December

Important Dates

Dec 2 & 3 - Booster Bazaar

Dec 20 - End of 2nd Quarter & Early Release @ 11:45AM

Dec 21 - Jan 8 - Winter Break

Hello First Grade families!

First, I just want to congratulate ALL our sweet first graders on such an amazing Thanksgiving program. They all worked really hard and did a great job!I hope you all had an awesome Thanksgiving break last week. I spent a relaxing time with my family and simply took time to breathe and take it easy.  Many of our students were ready and eager to come back on Monday and for that I am very grateful. We do not have much time this month and  we have so much planned for the month of December so we have hit the ground running.

Here are a few dates to mark on your calendars:

December 15 we will have Grinch Day. Students may come to school dressed in green or even characters from the book. We will spend the day working on things that are all Grinch!

December 16th we will have our holiday party. My wonderful room mothers (Mrs. Wood and Mrs. Joyner) have some amazing things planned for our sweet first graders. It will be much like our Halloween party so if I can get some parents to come in and help with stations I will really appreciate it. Please be on the look out for a sign up genius.

December 19th we will have our polar express day. Kids may come to school dressed in Pajamas and we will have a pancake breakfast and drinking some hot chocolate. We will be watching the movie and then following up with some activities.

I am beyond excited for all the fun things we have planned for our classroom!

I hope you all have a wonderful week!

Mrs. Atkisson

Classroom Needs:

With all of our class projects that we have been working on, we are really running low on some classroom supplies.

Glue, copy paper, and construction paper (all sizes)

We have had to barter with other classrooms for supplies so if you have any extra at home, we would really appreciate any help!

November 14-18, 2016

Important Dates

Nov 17 - Progress Reports go home

November 22- First Grade Thanksgiving Production (please meet at the gym)

Nov 23 - 25 - Thanksgiving Holiday

Hello Neuse Families!

 Another busy week has come and gone. November is certainly flying by! We spent the first couple days of the week talking about elections. We read a number of books about elections and voting and also watched some videos. The conversation was rich with new vocabulary: government, democracy, voting, election, campaign, president, citizen, registration, ballot, ballot box, etc. 

We read one story called Duck for President. Duck for President is a hilarious book about a duck who is looking for a better job. First he runs for farmer, then for governor, and finally for president. He decides none of the jobs are really for him and goes back to his "duck" job on the farm. 

Another story we read was called Grace for President.  After reading several books we had a mock election. The kids filled out a ballot voting for Duck or Grace. The kids then put the ballots into a ballot box. We counted up the ballots and put them into a bar graph. I hope they went home and talked about all the fun things we did in class last week!

Our First Grade Thanksgiving Production is coming up and I am BEYOND excited! We have been working hard and practicing at school but please remember to have your child practice at home as well. If your child has a speaking part, we are asking them to practice their "stage" voice. We also have had several students say they do not know what to do for their costumes. If you need some ideas please email me and I will be happy to send some links to easy costumes you can make with just items found in your home. We would really love to have all the students in their costumes so if you cannot make one at home, please let me know I will make it for your student. 

Sight word tests were sent home today. Please remember that these are NOT graded. We are trying to get students to not only recognize these words but also write them correctly. The list that they are on is stapled to their test. I will test them again in a few days time and send that home along with their list. As you may have noticed I am a huge writing teacher. I love to get my students writing and many are already writing up to five sentences! Now I am really pushing for students to spell these sight words correctly in their writing and I hoping these tests will help with that.

One last thing, we have been having quite a few behavior issues in the classroom. Please speak to your student about what it means to be respectful and why following the rules is important. It has not only been happening in the classroom but also in specials. We are trying to add to our compliment chain but sadly the other teachers have not been reporting positive behavior. This does not mean that it is all my students all the time. However, it seems after Halloween we have been having a hard time getting back to our regular routine so we need to make sure our classroom environment is always conducive to learning. 

Thank you and I hope you have a wonderful week!

Mrs. Atkisson

Happy Halloween!!!

Happy Halloween from our First Grade classroom! Please stay safe tonight and I will see you bright and early tomorrow.

Awards/Homework

Good morning!

I just wanted to send out a reminder email about awards tomorrow. If your child received a yellow slip stapled to their report card, they will be receiving an award tomorrow. Awards will be held in the gym and begin at 12:30. You may check your child out after the awards from the classroom.

Starting this week I will begin collecting the spelling homework from your child. I will be adding this to their spelling grade starting this second quarter. If your child has an off day when we are testing, I am hoping that the homework grade will help offset their test grade. Everyone should have a spelling notebook in their OWL Binder with a tic-tac-toe grid stapled to it. If you are missing any of these items, please let me know and I will make sure they have them in there.

Students also have the sight word lists in their binder. Starting this quarter we will begin testing with these words and moving through the lists. These will NOT be graded. This is to keep moving forward with first grade fluency since they will see these words quite frequently in the stories that we read. I will send home a note every Friday stating which list your child is on after we test. Again, this is NOT graded. I will leave the lists in their binder for your information. This is not an added thing to the homework. We will work heavily with these words in the classroom. If you would like to work with your child at home to move them faster through the lists, you may do so at your discretion.

Homework this second quarter will consist of the packet, spelling, and fluency. Some students will be getting a new fluency packet so please look through these to see if you are working on a different one. These will also begin to be collected starting next week.

I hope this has answered any questions you have regarding homework this new quarter.

Mrs. Atkisson