Happy Monday! I sent home the Conference Day schedule and assume, all is well, since I did not hear that anyone could not make their time. I look forward to talking with everyone on Thursday.
It is Time to Re-enroll. Please do so immediately! You can do it on-line.
Our Love Jar has come to an end. I will be moving their seats into islands of three students each. Their rewards will now be pennies. They are learning on how to work together, compromise, share as a team, rather than only worrying about themselves. This will be our focus throughout the remainder of First Grade. The 100th day of school is Friday. Thank-you to all of you who have sent their 100 items to school.
Our Science Center field trip is Tuesday. Please join us at 12:00 at the Science Center if you can. The address is 7701 22nd Ave. N St. Petersburg. Please return your order forms with the money by Tuesday, so we can pick up the items when we are there.
The 7th graders came down on Friday and shared their fables they wrote with us. It was so fun for us to hear the stories that the older students wrote. Thank-you Mr. Collins.
Our main focus this week has been our projects. We are working with partners, designed a presentation board to display facts about our planets, compromised about what each of us could do and enjoyed the process immensely. We will finish them this week for you to see and enjoy on Conference Day.

I have been crazy assessing, and will share the information with you on Thursday. Have a great week. We will!

Happy Monday! We had a great Special Friends and Grandparents Day! Enjoy all of the pictures from our class.
We learned all about Saturn and Mars this week. We also began our All About stories and used hedgehogs as our topic. We really know a lot about them.
We are also learning about equivalent numbers in Math. What other names can you make for the number collection box. We will be celebrating the 100th Day of school on Friday, Feb. 2nd. Please look at your form to see what item you need to bring to school.
We are continuing our work reading nonfiction books. We learned about what is a glossary and index.
Spirit Day is also Tuesday this week. We are going to the Upper Division for a pep rally on Tues. to celebrate the girls and boys soccer teams. Please wear a spirit shirt to school tomorrow.
Have a great week. We will!

Happy Friday. I hope everyone has a great long weekend and finds time to reflect about all of the great things Dr. King accomplished. We will talk more about him on Tuesday. Grandparents/Special Friends Day is Friday. If you have not sent in a photo yet, please do so asap. We are trying to make something special to give out on Friday. Any child who does not have anyone coming, will be paired up  with someone who does, and their Grandparent project will be sent home to be mailed. Don't forget it is a noon dismissal on Friday.
A great big Thank-you to Mrs. Ewert for coming to teach us about hedgehogs, read stories with hedgehogs in them and make a great corn muffin hedgehog snacks. What a great compliment party we had.

February 5th is our Field Trip to the Planetarium/Science Center in Saint Petersburg on 22nd Ave N. Please join us if you can. Due to limited space on the schoolbus, you will have to meet us there. Check your child's Homework Calendar for a reminder. We will be eating lunch at school that day before we go. Our tour at the Science Center is from 11:30-2:00p.m.
Our focus planet this week was Jupiter. Please ask me facts. We blended colors with cray-pas to make the gas giant. We used red glitter to make the great red spot. They are hung in the hall for preview. We also used our fingers to blend the colors. The books were confusing, because they all made Jupiter look red, orange, yellowish but it is a very cold planet. So we made the bands of Jupiter the colors we thought were appropriate. Each one of our Jupiter's is different.
Our How To books are published and in the hall. That is the first part of our non-fiction writing unit.
The Checking Progress for Unit 5 in Math was sent home today. The parent letter for Unit 6 will be sent home with the Homework Calendar on Tuesday. There will be 5 new word card words next week but no new word family phonics sounds. It is a review week of the long vowel sounds previously covered. Mainly all of the silent e rules except e, ee, and ea.
Please check the Conference Day schedule for Feb. 7th. Have a great weekend. We will!

Conference Day February 7th   Sign-up

 7:30a.m.   Beasley

 8:00a.m.   Rutledge

 8:30a.m.   Torres-Monclava

 9:00a.m.  Martin

 9:30a.m.   Hamblen

 10:00a.m.   Davis

 10:30a.m.   Evans

 11:00a.m.   Hasbun

 LUNCH

 1:00p.m.   Welborne

 1:30p.m.    Palmer

 2:30p.m.  Levitz

 3:00p.m.  Kennedy

 Other Days:

Tues. 1/21 7:15 a.m. Healey

Tues. 2/12 1:30 p.m. Imensek

Thanks

Gaye Whitecage

Happy Monday! I hope everyone had a great weekend.
 We are counting each day until we reach 100. We have 17 days left. I sent home their animal cards. Please refer to the note to review the skills, especially more than and less than. Please pay close attention to the Function Machine homework this week. If the out number is larger, the rule has to be addition.
We are working on non fiction in reading and writing. We are writing How To stories and teaching others about, what we or they can learn.

