October will be a very busy month for first graders at Mill Run!  I will use our blog entry this week to keep you informed regarding upcoming events and other notices for October.

Fall Weather
Now that the weather is getting cool, many of the children are bringing sweaters or jackets to school.  Please help your child to label these items, in case they are misplaced.

PTO Assemblies
Many thanks to our incredibly generous PTO for the Dome Theater assembly last week.  The children enjoyed the experience of being in a mobile planetarium.  This was a perfect introduction to our next unit of study in science on the sun.  I'm sure we will all enjoy the African Acrobats this week, too!

Homework
The first grade team has decided to begin homework the week of October 15th.  Stay tuned for more detailed information in your child's red daily take home folder.  With a short week for Columbus Day and our field trip, it made sense to begin when we could keep the routine going.

Tuesday, October 9
On Tuesday, October 9, we will follow a Monday schedule.  This means that your child should be prepared for P.E. on that Tuesday.

Mill Run East
The school will be collecting loose change to support our sister school in the Philippines.  First grade's own Miss Pick visited the school last summer!  It is a powerful opportunity for the children to know that their spare change will make a real difference in the lives of less fortunate children.  

Field Trip
We will visit Great Country Farms on October 12th.  You will receive more information soon on how to prepare your child for our day at the farm.  We plan to have our field trip rain or shine!

Parent/Teacher Conferences
Conferences will begin October 22.  I am looking forward to sharing good news with you about your child.  We will discuss your child's adjustment to first grade, the report card, and the reading assessments that are currently being administered.  I will send out reminders via the red take-home folder.


As always, please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.  :-)

It is wonderful to see the progress the children are making every day.  They are becoming much more familiar with our classroom routines and expectations for positive classroom participation.

I hope you have noticed a new sticker inside your child's red daily take-home folder.  This sticker gives you a summary of our first-grade grading policy.  Student work that is completed for a grade will have a letter:  E, M, P, or B.  These letters correspond to the following descriptions. 

E:  The student exceeds expectations for this standard at this time.
M:  The student is meeting expectations for this standard at this time.
P:  The student is making progress toward meeting this expectation.
B:  The student is performing below grade level expectations at this time.

Please note that these grades reflect the students' academic achievement for the specific standard;  they do not necessarily reflect student effort or work habits.  We will discuss these in more detail at our conferences in a few weeks.

Also, there is a fifth option for a "grade":  the smiley face!  There are many opportunities for the students to practice skills in various areas throughout the day independently.  Things like morning work and math practice sheets may come home with a smiley face. 

Finally, below you will find a slideshow of the children's most recent writing project.  We practiced each step of the writing process together for the first time.  We brainstormed words related to apples, we made a draft paragraph, we checked our paragraphs for upper-case letters at the start of each sentence, and we published our work on fancy apple-stamp paper.  Many of the students relied heavily on the examples that we composed as a group, which is absolutely fine at this point in the year.  Other students added personal flair, and in these pieces you are more likely to see creative spelling.  Phonetic spelling is an essential step in developing confident, fluent writers.  Enjoy! 

I hae been asked to share some information with you regarding the Northern Virginia Writing Project.  A variety of writing workshops for families and parents are available at George Mason University.  If you would like more information, please visit:  http://nvwp.org/youngwriters/saturdayworkshops/

Our second week of school was very busy, despite the holiday on Monday!  Considering our work in reading, writing, math, and social studies, much of our learning reflects this theme:  gaining confidence.

The children are gaining confidence in our many school routines, including our lunchtime habits and even dismissal!  As you can see, Mr. Vickers has already stopped by the cafeteria to have a bite with our class. 

 We have also practiced many classroom routines with great success.  The children are participating in our large group poetry lessons, writing sight words, practicing spelling strategies, engaging in a variety of literacy stations, and choosing books for independent reading.  They have used a variety of math resources to explore number concepts, and they have explored many ways we stay safe and show good citizenship at school. 

Independent reading will be a central part of our reading program this year.  During independent reading, the children have the opportunity to apply decoding and comprehension strategies that we have reviewed together as a class.  One strategy that we discussed this week is that there are many ways to read a book.  It is important for readers to read the pictures as well as the text in a book.  Readers read the text to learn what the author wrote, but readers can also learn from the illustrations.  Details in pictures can help readers with decoding tricky words, making inferences in the story, and making predictions.  

Stay tuned as we add more strategies and your children continue to develop their love of reading!

We've finished the first week of school, and I still can't believe how lucky I am to have your children in class this year.  We have had a very busy week, learning classroom routines, school routines, having our special classes, and even having our first all-school fire drill!

I would like to share with you some of the activities that we have begun.  We have our first piece of writing hangin on our author board.  The children drew a picture and wrote what they were hoping to learn in first grade.

We have also been talking about our classroom community and how we can all work together as a team.  We read Officer Buckle and Gloria by Peggy Rathmann, and we made a list of ways we could be good classroom citizens.  The children chose their favorite advice and wrote their ideas on paper stars.

In math, we have worked to establish our morning meeting routine.  Every day we will use our morning meeting time as a great way to practice our counting skills, practice calendar skills, and practice collecting and describing data about our class.  We will add other skills (e.g. working with money and telling time) as the year progresses.  We have also used the Promethean board to collect data about the number of boys and girls in our class and the different ways we

Today, we have another piece of writing in the hallway.  The children developed a list of everything they like about school.  They then took their favorite idea and completed an "I like school because" writing prompt.  For the beginning of the year, I am very impressed with what the children can do!  It makes me even more excited to see their work later in the year.

I wish you all a wonderful holiday weekend.  Take care, and I will be waiting for the children Tuesday morning.

Wow!  I can't thank you all enough for the warm welcome to Mill Run!  It was so inspiring to me to meet all of you and see your excitement for your childrens' education.  Mill Run is an exceptional school, and it is clear that you are making our school community the warm, cheerful, and exciting place that it is!  Thank you!

     Thank you, also, for coming to visit the classroom yesterday.  The children are amazing, and I am so excited to see them again on Monday.  We will spend some quality time getting to know one another while also easing into our academic routines.  Of course, I will keep you posted regarding our activities on this page every Friday.

     And, thank you to all of the parents for coming to the Back to School Night presentations yesterday evening.  As I mentioned, your children are my top priority and establishing a strong home-school connection is a critical foundation for our joint mission.  If you ever have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to call, send a note, or e-mail.  I will check email before and after school each day, and I will do my very best to reply within 24 hours.  

    So, I hope you have a wonderful weekend enjoying some special time as a family.  Here are some final reminders for the first day:  Please remember to send a snack of cheese, raw fruit, or raw vegetables for our morning snack break.  If your child will be purchasing lunch in the cafeteria, please discuss your expectations regarding your child's choices.  (Are they allowed to buy ice cream every day, only once a week, or not at all?)  And finally, please remember to remind your child how they will be going home. 

     With children like yours, we are guaranteed to have a wonderful year!  I am so excited, I'm not sure I'll be able to sleep this weekend!  Please tell the children that I said "Hello!" and I'll be waiting for them in Room 4 on Monday!