I hope you can tell when we meet for our parent/teacher conference just how much I enjoy sharing good news with you about all that your children are accomplishing at school.  This is one of the many things I love about teaching!

During our conferences, I am hoping to provide you with a snapshot of your child's adjustment to first grade as well as a quick overview of his/her academic progress.  Based on some very insightful questions that I have received in the first few conferences, I would like to provide a few notes for everyone.

The two formal literacy assessments that we conduct at Mill Run for first graders are the Phonological Awareness Literacy Screening (Pals) and the Developmental Reading Assessment (DRA).  These assessments provide me with a wealth of data that I use to best differentiate reading, writing, and word study instruction for each child.  The Pals website has abundant information about the program, but best of all, it has a tab just for parents.  If you visit:  https://pals.virginia.edu/parents-monthly-activity.html, you will see background information about the assessment as well as ideas for parents to use at home for further enrichment.  

If you are looking for more context regarding your child's DRA score, one tool that is available to parents is "bookwizard" on the scholastic.com website.  Scholastic makes it very easy to search for books within a certain level.  However, please use this with caution!  It is much more important for a child to learn to love reading than to learn to identify with a particular level.  Levels are primarily useful at school in a small group, instructional context.  Also, many children change rapidly from one level to another.  So, for reading at home, please focus primarily on books that make your child happy.  :-)

This week, please remember that Wednesday, October 31 will be Mill Run's Book Character Dress Up Day.  Here are some key reminders:
     *  Students bring their costumes to school and change into them immediately before the parade.
     *  Students should have a copy of the book, the book cover, or a drawing of the book cover to carry during the parade.
     *  Parents arrive at the gym at 1:15 to form the audience for the parade.
     *  The parade will begin at 1:30.
     *  No masks, weapons, or scary items, please!
     *  In class this week, each student will have the chance to tell the class  about how they chose this particular character.

Many thanks to the parent chaperons for helping to make our field trip a success on Friday. Wow! Literally, we couldn't have done it without you!  Although I was disappointed by the lack of service provided by the farm, the students did not seem to mind.  In fact, I was tremendously impressed with our group's patience, cheerful attitude, and good manners.  If you were not able to join us at the farm, you should know that your children did a fantastic job.  Several parents were helping to take photos on Friday.  I will add them to the slideshow below as I receive them.  Stay tuned!

In other classroom news, we have completed our math unit on patterns.  Your student should be able to tell you the difference between a repeating pattern and a growing pattern.  She/he should be able to give you examples of both types of patterns and be able to represent those patterns in more than one way, e.g.  a clap-snap, clap-snap pattern could also be represented as an AB pattern or as a square-triangle pattern.  We will be studying sorting and two-dimensional shapes in the last few weeks of the first quarter.  For sorting, I am collecting buttons and lids.  If you happen to have any loose buttons in your junk drawer, we would love to have them for our math work.  Any lids that can be salvaged before you toss them in recycling would be wonderful.  I found about ten lids in my family's recycling bin yesterday - everything from laundry soap to a chip container.  We are hoping to have a wide variety of sizes, colors, and textures.

On Monday, your child will be bringing home our first homework packet of the year.  We will add components to the homework packet as the year progresses, but for now you will see three types of assignments on the cover sheet:  daily reading, word study, and an optional double-sided handwriting page.  Please initial at the top of the page to indicate that your child has completed the assignments.  Only the cover page needs to be returned on Friday.  Please let me know if you have any questions about homework.  

And, parent/teacher conferences will begin the week of October 22.  We will spend time discussing your child's adjustment to first grade, strengths and areas for improvement, and the results of your child's reading assessments.   These assessments are tremendously helpful to me as I work to focus our classroom instruction to meet the individual needs of each student.  If you have specific questions that you would like me to address during our conference, please send them to me as soon as possible.  

Thanks again and again for sharing your children with me.  I am the luckiest teacher in the school!