September 24th-28th

Happy Sunday!  I apologize that I have not been getting my blog out on Friday like I usually do.  I normally type my blog and do the Sign Up Genius during my morning planning time, but our team has missed 4 planning periods recently due to holidays and the hurricane.   We have been meeting on Friday mornings so I have not had the time to type this.  Hopefully we will all be back on track soon!

As parent conferences and report cards are quickly approaching, I am using a large chunk of the day to assess students.  Last week I was busy with running records and sight words and this week I am planning on assessing math, spelling, and writing.  All of this will be ready to share with you at parent conferences in two weeks.  The Sign Up Genius was just sent out for conferences. Because we lost the teacher workday that consisted of parent conferences, I have generously been given a half-day sub for Tuesday morning (Oct. 16th) so that I can finish up conferences.

October 11th Make-up School Day (from the hurricane)

October 12th Teacher Workday: Parent Conferences 

October 16th AM Conferences available

October 18th CSD Kickball Festival 4:00-8:00 PM: This event is for the whole family! Be sure to mark your calendars.  😁

October 19th Fairy Tale Ball 8:30-10:30 AM: You can now start thinking about your child's costume for the ball! They can dress up as any fairy tale character.  Please no weapons of any kind (guns, swords, knives, etc.)  We will send out a Sign Up Genius as we get closer for parent volunteers. The students have started learning their salsa dance in Spanish class that they will perform at 8:30 AM for us all.

October 31st Parade of Fiction (time TBD usually 8:30AM): Parents are invited to come watch their child walk in the Parade of Fiction! Your child needs to dress up as their favorite book character.  They will carry the corresponding book with them in the parade.  No weapons of any kind and no scary masks.

Math:

Last week we moved onto Cluster 2 of our math curriculum which is "building a conceptual understanding of addition and subtraction within 20 and developing fact fluency within 10."  We want students to become familiar and confident when solving addition problems when finding the sum or a missing addend.  Students learned two new games last week to practice these skills.  Roll and Record Addition and Seashell Addition.  In Roll and Record Addition, the student would roll two dice, add them together, and color in the corresponding box for the sum they found.  They would then write the equation for the combination they rolled.  In Seashell addition, students were working on combinations of 12.  They had a ziplock bag full of *paper* seashells...some were clam shells and some were spiral shells.  They pulled 12 out of the bag and made two groups.  They counted to see how many of each shell they had and then recorded the addition equation.

Literacy:

We launched our last part of Daily 5 this week which is "Work Work."  Students can come to this station to practice their word study words.  The fun activities we have rotate each week and may consist of wiki sticks, shaving cream, word searches, rainbow words, play dough words, secret code spelling etc.  This past week, students practice their words by using play dough and doing rainbow words.  Now that our Daily 5 is fully launched, students have the freedom to rotate through all 5 stations.  Some students may only do 2 stations in a day while another student may do 4.  They have the freedom to clean up and move as wanted.  This allows me time to pull for guided reading groups, handwriting practice, word sorts, etc.

Thematic:

We started learning about the fairy tale "Rumpelstiltskin" this past week and will continue studying it this week.  We have read many different versions and we are also focusing on practicing spelling classmates names, as that ties into the story.  On Friday, students wrote all of their classmates names on a chart and could compare how many letters it had versus Rumpelstiltskin's name.  Students also wrote a writing piece about how they would trick Rumpelstiltskin if given the opportunity.  They were so creative!  Their favorite activity that we did was making Rumpelstiltskin's gold coins and they got to eat them when done.  They had to follow step-by-step instructions and used vanilla wafers, icing, bananas, and gold sprinkles to create the gold coins.  It was definitely a hit!

Science:

Thank you Mrs. Sue Sink for being our first parent volunteer for Sci-Fri!  We LOVE having parents come in and this is a great way to get involved in our classroom and get to know the students!  You can teach any science experiment that you would like. If you need help with ideas, I am happy to send some ideas your way that correspond with our curriculum!  Mrs. Sue did an amazing experiment that directly aligned with our curriculum about force and motion.  Students all got to participate in a pendulum painting.  We had a great class conversation about force, motion, and gravity in our everyday life.

