December!

Wow, I can't believe that it is already almost halfway through this month.  We are continuing to work hard with all that we do and at times we need reminders on the simple routines and rules of our classroom that we worked very hard to learn the first few weeks. ;)

I look forward to parent/teacher conferences as our time to chat about your developing First Grader. Please keep in mind that conferences are about 20 minutes and I have them back to back both days! I will do my best to stick to the time but you may be waiting for a couple of minutes if anyone comes in late or we go over a minute or two.

We are starting a new unit in Reading Workshop that focuses on "meeting" and understanding/analyzing the characters in our books. You can help to reinforce this at home when your child finishes reading a book to you. Have him/her retell and discuss what they notice about the character, did the character change at all throughout the book, what are words to describe that character, etc.

I am impressed with the hard work that the students did on their very first gumball quiz! We had many gumballs this first week. Please keep in mind that your child may be practicing the same facts for more than a week depending on whether they successfully completed the quiz in that time frame. If your child does not receive new flashcards on a Monday that means they did not complete the quiz the week before and will retake it that week. I stressed to the children the importance of not bragging and being proud of everyone's accomplishments, even if it just means for trying very hard. We are all working at our own pace.

Thank you to those of you that offered to help run a Holiday Workshop next Friday! I will be in touch shortly. If anyone else is still interested that would be wonderful! Please email me to let me know.

The next two weeks will be spent traveling the world and learning about how some other countries celebrate the December holidays! Today was our first country and the students learned about Mexico!

Challenge:  Which continent is Mexico located on?  Please email me by Friday with your child's answer for a prize.
Please remember that your child needs to be the one to answer! :)