First Grade Newsletter

August 30-September 13, 2007

Dear Parents,

We are really getting into the swing of things. The children are learning all the different procedures. The beginning of first grade can be overwhelming, but everyone seems to be adjusting. Please check for homework in your child’s assignment notebook. Be sure to ask your child what life skill we are working on. Your child should tell you all about perseverance. It’s one of our favorites.

Religion: In Religion class your child will be taught about doctrine, Scripture, and our liturgical year. You are a partner in this process. You have a unique opportunity to relate what is being taught in class to what is happening at home. You help to connect faith for your child. If faith is important and practiced in your life than chances are it will become important for your child as well.

Every Friday your child will bring home the chapter we have been studying in class. The last page is titled “With My Family”. Please go over this with your child on the weekend.

The first grade will be attending Mass every Thursday at 8:15 with the entire school. We will be teaching the children how to respond appropriately. Please reiterate to your children how to stand, kneel, make the sign of the cross, and participate at Mass. We also invite you to attend Mass with us throughout the school year.

Math: Our classroom will use a curriculum called Math Trailblazers™: A Mathematical Journey Using Science and Language Arts. The curriculum meets national recommendations for improving mathematics education in our schools.

We will create a mathematics classroom where students work together on meaningful and challenging tasks and discuss their ideas with their peers, teacher, and family. You will receive a letter at the beginning of every unit that updates you on the math concepts and skills your child is learning. At times, I will ask you to participate by sending small items to school, playing a math game, or helping with homework assignments.

In this unit, your child will learn to visualize and find relationships among shapes. Children who explore geometry in this way are better prepared to learn other concepts related to numbers and measurement.

We will work with squares, circles, and rectangles as well as with less familiar shapes

such as hexagons and trapezoids. Children will locate shapes in their everyday lives,

create patterns, and investigate the results of combining shapes and breaking them into

smaller parts.

As we explore these concepts in the classroom, you can help at home. For example:

• I Spy a Shape. Describe a shape you see that is part of an object, such as a tile
on the wall. Invite your child to guess the object you are talking about.

•Reading at Home. Your child may enjoy finding books about shapes at the library and reading them with you. Some suggested books about shapes are Shapes, Shapes, Shapes by Tana Hoban and Color Zoo by Lois Ehlert.

Work Activity Time (WAT): You may hear your child speak of Work Activity Time. It is one of our favorite times of the day. Your child will be working independently on Math, Language, Geography, and Science projects. Please feel free to stop by sometime and see your child’s hard work.

Phonics: Phonics notebooks come home every Monday and Wednesday. Thank you for helping your child with these words. They are so proud to read these notebooks the next day. It is also a good idea to go back and review the words from previous weeks. All letters in the notebooks are sounds we have covered. Help your child sound out words with these sounds. Don’t forget to help your child spell the words correctly, capitalize only proper nouns, and to make sure they are using their best handwriting.

Language Arts: Our Language Arts program this year is the Four-Blocks method. The Four Blocks----Guided Reading, Self-Selected Reading, Writing, and Working with Words----represent four different approaches to teaching children to read. Doing all Four-Blocks acknowledges that children do not all learn in the same way and provides substantial instruction to support whatever learning personality a child has. This approach seems to meet the needs of those who struggle and those who need additional challenges.

Every Monday your child will bring home five “word wall” words. They should be written in your child’s assignment notebook. These words do not need to be spelled, but make sure your child can read them. One idea if your child struggles with this is to make flash cards.

Writer’s Workshop: Writer’s Workshop is always a favorite time of day. We have many authors busy at work. Ask your child to tell you about it. Conference time will be a great time to show it off.

Weather:

(Math Piece included on hard copy)

In Math, your child will be collecting weather data daily and will continue throughout the month. At the end of the month, we will graph our data. Be on the lookout for weekend weather tracking homework. It will be coming home on Friday’s throughout the month of September.

Other Notes: We ask that you look at the book orders carefully. They usually have very age appropriate books for your child. The more you order, the more free books and other educational items our classrooms receives. We would appreciate any help you can give us. September book orders are due Friday, September 7. Remember only one check is needed for multiple orders.

Dates to Remember:

September 3 – Labor Day! No School

September 11 – Late Start 10:00 am

September 10-14 – Food Pantry Drive

*HOME FOLDERS AND ASSIGNMENT NOTEBOOKS SHOULD COME HOME AND BE RETURNED DAILY.

Please do not hesitate to email or call us with any questions or concerns. As always, your children are real treasures, and we feel very blessed to be their teachers this year.

Sincerely,

Kate Stilley (kstilley@stpeterskc.org)

Carmela Guthrie (cguthrie@stpeterskc.org)

Kathleen Barry (kbarry@stpeterskc.org)