John C. Daniels

Dear Parents and Guardians,

                I would like to thank all the parents for taking the time out of their busy schedule to meet with us for parent/teacher conferences. I hope you find the information we handed out helpful at home when you are working with your child.

                Since we have been back from the holiday break, we have been extremely busy. We have started reading in our new guided reading groups. We have spent a lot of time on modeling, practicing and discussing the different strategies good reads use when they are reading (ie. making connections, visualizing, inferring, questioning, determining important ideas and synthesizing). Doing this at home will reinforce what we are doing in school and make your child a stronger reader.

                In writing, the class has been working on interviewing a friend. They are learning new things about their classmates. Writing a complete paragraph with the information they received has been a focus in both in English and Spanish. They are now writing questions about someone else they would like to interview. Some special people are mom, dad, siblings, an astronaut, the president and a teacher.

                We have started a new science unit on organisms. Once the students became familiar with different organisms, they planted and have been taking care of pea, pumpkin and sunflower seeds. Thank goodness they have green thumbs! Then the students observed and compared woodland and aquatic plants. In the next few days, we will observe and compare snails and guppies. They have been working very hard in their science groups.

                Our class is fortunate to have a HOTS artist (Mr. Wood) working with us every week. The children are making giant globes with him. They are learning about the continents, the equator and geologists.

We invite you to stop by anytime to look at our terrariums, aquariums and globes.

A few reminders:

*Please fill out the permission slip for the Peabody field trip for Wednesday 2/15. If we do not have a permission slip, we cannot take your child.

*We will exchange valentines on Tuesday 2/14.

* We only need $40 to meet our goal of $200 for The American Heart Association and Haiti fundraiser. If we meet our goal, we will watch a movie and eat popcorn on the Friday before vacation.

The first grade team

Parents,

Tomorrow at 11:00 am. the first grade will have their holiday celebration. The students will not be eating a school lunch. Families have made a special something for our students. Some parents have already told us that there will be rice and beans, meatballs, macaroni and cheese, cookies, and of course we still have juice left over. We look forward to seeing you all.

1st grade team

Dear Parents,

We have a website for your child to use and practice reading. They are able to go to http://www.raz-kids.com/ and in order to enter to their own books they look up the teacher: mcanaloria. Once they type in mcanaloria, they are able to find their name and read the stories on the computer.

The first grade team

Dear parents and guardians,

I would like to start by saying I am sorry. I apologize for not adding to the website this month. I do not want to make any excuses, only that I have not done my job at keeping you as informed as I should. The holidays are here, but we have not slowed down our learning.

We are writing letters to our friends, teachers, family and favorite authors. This was difficult for many, but we decided that most of us love Dr. Seuss, and wrote a letter to him. We make sure to include the date, a greeting, the body, and a closing. The most important is to write your name at the bottom so the receiver knows who the letter came from! After we wrote our letters, we made sure to EDIT the letter to make it perfect to send out.

In reading we have talked about “sparkle words”. These are the adjectives we read in a story to allow us to see/picture the story. We made sure to add our own sparkle words when we described the story after we read it. The retell is very important as well and the deeper questions that can be asked. Some of these questions are, “what is your favorite part and WHY?”, “if there was another page, what would happen?”, “How did the main character feel, why?”, “Would you like to be a character in the story? Why?”. All of these questions help the reader find the deeper meaning in what they are reading. It is important to ask your child these types of questions when you read with them at home.

Math has been busy with plane and solid shapes. We have talked about patterns we can make with plane (flat) shapes and solid shapes. We also made sure to talk about the similarities and differences in the shapes and colors. We also are trying to make number stories. When we were all growing up these were called word problems. Ask your child to help make a word problem using numbers in a number bond.  Thank you for all the hard work you do with your child to help us keep on track in school. We are so proud of our 1^st graders.

Dear Parents/guardians,                      

This year has just flown by. It is hard to believe we are already in December and are celebrating the holiday season. On December 23^rd, we will have a holiday luncheon at 11am. The students will spend the 23^rd working on activities for the holidays that we celebrate in December. We are inviting parents to join us at any time during this day. Our lunch will begin around 11:00am and we would love if the children brought in traditional food from their country or one food that your child will love! We do have a nut allergy. Please be extra cautious if you are making something and do not use any products with nuts or nut oils. There are 50 students in the 1^st grade, but please do not worry about making a large amount of food. There is always plenty to go around since so many children bring something to share. We have plenty of drinks left from our Thanksgiving celebration. We look forward to seeing you on the 23^rd.

The first grade team.