Great start to the new year!

Hi everyone! Welcome to the first blog entry for the 2011-2012 school year. We have had a great start to the new year. What a SUPER class we have! We have been spending the last few weeks getting to know each other, assessing, and learning the routines. I think we may have it all down now!

I will start reading with small groups this week. Please look for your child's "Guided Reading" book bag to come home in the next few days. These bags will have "just right" books in them. Please understand that I am just getting to know your child as a reader, so I may be adjusting the level up or down over the next few weeks.  I will read with 2-3 small groups a day. The children will be coming home with books we have read in the small group. The books will be familiar to them. However, reading them at home is very important for fluency and comprehension. Please read every night. Also, please make sure they bring the book bags to school everyday with the books in the bag. We will use the book bags everyday.

We have also started our Writer's Workshop. The children will have time everyday to write. Right now our unit of study is Personal Narratives. They will choose topics on their own to write about. Our focus in writing now is stretching out words, spaces between words, starting with capital letters, and adding punctuation to the end of each sentence. We have also been working on handwriting and making our writing legible. You will not see a lot of writing coming home, because we keep our papers in our writing notebooks. But do not worry, you will see them coming home soon enough!

In math we are getting ready to take our first "end of unit" assessment. We have learned about tallies, number problems, the weather, and counting with coins. Look for their assessment to come home soon.

Thank you to all the parents who have volunteered to help out in the classroom. If you have not signed up yet, it is not too late. Please just let me know when you would be available to help. As of now, I have three room mom's signed up: Ronda Weaver, Rebecca Howell, and Alyssa Gumm.  If you also wanted to be a room parent and I forgot to add you to the list, please forgive me. Just let me know and I will put you on the list. If I put you on the list and you do not want to be, again, please forgive me and I will take you off the list! :)

Just a few reminders:

* Please sign the permission slip for the blog and send back to school as soon as possible
* If you have not paid your $5.00 for Time for Kids Magazine please send in as soon as possible
* If you did not receive an email from me with your email verification, please let me know as soon as
   possible so I can make sure you always receive the emails. I would like to keep you updated on the
   classroom through the blog as often as possible to save paper.

Thank you for your support! I look forward to working with your children this year! Have a great week!

P.S. If anyone is interested in buying and electric pencil sharpener for the classroom your donation would be greatly appreciated. We have no pencil sharpener right now and have had to borrow from other classrooms. Let me know if they it be an option for you. I am looking for a heavy duty classroom sharpener. They run about $50.00.  Thanks for your consideration!