Have an awesome week!
Love,
Mrs. James

September 17th-21st

Good evening parents! What a crazy two weeks we have had! It was nice to have some extra days off school, but it will be nice to get back to our normal schedule next week. 😊 We squeezed in as much as we could in three days of school this week and the students did great with their second week of word study!  Just a reminder that they will bring home their binder on Monday with their new words (and you can see their spell check from the previous week then).  Next week will begin our third week of word study and each week will bring new markings for the students to learn.

October 11th Make-up School Day (from the hurricane)

October 12th Teacher Workday- Parent Conferences: Please reserve this day for conferences.  Admin has kindly offered to get us a sub on another day so that I can have two full days of parent conferences to fit everyone in.  I will let you know the date of this as soon as I find out.

October 18th CSD Kickball Festival 4:00-8:00 PM: This event is for the whole family! Be sure to mark your calendars.  😁

October 19th Fairy Tale Ball 8:30-10:30 AM: You can now start thinking about your child's costume for the ball! They can dress up as any fairy tale character.  Please no weapons of any kind (guns, swords, knives, etc.)  We will send out a Sign Up Genius as we get closer for parent volunteers. The students have started learning their salsa dance in Spanish class that they will perform at 8:30 AM for us all.

Guided Reading Books:

Thank you for taking such good care of our guided reading books and remembering to send them back on Friday's!  I highly suggest that whenever your child reads the book to you, they put it right back in their reading bag when they are done so it doesn't get lost.  That way they know exactly where it is when Friday arrives.  Below are some tips for guided reading and things that we do during our guided reading group that may help you at home.

- Have your child point to each word as they read.  This is so beneficial because we are able to            see if they are tracking, skipping words, or understanding the concept of saying one word and pointing to one word.
- If your child misses specific sight words in the book repeatedly, write them down and practice them later on when you practice word study.  Sight words are essential for them to learn and memorize in this phase of learning to read. You may notice that I write down sight words on a sticky note that I have noticed them struggling with.  You can find a fun way to practice these!
- Ask comprehension questions all throughout the book to make sure they are understanding the story.
- Have them retell the story to you once the book is over to see how much they remember.
- Encourage them to read with expression once they have read the book two or three times.  This is one of the reasons we have them read the same book for three nights.
- Encourage them to use our Beanie Baby Strategies we learned last night when they come to a word they struggled to decode.  If you want a copy of these to print out for home, I will be happy to email them to you!

Word Study: 

Please have your child write their spelling words in their "best" handwriting column as some point during the week.  I highly encourage your child to practice the words during the week if they do not know them already.  Make it fun!  There is a list of activities in the "handouts" section of their binder.  We notice a strong correlation with the students who know their words when the spell check comes on Friday. They are the students who do their "best" handwriting section and practice the words during the week.  They also practice explaining the markings to their parents so they understand the "why" behind the spelling rules.  Thanks for helping your child in this way!

Math:

Students were able to rotate through 8 different tubs during our math workshop time.  These tubs included games such as Grab Bags, Start With Get To, Get the Goof, and Red Bird Yellow Bird.  Get the Goof is one of our newer games where students have to investigate a series of numbers to figure out what is missing.  They then rewrite the number series in the correct way.  Red Bird Yellow Bird is our newest game where students are working on combinations of 10.  They use a ten frame to organize and show their thinking and record their findings on a chart.  We are finished with "Cluster 1" of math now and are moving on to "Cluster 2" which is addition and subtraction.

Literacy:

Students did very well with their second week of word study! We also had guided reading groups on Tuesday which is always my favorite.  I love reading with the students in small groups and getting to work on their individual needs.  We will soon begin doing word sorts on Wednesdays during our Daily 5 time.  I introduced our fourth element of Daily 5 this week which is "Work on Writing."  The students were thrilled! They are able to go to our writing table or can write at any of the normal tables.  They are able to work on our monthly writing topic or any other free choice topic.  I will soon introduce the last element of Daily 5 which is "Word Work" and this is where they practice their spelling words in fun ways!

