Welcome to a whole new "crop" of students!

Hi new Kindergarten students and parents. We are so excited about the upcoming year. We are looking forward to meeting all the new students. It will be a "blooming" year for everyone. See you soon on August 20th for Orientation!

Pamela Duncan Edwards and Henry Cole

Wow! We were spell bound by these two wonderful people. You could hear a pin drop while Ms. Edwards was talking and Mr. Cole was drawing. Ms. Edwards read the story Livingstone Mouse while Mr. Cole was drawing a mysterious picture. At the end of the story when Mr. Cole turned his paper around he a drawn in a matter of minutes and incredible picture from the book.


Next they talked to the kids about the process of how they come up with ideas. Using the ideas from the students Mr. Cole drew a picture of a cat going to a dance with a dog as her partner. All the details came from the students.


We also found out that our new book of the month is Princess Pigtoria and the Pea written by Ms. Edwards and illustrated by Mr. Cole. Our class was so excited because it is another one of their stories using alliteration.

We loved their visit! We wished they could have stayed the whole week.

Author Study - Kevin Henkes

We had a fabulous celebration of Kevin Henkes last week. The students came in very excited dressed as their favorite characters. We had Lilly, Wilson, Chester, Wemberly and many other great characters in our room. The student spent the day making mouse ears, completing fun activities and eating cheesy snacks with other 1st grade classes.

Collect 25 Cents

This week we learned how to play a new game called Collect 25 cents. This is a fabulous game that combines adding numbers with counting money, two seperate skills that we are working on. To play this game you and a partner will need a collectin of pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters. You will also need one dice. To play the game one person will roll the dice and count out the amount of money that matches the roll. For example if you rolled a 4, the only way to make 4 cents is by counting out 4 pennies. Next the other person will roll the dice. That person will add their money to the previous roll. For example if the 2nd person rolled a 6, they would add 6 cents to the 4 cents. When adding the 6 cents the partners will need to decide if they want to add 6 pennies or 1 nickle and 1 penny. Next they will count all the money (10 cents). The game will continue until they reach 25 cents. This game can be adjusted to the level of the players. All pennies can be used if they are just learning how to count money. The players can also continue to exchange the coins so they have the fewest possible, for example if I had 17 cents I could have 1 dime, 1 nickle and 2 pennies. That would be the smallest amount of coins I could use compared to 17 pennies. If your child has no problem counting up to 25 cents, continue to raise the amount of money they are trying to reach. Another variation would be to roll two dice together to make the total of 1 dollar.

Owen: From English to Japanese

A. has amazed us again with her knowledge of both the Japanese and English language. Our class has been studying Kevin Henkes as an author and illustrator. This morning A came in and showed us the book of Owen. Owen was one of the first books we read as a class of Mr. Henkes. The students loved the story of a boy who wanted to take his blanket to school with him in Kindergarten. At first glance it looked the same as our book, then we noticed it was written in Japanese. Of course A said she could read the book and would be willing to read it to the class. We were so excited. A did an outstanding job. She used intonation and read with fluency. The other students were spell-bound by her knowledge of both languages. We are so fortunate to be able to share both books with our class. Thank you A for making this possible.


Please stay tuned for an audio peak of A reading Owen.

Total of 10, Tens Go Fish

This past week we have been playing a math game that focuses on finding combinations of ten. All you need is a deck of cards. You will need to take out the face cards or you can treat the face cards like a wild card. With a partner pass out 7 cards each. Each player will look at the cards in their hand. They will look for two cards that add up to ten. For example: 5+5, 7+3, etc. They will set these cards aside. Next they will continue to play the game just like Go Fish. Each player asks the other if they have a number that would help them make a combination of 10. If the other player does not have that card, the person asking would take one from the left over deck of cards. Continue to play until all cards are gone. If one person runs out of cards, they will draw 7 more from the deck.

If your child can not hold the cards in their hand, another variation would be for you to place 5 rows of 4 cards facing up on the ground. Have your child look at the cards to make combinations of ten. They can use multiple cards to make the combination. As the child takes cards from the rows, replace them with new cards from the deck.

Repeated Reading Builds Fluency!

By the end of the year, we expect first-grade students to be able to independently read aloud from Level I books using intonation, pauses and emphasis that signal the structure of a sentence and the meaning of a text. They should use the cues of punctuation -- including commas, periods, question marks and quotation marks to guide them in getting meaning and fluently reading aloud. Repeated Reading has been shown to improve students' reading fluency and general reading. Recording students while they read aloud is a great strategy to use. As they listen to themselves they can hear when their reading does not sound fluent and along with teacher guidance they can begin to make corrections to improve fluency.

Using your own recording device at home, record your child reading their Book in a Bag. Your child should listen to their recording. Discuss strengths and areas that need improvement. Then, have them read their book again as you record. Have your child listen to the second recording and discuss their areas of improvement. Repeated Reading is sure to make a positive impact :)

Listen to Amanda read Ribbon Rescue. Notice the changes she makes from the first time she reads the story.