Last week, we spent a lot of time getting to know each other. One of the ways we will learn a little bit about each person in the class is by conducting interviews. Each day, we'll interview someone new. Last week, we started by interviewing me, Ms. Buttery. Ask your child if he/she remembers my favorite food (pizza) and color (green).
We also have been spending a lot of time learning new classroom routines, like unpacking, cleaning up, and moving around the classroom. In 1-Bu, we use sign language to ask to go to the bathroom or get a drink of water. Ask your child what hand signals we use for each of those. We'll work on creating some classroom rules this week.
We read a few great books last week, too. On the first day of school, we read First Day Jitters, which is a story about someone who is very nervous about going to her first day of school at a new school, except we don't really get a good look at the main character until the very end of the story. There's a surprise ending when the reader finds out who the person is on the very last page. Ask your child if he/she remembers what the surprise ending was.
We also read Mrs. Watson Wants Your Teeth, after which the students loved learning that I am very squeamish about loose teeth. The students also enjoyed reading The Kissing Hand, which is a story about a raccoon going off to his first day of school and learning all about his mother's love.
In math, we've been working on counting and using the number line. The students enjoyed using the Smart Board to play Monster Squeeze, which is a math game that focuses on developing students' familiarity with the number line.
Last week we launched reading workshop so that the students can get used to the structure of how we'll be doing reading this year. For now, the students are reading in mixed-level book bins at their tables. In a couple of weeks, however, the students will be selecting their own, appropriately leveled books to read during reading workshop. I'll go over our reading program in much more detail at Back to School Night in a couple of weeks.
The students created their first writing piece last week. We haven't officially launched writing workshop yet, but I wanted to get a beginning of the year writing piece out of the way so that we can see how much progress the students make over the course of the year.
It was a busy three days!
Odds and Ends
* I sent out an email on Friday night. If you received the email, please make sure that you respond to let me know that you got it. I will be going through and contacting those of you I haven't heard back from. If you didn't receive an email from me on Friday night, please send me an email. You can find my email address under one of the tabs on the left side at the top of this page.
* Please make sure to check and empty your child's home folder every night. Any notices on the 'leave home' side of the folder should be taken out and left at home. Anything on the 'bring back' side of the folder should be looked at/completed and returned to school.
* Homework will start some time this week. We'll start off the year with just math homework. In mid-October, the students will start having word wall homework as well.
* Back to School Night is now on September 27th, which also makes September 27th a 12:45pm dismissal. Please note that September 11th is now a full day.
I look forward to another great week in 1-Bu!