It's Official..

 

First and Second Grade Laptop Learners!

The Week of Oct. 19

 

Upcoming Events

Parent/Teacher Conferences -Oct. 27 and 28 

Please contact Ms. Debbie to schedule a conference! 

First Day of Computer Work at Home - 

Wednesday Oct. 28

Early Release Day- Friday, Oct. 30 @ 11:30- 

Students will eat lunch and then be dismissed. There will be NO after-school program on Friday.

Book Orders Due 

Friday, October 30

REMOTE DAYS

On Oct. 28, your child will begin using their laptops at home on remote days. For the first few weeks, we will begin by using Dreambox a math practice app, and EPIC our online library. All students have the EPIC icon on their desktop and can access it from there. 

Your child will have a TECHNOLOGY menu which I will put in the back of their home-folder.  This menu will have their usernames and passwords. I will send out an assignment packet each week just as we did all along including their work for "homedays".

LAPTOPS  NEED TO BE RETURNED TO SCHOOL ON YOUR STUDENTS' NEXT SCHOOL DAY :)

Technology Update

The first and second graders are learning to safely handle and use their laptops. This week we focused on:

• Carrying our laptops
• Navigating the keyboard
• Using the touchpad
• Using the touchscreen (some laptops have this feature)
• Turning on and off 
• Logging onto laptops
• Using EPIC and Dreambox apps 
• Cleaning our laptops safely

By meeting these classroom expectations, students are working on earning their  Laptop Learners License! 

Readers Workshop

This week, we chose new books to read during readers' workshop and worked on reviewing the Habits of a Good Reader! We are working on reading stamina and have been setting goals for our reading each day. We really loved checking out EPIC and reading some fun books! 

Writing Workshop

Our little authors are working hard on their small moment stories! This week, we organized our writing folders and learned about elaboration. Students created a red sticker and a green sticker for their folders. The red side will hold stories that are finished, and the green side will hold those that we are still working on. We looked through all of our stories and noticed ways we could go back to add more detail. This week, we added more to our pictures! 

HOPES AND DREAMS 

I can't wait for you to see them at Parent/Teacher Conferences

Math

In math, we tried out a new station which the kiddos LOVED! This week we explored 3D shapes with building blocks and polydrons. We continue to work on subitizing and recognizing sets without counting. We also explored DREAMBOX and enjoyed playing some fun games! 

October Book Order

 

Oct. 15, 2020

 

Dear First Grade and Second Grade Families,

October book order catalogues are here for this month. There is a great selection of books and a wide range of reading levels. If you wish to order, please look through the flyer and return the order form and a check made out to Scholastic. Please use the code below to access our classroom online. Just visit  https://clubs.scholastic.com and enter in LDRGD.  All orders will be due by Oct. 30^th.

PBIS Classroom Celebration

 

Congratulations First and Second Grade!

We have accomplished one of our classroom goals! 

We can clean up and pack up quickly, quietly and safely at the end of the day. 

The first and second graders would like to have Pajama Day on 10/20 and 10/23 to accommodate both Group A and B Students. Students can wear their pajamas and slippers to school if they would like to! We are so excited! 

The Week of October 5

 

First and Second Grade 
Related Arts Schedule

Monday- P.E. Class and Library Class 

    ( Return your library books on Monday)   

Tuesday- Music Class

Thursday- P.E. Class and Guidance Class

Friday- Art Class 

Wednesday Check-in

Please be sure to check for your attendance/check-in email on Wednesday mornings! Ms. Debbie and I will be using this to take attendance. Your child will be marked absent if we don't receive a response. Thank you! 

Upcoming Events 

No School- OCt. 16

Parent Teacher Conferences- Oct. 27 and 28

Oct. 27-3:00-5:00  Oct. 28. 12:00-6:00

Early Release Day- Oct. 30

(Students will eat lunch and then be dismissed @ 11:30)

It looks like teachers are able to use their laptops and phones in school again. I wasn't able to snap any pictures of the kiddos this week, but hope to do so soon! :)

Parent/Teacher Conferences

This year, I will be holding parent/teacher conferences on Oct. 27 and 28th  via Google Meet, Zoom or over the phone. We will have a chance to talk about your child's strengths and areas of improvement in: social/emotional learning, mathematics, literacy, and have a chance to go over their fall assessments. We can set goals together and I will have time to answer any questions you have. I hope to have time to share information about Seesaw and Epic. I will be sharing a conference schedule with Ms. Debbie in the office. Please contact her to set up a time. If Oct. 27th or 28th don't work for you, please let me know and we can set something else up! Thank you for all you do to support your children! 