We worked on projects this week, with our planet Earth study. I first asked the students what they already knew about Earth. I was surprised at how little they knew. We worked on the computer, wrote on a graphic organizer, colored and created information that was important to us. Each child's work is different. We will be doing another project shortly, and they will be choosing the planet or topic. They will be working with partners. They will begin their research with Mrs. Baralt in the computer lab on Tuesday. The tricky part, is that they are not always able to read the information independently. The pictures on the web sites help greatly. They will be creating this project in school. After learning how to put a project together they will have the opportunity to work on a project at home in May.
I am in the process of assessing their reading levels over the next couple of weeks. I will be sharing this information with you, in our February conference. Thank-you for sending non-fiction books to school. It is fun to talk about the variety of interests. Have a great week. We will!

Happy First School Day Monday of 2013. We are off to a great start in 2013. My message to the students on Thursday and Friday was that we are no longer learning about what first graders do, rather we are preparing for second grade, the remainder of the year. There eyes grew wide, and they are now anticipating the 100th day of school. We have 23 more school days until the 100th. They are somewhat changing their priorities and have more accountability over what they are helping themselves learn. We wrote New Year's Resolutions! Goals for home and school. Help your child to be accountable for what they are helping with at home. I've got the school goals handled.
Book orders went home and are due back to school by Fri. January 11th. Reminders.... please send a jacket or sweatshirt to school each day. This weather is tricky and it is sometimes a lot cooler than predicted. We eat lunch outside and the students get cold sitting still for that time. A snack needs to be sent each day, even if they are buying school lunch. A reminder of new supplies needed is on their Homework Calendar. Please replenish the supplies needed.
I will be sending home their Just Right Book, in their Wednesday Baggie. Everything is due back on Mondays. Please do not forget, because I use the books in class on Mondays and Tuesdays before another goes home on Wednesdays.
Please keep the Handwriting Without Tears workbook close by, when your child is completing their homework. Neatness and proper letter strokes are closely reviewed and monitored.
In Math we are working on writing number stories and practicing number facts. At this point the students are using their number grids to find the difference between two numbers.
Thank-you for all my tubes. Now, we will make our Night Sky Viewers.......please use them at home to preview what your child sees in the night sky.

Happy Monday! This is it until 2013. I wish everyone a wonderful and restful vacation. What a huge success the gift drive was this year. I would like to thank Patty Ann for all her hard work handling our classroom donations. Please check out ebytes to see all of the photos taken at the gift drive. We had a wonderful discussion in our class meeting about it, Why Give? It was important for the students to talk about why we do this.
We will be publishing this week in Writers Workshop. I thought it would be best to have their stories available for others to read on Thursday morning. I am hoping many of you can come to our pajama breakfast and Writer's Workshop Celebration. I sent home the letter today.

In Readers Workshop, we are finishing up our Spotlight author study with Amelia Bedelia. The students have enjoyed all of the different adventures she has taken. The students enjoyed working on the IPads this week for our word work. The app we used was Vocabulary Spelling City. We have now covered a, i, o as longvowels with a silent e. Please continue helping your child with the spelling rules. Come is not a long o word even though it ends with an e. I have shown them the exceptions to the silent e long vowel rule. This is the word and how it is pronounced, even though it follows a different spelling rule (one). There are so many exceptions, it is hard to keep all of the spelling rules straight. There are no new Word Families this week just review the a, i, o long vowel silent e rule. There are no new word card words either.Your child is responsible for reading and spelling all of the words on their ring.
I have some Homework Calendar issues. The students are returning their homework with sloppy or incorrect letter strokes. Please check their neatness and if need be, have them redo their work. I am sending home their Handwriting Without Tears workbook. Please refer to that for correct formation.
In science we worked on the stars and constellations this week. I am collecting paper towel or toilet paper tubes to make night sky and constellation view finders. We looked at the meteor shower on the computer because I doubt anyone including me would be watching it from midnight until 3a.m.

Have a great rest of 2012. See you in 2013! Look even Slim is in the Santa Spirit!

Happy Tuesday, now! Sorry, I forgot to post yesterday.Boy, how time is flying by. I can't believe it is almost winter break.

There are a few things I want you to review and work on at home. I also want to introduce you to our new pet hedgehog, Slim. Slim is a whole lot of fun for the students to look at and hold. I have them wearing garden gloves, because his spikes are a little startling.
We are focusing on Realistic Fiction in reading and writing workshop until winter break. We are reading stories that have a made up character in a real setting with real problems and solutions. This genre is tricky because based on anyone's interpretation, most stories could fit into this category. In writing, we are isolating one aspect of the story as fiction. For example this week we only wrote with fictitious characters in our stories but with real problems and solutions.

I am sending home the Unit 4 Checking Progress in Math. I am also sending home the unit 5 Family Letter. The students had a hard time completing the Frames and Arrows portion. Please practice counting backwards by 2's, 5's and 10's. Please also continue working on learning their math facts quickly, so they are not having to count on their fingers. They practiced making number combinations with double dice. Dice are great tools to get numbers from, for basic facts. Then they can always count the dots if they need to. As you can see, this skill is used when completing various activities. The Pringles cans are working beautifully in making a place for our Math Scrolls. The students are busy adding to their scrolls and making them as long as they can. They will not get to bring their scrolls home until the end of the school year. This week we will be studying the sun and stars. Our pajama party will be on Thursday December 20th at 8:15 a.m.. Please plan on joining us only if you wear your pajamas as well.