Thematic:

We wrapped up learning about Jack and the Beanstalk this week and are moving onto Rumpelstiltskin next week.  Students got to make their own beanstalk by using paper and linking it together.  They had to keep linking the paper until the beanstalk was as tall as them. They then counted how many links there were and recorded it on one of the leaves.  We also did another measuring activity where they used non-standard measurement tools (unifix cubes, paper clips, pennies, etc) to measure a beanstalk.  

Have an awesome weekend!

Love,

Mrs. James 

September 3rd-7th

Happy Tuesday! I hope you all are enjoying the four-day weekend as a family...I know the kids are. 😉  We had a great week last week!  Celebrating my birthday on Friday with our sweet students was the cherry on top.

September 10th, 11th, 19th: No school

September 18th 8:30 AM-1:00 PM Walking Tour of Davidson: I just sent out the Sign Up Genius for parents chaperones.  We would love to have as many parent walkers as possible to make this a fun and safe field trip.  We will leave CSD at 8:30 AM to walk to Davidson and will return around 12:30-1:00.  Please make sure your child wears comfortable clothes on this day.

October 18th CSD Kickball Festival: This event is for the whole family! Be sure to mark your calendars.  We still need a parent volunteer from our classroom to help plan the first grade booth. 😁

October 19th Fairy Tale Ball 8:30-10:30 AM: You can now start thinking about your child's costume for the ball! They can dress up as any fairy tale character.  Please no weapons of any kind (guns, swords, knives, etc.)  We will send out a Sign Up Genius as we get closer for parent volunteers. The students have started learning their salsa dance in Spanish class that they will perform at 8:30 AM for us all.

Love and Logic Parent Classes with Marianne:
https://www.signupgenius.com/go/20f0f49a4ac2a1-parenting6
https://www.signupgenius.com/go/20f0f49a4ac2a1-parenting7

Math:

Our math lessons last week revolved around the activity "Start With, Get To" and the skills that were required to complete this game.  I am sure you saw this sheet come home in your child's folder and maybe they explained to you how to play.  This game works on many different math skills and was challenging for all students.  Student played the game with one partner and it started out by one student picking a number of out a bag.  They worked as a team to create a tower with that many cubes.  Then the second student picked another number out of the bag and they had to change their tower to now represent the new number.  This required them to add or subtract to reach the new number.  The last step was them recording whether they added, subtracted, or there was no change.  We will continue to play this game this week and will add it to our math tubs!

Literacy:

All of the students did GREAT on our first week of word study!  They were very excited to get started and to get their spelling words. 😊  Thank you for having them do their "best" handwriting column at home and for encouraging them to practice their words.  There is always a strong, positive correlation when students practice their words doing the week and take their spell check on Friday.  Always make it fun for them! Refer to the "handouts" section in your child's binder for ideas.  No word study this week since it's a short week.  The students also did great on their third week of guided reading groups and were excited to bring home their books to read to you.  We also introduced our third portion of Daily 5 which is "Listen to Reading."  I taught the students how to use the CD player and I called over pairs of students to pick out and listen to a story together.  We haven't gotten through all partner groups yet but we will the rest of this week.

Thematic:

Last week we finished up Little Red Riding Hood during our thematic study time.  The basket weaving was definitely a hit!  Students learned how to use construction paper strips to weave a basket like Little Red's that she carried.  These are hanging in the classroom and you can come see them on the day of the Fairy Tale Ball.  Students also got an opportunity to work on the cardinal directions by creating a map of the setting in Little Red Riding Hood.  This week we will begin studying Jack and the Beanstalk and will read different versions and begin new centers!

Have a wonderful day!
Love,
Mrs. James

August 27th-31st

Happy Labor Day! I hope you all had a wonderful and restful weekend! Thank you to everyone who came to curriculum night last week.  It was great to see all of you and I really appreciate you taking the time to invest in your child's school year. We are off to a great start in first grade and it's only going to get better with time! 😁

***This week we begin our word study program and our guided reading groups.
Word Study: Word Study binders will come home tomorrow and need to be brought back on Friday.  Please have your child write their words in the third column ("best column") in their best handwriting.  I highly encourage your child to practice their words in fun ways at home!  A list of suggestions can be found in the "handouts" section in their binder.
Guided Reading Groups: Your child's book will be sent home tomorrow and need to be brought back on Friday also.  Please have your child read this book to you every night that it is home.

