1stspanish's Blog

The class has been practicing a reader’s theater play on The First Thanksgiving Day.
They are very excited about it. They will be performing it for you on Wed., Nov. 16 at 11:10 a.m. in the classroom. It is a short reading.
The students go to lunch at 11:30 so if you would like to stay and have lunch with them, you are most welcome.

The book fair and Santa shop will be available this week.  Be sure to come view the book selections as possible additions to your home library.  If you can help PTA by volunteering, please let them know.  They can use all the help available.

AR books are read by the students several times before they take the test.  It is advisable for parents to ask the student questions over their reading so that the student begins to read critically and remember information.  It is NOT advisable for the parent to take the test with the student. At the beginning the parent may help the student navigate the site by helping select the path to taking the test.  Once the student begins to take the test the most a parent may do is suggest that if the student does not know the answer then where he/she find it? Also, if the student is having to go back to the book to find the answer for most of the questions, then the book was not fully comprehended and the student needs to either read a lower level book or spend more time reading the book.

To find the level for books that you may have at home, you can input the title and do a search which will give you the test number and the book level.  The books from our library will have that information inside the cover.  They are identified by both color (dots on the outside cover) and reading level on the inside cover.  For example, 1.3 would correspond to first grade third month.  But do not take this literally as some books have words which may be too long for the student to decode accurately and/or too complex in meaning.  Look over the book and select words which you may want to explain to the student to make the reading more comprehensible or suggest that you read the book together and maybe not take the test.  NOT every book is read in order to take a test.

Once you look up the test history for the student you will see which levels have been appropriate by looking at the test scores.  I sent home each student’s test results for  previous system for AR tests.  These were not ONLINE and therefore you will not see them with this new system.  BUT that gives you a good idea of where your child is.

You also received the letter giving you the student’s  user name and password to log in.   You can check the progress using this through the HOME CONNECT. PLEASE let the child do the TEST AT SCHOOL rather than at home.  I know that you will want to look at the test to see what it asks and how it is formatted – so if you want to try one at home that is fine. BUT just one.  The students tend to want to hurry and do many tests too quickly at times and not focus on the joy of reading and understanding what they read.

Thank you for all your support.

GREAT NEWS!

We now have AR (Accelerated Reading) available online.  This means that students will have access to MANY MORE books. In the past we could only access the books which had had tests purchased for by us. But it also means that ALL the books we have (in the classroom, etc.) need to be leveled. I do not have the exact procedure defined yet, but if anyone is willing to help let me know.  It involves getting the books and checking each one individually online.  Parents will also be able to do this with the books they have at home for their child.  I will send more news as I have it.

February is a very busy month in many ways.  It means applying our prior knowledge from the beginning of the year till now. For example, in working with money we need to apply our concepts of counting by ones, tens, fives, twos as well as understanding greater than and less than.  IF your child has not mastered these concepts, the clock is ticking fast towards the end of the year – so please review daily so that it becomes automatic.

It is learning to refine our writing skills.  The focus in first grade is on both expository and narrative writing. Presently we are focusing on expository by writing descriptions and also information learned about different people.  Students by now should be able to write sentences  and recognize what is and is not a sentence. They should be using nouns (red words), verbs (green words), adjectives (orange words), and prepositions (blue words). There is ALWAYS a topic sentence at the beginning. They need a minimum of 5 sentences including the topic sentence and conclusion.  ALL sentences need to begin with a capital letter. PRINTiNG has to be very neat and good.

In reading students need to have a minimum of 35 words  per minute by now.  Soon we will be in May and they need 60 words per minute to pass to second grade. Presently only 5 do not meet the 35 word mark.  The rest range from 48 – 87 words per minute. Where is your child? Daily practice is needed to develop fluency and comprehension.

Soon we will begin to study time. So start discussing the clock and how long different activities may take.  How long does it take to eat an apple? brush your teeth?  watch a TV program?  read a book?

Please be sure to check calendars daily for notes and go over the homework both for progress and to check for notes on it.

Remember that we have a four-day weekend this month.

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