Mind Up/Social Emotional Learning

The first and second graders are beginning to learn about their brains. This week, we worked on learning about the prefrontal cortex (Wise Leader), amygdala (Security Guard) and hippocampus (Memory Saver). We gave them nicknames to help remember the important jobs each part of the brain does. Students drew comic strips of the different parts of the brain and imagined what super power those parts would have! We also created a "hand-model" of the brain! We are learning SO MUCH!

Readers' Workshop

In reading we are building up our "good reading habits". This week we worked on doing something at the end of each book. Students practiced reading a book again, rereading their favorite part or retelling the whole story from beginning, middle to end. On Friday, we read from our National Geographic magazine and learned that we can learn lots of information from the pictures and the text! 

Writers' Workshop

The first and second graders really like writers' workshop already! On Tuesday, we worked on our pre-assessment for our upcoming unit on small moments stories. We wrote about our favorite activity to do during our favorite season. Later in the week, we read a  mentor text which is helping us get to know how narrative stories should go! Our favorite book so far is The Night of the Veggie Monster by Andrew Clements! 

Technology Update

Seesaw Info for Families

I am excited to begin working on our new laptops next week. We will begin by learning computer handling skills, navigation of the keyboard, how to log-on and proper shut down procedures. Later, we will begin to use Seesaw and Epic. Epic is one online library we will use in class. I will share more with you at our parent/teacher conference! 

Math 

In math, we are working on combinations of ten. We are using many different manipulatives from our math boxes. We are working more and more on subitizing and using our number racks efficiently. We love our daily counting practice, and this week we are working on counting to 120 by 1s and 10s. 

The Week of Sept. 29

 

First and Second Grade 
Related Arts Schedule

Monday- P.E. Class and Library Class 

( Return your library books on Monday)   

Tuesday- Music Class

Thursday- P.E. Class and Guidance Class

Friday- Art Class 

Upcoming Events

No School- Oct. 16

Early Release Day 11:30- Oct. 30

(Students will eat lunch and then be dismissed)

Hopes and Dreams

This week, we worked more on our Hopes and Dreams for the year. Students brainstormed ways they wanted to improve this year. We wrote out our goals and made a cool cloud display in our room. We will use these goals to form our First and Second Grade rules and expectations that will help support students in achieving their goals for Trimester I. 

Putting Your Best Foot Forward

We read the book How Full is Your Bucket by Mary Reckmeyer and Tom Rath. Students noticed when they put their best foot forward they help fill others buckets. Together we made our own buckets and have really enjoyed writing notes to our friends sharing ways we notice them being kind and helpful! Our students are making our world a better place :) 

Readers' Workshop

The first and second graders are developing some great reading habits! This week, we worked on identifying just right books, making a reading plan and building our reading stamina. On Mondays, Ms. Marie is doing her best to select books of high interest and at a just right reading level for our kiddos. Students keep their books for the week and on Thursdays we place them in our BOOK REST tub for 3 days of quarantine. Ms. Russin has finished up our Fountas and Pinnell Reading Assessments and I will begin small group/individual instruction in the coming weeks. 

FUNdations

We are working on a review of letter names and sounds,  formation of lowercase letters and have begun using our cool new magnet boards! In the coming weeks, we will begin working on word building and TRICK words. Trick words are tricky because they don't follow the regular spelling rules! Trick word examples are: was, the, are etc. 

Fall CRAFTIVITY

On Friday, we read a fun fall poem! Students loved checking out different kinds of poems and noticed lots of great details (rhyming, poem looked like falling leaves, and rhythm). We read the poem together and made up movements for different parts. Later we explored different kinds of leaves and did some leaf rubbing! 

Math 

Subitizing Video with Jack Hartmann

In Math, we are working on subitizing with our eyes. We are using ten and twenty frame cards to quickly group dots to tell the total amount. We have played a lot of fun subitizing games and practiced counting by 5s. We also have learned a few new station activities: Geoboards and Ten and Some More. These first graders are so much fun to work with! We LOVE math time!