September 10th, 11th, 19th: No school

September 18th 8:30 AM-1:00 PM Walking Tour of Davidson: We are so excited to still get to go on this field trip!  Because it was rained out last spring, we decided the kids should still have this amazing opportunity to go explore Davidson and meet our community helpers.  Community helpers, cardinal directions, and maps are all a big part of our social studies curriculum.  We will need parent chaperones to walk with us so put this date on your calendar if you are interested.  More details to come!

October 18th CSD Kickball Festival: This event is for the whole family! Be sure to mark your calendars.  We still need a parent volunteer from our classroom to help plan the first grade booth. 😁

October 19th Fairy Tale Ball 8:30-10:30 AM: The kids are all SO excited for this event! We plan and throw a Fairy Tale Ball for all first graders to attend.  Students dress up as their favorite fairy tale character and they rotate through different stations/activities over the course of two hours.  Parents are welcome to come and watch the very beginning of the ball when the students will do a group dance.  This portion will last about 10 minutes.  We will also need parent volunteers to help run the stations.  More details to come but mark this date on your calendar.  You won't want to miss it!

Math

Students continued to practice our "grab bag" game that works on counting, one-to-one correspondence, estimating, using 10 frames to organize and count cubes, figuring out how many more to make 20, and recording their findings on a chart.  They have mastered this activity so it will now go into one of our eight tubs.  This week I will introduce a new game called "Start With. Get To."  Students will pull a card with a number on it and they will make a tower with that many cubes.  They will pull another card and they have to change the tower to match the new number (adding or subtracting cubes).  They will have to record both of these numbers on a chart and then write what change they had to make (ex. add 4, subtract 6, etc.).  Addition and subtraction should always be taught simultaneously and this activity is perfect for that!

Literacy:

We continued to build our stamina with "read to self" and "read to someone" doing our Daily 5 time.  The students are doing well with this and especially love the "read to someone" portion.  I will introduce "listen to reading" this week at our listening station.  We have around 60 books on CD that the students can go listen to and follow along in the book.  We have already done guided reading groups for two weeks but this week will be the first week that the books come home.  We will also begin our word study program this week and some of this will happen during our literacy time.

Thematic:

We finished studying Cinderella and began our next fairy tale which is Little Red Riding Hood.  We love to find all of the different versions to read of each story.  We have continued to talk about the "elements of a fairy tale" and which ones exist in is each story.  We are also intertwining learning about map and the cardinal directions into this curriculum.  It is easy to do when we are learning about the different fairy tale kingdoms or settings in the stories

Have a great week!
Love,
Mrs. James

August 20th - 24th

Happy, happy Friday! We had a wonderful second week of school in our classroom.  We began many new things that the students were very excited about. This week was full of book buddies, learning to write on our green line paper, beginning our fairy tales unit, and much more!

August 27th Class Pictures: St. John Photography will be taking our class and individual student pictures on the 27th.  Make sure to dress your child in what you want them to be wearing in their pictures.

August 29th 6:00-7:30 PM Curriculum Night: Note the time change!  Due to parent and staff feedback over the years, they have reduced curriculum night to two sessions.

6:00-6:40 PM

6:50-7:30 PM

Please, please make every effort to attend one of these two sessions.  I will discuss the first grade curriculum, expectations of students in the classroom, our field trips and performances, our first grade word study program, student/parent/teacher communication, and much more!  If you cannot attend, please let me know and I will send home the information packet from the event.

August 30th 9:00 AM Parent Volunteer Training: This will be held in the elementary music room.

September 3rd, 10th, 11th, 19th: No school

September 18th 8:30 AM-1:00 PM Walking Tour of Davidson: We are so excited to still get to go on this field trip!  Because it was rained out last spring, we decided the kids should still have this amazing opportunity to go explore Davidson and meet our community helpers.  Community helpers, cardinal directions, and maps are all a big part of our social studies curriculum.  We will need parent chaperones to walk with us so put this date on your calendar if you are interested.  More details to come!

