Week 1 is in the books!

Last Wednesday was my son's first day of 2nd grade. After a great deal of tears {on my part, he was off and running and couldn't wait to get into school} I came here to Mann to get ready for your first graders. When I got home I asked him about his day, and he said "the teacher did a LOT of talking Mommy and boy am I tired!" Yep, he's in good hands! :D

I share this with you because I suspect your first grader came home with the same story their first day. In first grade we start our year with a great deal of routines and practice. A GREAT deal. Lots and lots of routines and practice--BECAUSE, it only helps us to get so much more done as we really get rolling into our school year. I "train" the little ones on our routines so that it becomes just that, routine. That way we can accomplish big things with regards to academics because we are not worried about the little stuff like "where does this go when I'm finished?" All that good and important classroom management stuff. 

So I do a great deal of talking, but then we do a great deal of practice of those routines so we all are confident and comfortable. I know the age group, so at the beginning of the year I have a small 10 minute window and then we have to move on to something new. This routine practice only helps us to accomplish learning and knowledge growth with rigor as we move forward with our school year. This routine also is a sense of security for the children. They crave the routine and the comfort in knowing what to expect. 

Thank you so much for filling out the parent questionare. A chance for you to brag to me all about your first grader! 

I trust your first grader came home pretty shell-shocked about all the expectations this week. "We are not in Kindergarten anymore Toto!" We hold the bar high in first grade, only because we know they can achieve great things! :D

We journal every morning in first grade and I am very detailed with my expectations with their writing during journal. We of course will also have writers workshop, which is a different format for writing. I spoke more to these elements of our curriculum during our curriculum night.

Thanks for your help with our behavior support program in first grade. The reminders! This is first grade's strategy of helping your child to learn good behaviors and positively reinforce them.  I will let you all in on a little secret--the first week of school I like to make sure that EVERY child receives at least one reminder. That way they know what it feels like, what to expect, and know I mean business. Your child most likely will come home telling you they got a reminder at some point this week. The color code on my blog helps you to determine what the reminder they received was for, so you can have a conversation about what they did and what they can do better :)  We of course get a Horseshoe Hooray if we are caught making good choices, and will get one at day's end if we do not receive any reminders. We also each get a HH if as a class we have all of our tattle elephants in tact!

We took our first spelling pre-test. This was a bit tricky for some children as they were tempted to peek at the answers. We spoke to wanting to be honest with our abilities to spell or not spell the words. How some words we won't need to study as we already know how to spell them, so we can be efficient with our time. If we peak then we won't study any of the words and come Friday our final assessment will show our mistakes. 

We also practiced the independent reading portion of reading workshop.vWe will practice as a group each workshop center: teaching table, writing, word work, and independent reading. Talking about what that center should look/sound like. We are working to build our independent reading stamina!

Mrs. Mariani {Gifted and Talented Development teacher} came to work with a small group of students this week! She worked on math skills. Next week she will work with language arts skills.

In your child's mail folder this week there is the iLearn 97 program agreement. This is to be signed by all students in the district as we will employ the use of technology. Please return to school asap! 

Also of note, we voted on our class name. Drum roll please.....we will be the Cairns Ice Cream Cones! :D

Thanks so much for ALL you do!