Posted by kavery508 | Posted in Uncategorized | Posted on September 3, 2019
We’re off and running! The first six weeks of school, we devote much of our time to building a classroom community of learners. Every routine, every expected behavior, and every interaction is modeled and practiced with the clearly-communicated message, “You can do it! I believe in you–and it’s OK to make mistakes.” Our work follows practices outlined in The Responsive Classroom and is shared school-wide. It’s one of the things that makes Floral such a special place, and its students so successful!
In addition, we are committed as a school to developing Social Thinking in children. This means teaching kids how to recognize and monitor their emotions and behavior, and how to interact with others. We begin by teaching Whole Body Listening. This means using our eyes, ears, hearts and minds to understand what others say and mean. We’ll pay special attention to “listening with your heart,” helping kids to understand what it looks like and sounds like when you care about yourself, your classmates, and the learning that goes on here. And as is often the case in our classroom, we’ll be using music to help us learn!
For more info on Social Thinking, visit this site and explore its links: https://www.socialthinking.com/what-is-social-thinking
Supplies Just a few times during our year, I will be asking for your help with supplies to keep our classroom and kids healthy. To start us off, please send in 1 tub of antibacterial wipes, and 1 box of bandaids (plain, not antibacterial). This will help immensely.
Screenings At the start of the school year, we seek to find out the students’ just right levels in English Language Learning, Reading, and Math, so that we can meet each child where he or she is academically. We also use the information to determine eligibility for extra help such as through Title One or E.L.L. Your child may therefore tell you that heorshe played math games/read/wrote with another teacher during these first weeks. This is especially true of students new to our school or district. These adults are tutors and specialists in the building. If your child is eligible for additional help, we’ll let you know soon.
Reading We’re learning how to choose just right books from the classroom library using “I-PICK”: Purpose (why do I want to read something); Interest (do the pictures/topics interest me); Comprehend (do I understand what I’m reading); and Know (can I read almost all the words). Research points to the importance of beginning readers spending time in books that are at their specific levels, or just below, and not above. This week we’ll practice reading books on our own for longer and longer periods (the eventual goal is 20 minutes at a time), at what we call “Read to Self” time. I-PICK and Read to Self are methods taken from the Daily 5, a literacy management program we’ll be following to improve our reading, writing, and understanding.
Homework Homework will begin in a few weeks. Until then, here are some basics to go over with your child. Please help by setting aside practice time if your child is not yet independent knowing the following: address; phone number; birthday; how to tie hisorher shoes; how to zipper/button all of hisorher clothes; and very importantly, how to sneeze into hisorher elbow! There’s evidence that this last one goes a long way to stopping the spread of germs. Thanks for your help!
And if you’re looking for more academic work to do at home, I suggest the following (link to #1 can be found in the Student Resources section to the right of our blog–all links there are recommended for home use):
1) Greg Tang Math. In my opinion, this guy has absolutely nailed down what kids need to be doing with regard to number fluency. His site is an excellent resource for applying number concepts through the use of games that start easy and progress to well above this grade level.
2) Keep reading just-right books from the public library! They can help find books at every level.
3) Listen to stories/read stories together at Storyline Online. This awesome website features famous actors reading aloud award-winning picture books. Talk about engaging!
4) Research upcoming dates. I encourage families to teach kids how to safely take advantage of the vast amount of info on the internet by surfing, finding, printing out, and preparing to share with our class information found. Some suggestions: What does the first day of autumn mean (astronomically speaking)? The birthday of what local legend is coming on September 26, and what can you tell about that person? What is the next U.S. Holiday coming up, and why/how is it celebrated? Kids find out answers, then become experts who teach us–smart!