October 18th CSD Kickball Festival: This event is for the whole family! Be sure to mark your calendars.

October 19th Fairy Tale Ball 8:30-10:30 AM: The kids are all SO excited for this event! We plan and throw a Fairy Tale Ball for all first graders to attend.  Students dress up as their favorite fairy tale character and they rotate through different stations/activities over the course of two hours.  Parents are welcome to come and watch the very beginning of the ball when the students will do a group dance.  This portion will last about 10 minutes.  We will also need parent volunteers to help run the stations.  More details to come but mark this date on your calendar.  You won't want to miss it!

***Parent volunteers will start the week of Labor Day.  We have changed our park time this year to Thursdays from 1:00-2:00 PM.

Math:

We began our new first grade math curriculum this week that was constructed by the NC Department of Education.  I am very impressed so far with it!  The activity that the students completed this week required them to work in pairs and it worked on the skills of one-to-one correspondence, estimating, using 10 frames to organize and count cubes, figuring out how many more to make 20, and recording their findings on a chart.  The students began by choosing a brown paper bag with a letter written on it.  They had to estimate how many cubes they thought were in the bag and then take the cubes out and actually count them.  They placed them on the ten frames as they counted to work on their visualization and counting on.  Lastly, they had to figure out how many more cubes they would need to make 20.  This was a challenging task because there were 4 steps they had to complete for each bag and they also had to record all of it on their chart.  They were doing very well by the fourth day of working on it!

Literacy:

We continued to set up our Daily 5 time this week by practicing our "Read to Self" time.  We began last week with only 3 minutes of "Read to Self" and we have worked up to 12 minutes!  This is great because in order to add time, all students have to be focused with their reading and without distraction.  Next week I will introduce the second portion of the Daily 5 which is "Read to Someone."  We will build each week until I have introduced all 5 of the elements which include:
1. Read to Self
2. Read to Someone
3. Listen to Reading
4. Work on Writing
5. Work Work

While students independently work at these stations, I am able to call them over to work in small groups on handwriting, word sorts, and guided reading.  We also learned how to write on our green line paper this week and the students were VERY excited.  You should have seen this work come home in your child's folder.  I will explain all of this to you at curriculum night because this will lead into our word study program.

Thematic:

This week we kicked off our fairy tale unit by studying the elements of a fairy tale such as magic, good vs. evil, castles, and forests, happy endings, and "Once upon a time."  We began with the story of Cinderella.  We read many different versions of the story and compared and contrasted them.  Students rotated through four centers this week that worked on different skills in each.
1. Students created an art project and wrote what they would wish for if they had a fairy godmother.
2. Students used pattern blocks to build their own castle and then stencils to recreate the castle on paper. They had to record how many of each shape.
3. Students learned about the cardinal directions (north, south, east, west) and had to draw different parts of the fairy kingdom using the compass.
4. Students colored and created their own props, characters, and scenery in order to retell the story of Cinderella.  I encouraged them all to come home and act out the story for you with their items.

Have a great weekend!
Love,
Mrs. James

Our First Week of First Grade

HAPPY FRIDAY! 🎉 

We had an amazing first week in our classroom and we are so excited for the rest of this school year.  It is so fun having all of our sweet students again and seeing the growth they made over the summer in different areas.  Please read below about our important upcoming dates and announcements for first grade.

August 27th Class Pictures: St. John Photography will be taking our class and individual student pictures on the 27th.  The pictures usually turn out very well because they are candid shots taken outside.  Make sure to dress your child in what you want them to be wearing in their pictures. :)

August 29th 6:00-7:30 PM Curriculum Night: Note the time change!  Due to parent and staff feedback over the years, they have reduced curriculum night to two sessions.

6:00-6:40 PM

6:50-7:30 PM

Please, please make every effort to attend one of these two sessions.  I will discuss the first grade curriculum, expectations of students in the classroom, our field trips and performances, our first grade word study program, student/parent/teacher communication, and much more!  If you cannot attend, please let me know and I will send home the information packet from the event.

