroom to try to eliminate any germs being passed around. |