September 18th 8:30 AM-1:00 PM Walking Tour of Davidson: We are so excited to still get to go on this field trip!  Because it was rained out last spring, we decided the kids should still have this amazing opportunity to go explore Davidson and meet our community helpers.  Community helpers, cardinal directions, and maps are all a big part of our social studies curriculum.  We will need parent chaperones to walk with us so put this date on your calendar if you are interested.  More details to come!

October 19th Fairy Tale Ball 8:30-10:30 AM: The kids are all SO excited for this event! We plan and throw a Fairy Tale Ball for all first graders to attend.  Students dress up as their favorite fairy tale character and they rotate through different stations/activities over the course of two hours.  Parents are welcome to come and watch the very beginning of the ball when the students will do a group dance.  This portion will last about 10 minutes.  We will also need parent volunteers to help run the stations.  More details to come but mark this date on your calendar.  You won't want to miss it!

PhotoCircle: The PhotoCircle app is how I share pictures from our classroom.  It is much easier than uploading them onto the blog and then you can save them directly from the app.  It also allows you to upload pictures from our classroom events that you take.  Please only upload pictures in our class group that are from school events (no birthday parties or outside events).  Below is the link for parents to join. https://join.photocircleapp.com/rsIAdl

Blue Communication Folders: Please empty these every night.  It is usually a combination of your child's work and papers from us.  If you need to send us or notify us of anything, you can send a note in this folder.  Mrs. Rumburg checks and empties these every morning.

Have a great weekend!
Love,
Mrs. James 💜

April 30th - May 4th

Good evening parents!  It was so good to see all of you at the Commotion in the Ocean play last Thursday!  Thank you all for taking the time out of your day to come to our play.  Your kiddos were all amazing!  They make me proud every single day. I cannot believe we only have 15 days of school left.  Where has this year gone?! I am sure some of you have heard about our "10 day countdown" we do every year in my classroom to celebrate the last days of school.  I fill up 10 balloons and inside is a small piece of paper that has a fun activity written on it.  We pop a balloon at the end of each day and we will do that activity the next day.  I will send home an email if it requires the kids to bring in or wear something (PJ day or bring your stuffed animal to school day). 😊 

Below are important dates and reminders as we near the end of the school year.

May 15th: QU Wedding (students only) Have your child wear "dressier" clothes to school for our wedding celebration of these two letters! *more info below
May 18th: No school (CSD Staff Retreat)

May 23rd: Bare Book Sharing 1:00 PM (parent event)
Come celebrate your child and their hard work on their bare book!  

May 25th: No school (Kindergarten Screening)

May 28th: No school (Memorial Day)

May 29th: Water Day! 8:30 AM-12:00 PM (we will need lots of volunteers! sign up coming soon)

May 30th: Final Day of School!

Throughout the school year, we have learned lots of letter sounds, blends, and digraphs that exist in our names and words.  Some of these include -sh, -ch, -th, -ow, and -ou.  Next year in first grade we will learn all of the phonograms during our word study program! On May 15th, we are going to celebrate the letters Q and U to celebrate the sound /qu/.  Usually in our language, the letter Q is always followed by the letter U so we "marry them" so the kids remember this rule.  We will have a fun ceremony led by Michael Colvard (Joshua's dad) and will have wedding cake afterwards!  It will be a fun day for the students.  Please have them wear dressier clothes for the celebration.  They can bring a change of clothes for afterwards if they would like. 

Mrs. Rumburg and I began our end-of-year assessments on your child last week.  Many of these assessments are done one on one, and take a great deal of time.  I will not be sending home guided reading books over the next few weeks due to this.  Please keep reading with your child at home every night.  A great idea it to visit your local library and allow your child to get their own library card.  The library summer reading program will start soon, and it is an excellent program and a great way to keep your child reading this summer.  I will also be sending out some ideas of things to do with your child over the summer later in May, so be on the look out!  

Due to our upcoming Kindergarten Screening (screening of new incoming kindergarten students) there are not specific dates for us to conference on the calendar.  However, I am more than happy to conference with you if you would like.  We just need to know how many of you would like a conference so that we can request a sub and set up a conference day if needed.  End of year conferences are optional, but if you would like one we are happy to meet with you.  Please email me and let me know so that we can set up a day for this later in May. 

Have a great week!

Love,

Mrs. James