CA FIRST GRADE

Tuesday, August 5, 2014

Homework and Thursday Folder Information

Homework in first grade is designed to meet two specific goals. First, the homework assignments are structured to help students develop good at home study habits. This is the first experience that Columbus Academy students have with homework expectations, and we strive to help first graders and their families become comfortable with homework routines. The second goal is to reinforce learning that is taking place at school. All homework should be a review or extension of material presented in class.

First grade students are expected to work on homework Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday evenings. Most weeks this homework will consist of Fluency Folder work (repeated readings of a poem or other reading selection to help in developing fluency in reading), Monster Word spelling practice, and number sense/math facts practice. Occasionally students may have a specific written homework page or an extended project in place of or in addition to the usual homework expectations. Some nights the homework assignment could even be to play a math or spelling game previously learned in class. Nightly homework (excluding D.E.A.R.) should take no more than 15 minutes to complete. In addition to the daily expectations, students take home a book each evening for at-home (D.E.A.R. - Drop Everything and Read) reading. We ask parents to record their child's nightly reading on the provided reading log. This allows the students and teachers to track reading progress throughout the year.

To maintain regular communication between school and home, we use a system called Thursday Folders. 1D students keep a folder of schoolwork from the week, which they then take home every Thursday to share with parents. These papers often come home as a stapled packet, with an Ask Me About mini-newsletter attached. This paper can guide parents in talking with their child about his/her week at school. This gives parents the opportunity to review the week's work with their child, and it is a great way of staying connected to their child's school experience. After reviewing the folder and reading the comment page if there is one that week, parents have the opportunity to write a comment on the slip (if they wish), then sign and date the slip. Children are expected to bring the signed piece of paper back to school on Friday. There is no need to send the entire packet of work back to school! That is for the parents to keep. It is our hope that parents will find this form of communication informative and that they will enjoy seeing their child's work consistently.

Monday, August 20, 2007

Lower School Notes

1. Please label ALL clothing with your child's name - even shoes!!
2. Help your child remember to return his/her library books no later than the due date.
3. We welcome and obviously need parental help on field trips. If you offer to accompany a field trip, please do not bring younger siblings along. While it would be lovely to accomodate this, the focus of the adults on the trip has to be completely on the children in the class making the trip.
4. We will travel by bus only for field trips ~ parents are no longer permitted to provide transportation.
5. If a parent is late picking up a child from the carpool the child will be sent to C.A.S.E. to wait for his/her ride.
6. IMPORTANT PHONE NUMBERS:
Lower School Office: 509-2258
If you are leaving a message about how your child is to go home, please leave that information with Michelle Saling in the Lower School Office to make sure your child gets the information before dismissal time.
7. The best way to contact us is by e-mail:
Julie_Simmons@columbusacademy.org
Beth_Downing@columbusacademy.org
We do check e-mail often, and we recommend this method of communication. We do not have easy access for retrieval of voice mail messages, so use of voicemail is somewhat unreliable. All urgent messages should go to the Lower School Office phone number.

First Grade Themes

The Columbus Academy Lower School community focuses on two big ideas during the year ~ Change and Interdependence. First graders learn about these ideas through a variety of literacy themes. First grade students start the year with a focus on Back to School and Friendship. We will begin out first project based learning unit ~ Cool with School Rules. Starting in late September, the students participate in a theme entitled Going Global. We will begin by exploring maps, and finding our own place on the map. Then we will expand our learning to learn about daily life in other places. This will give us the opportunity to connect with classrooms from around the world. We will participate in several global learning projects this year. In mid-September we will be part of The Global Read Aloud Project. Classrooms from all over the world will be reading books by the same author over the same time period. We will discuss the book via Skype, e-mail, and Twitter - sharing our thoughts and showing any related projects. This year's GRA author is Peter Reynolds. In addition to this project, our class is also part of the Global Classroom Project. Students from 15 countries, across 6 continents, will participate in this project. As members of this project, the goal is to learn about children in other areas of the world. We will share about our daily lives - favorite foods, recess activities, families, houses, etc. We will use a variety of technology tools to help us in connecting with global friends. First grade kids spend much of December and the first week in January learning about Holidays and Traditions. Next, we focus on Gingerbread stories. After that first graders will celebrate WINTER, with a Jan Brett author study and a first grade favorite - animal research. After that, you will find first graders Going West, learning about the Oregon Trail. First grade is a time for writing, and first graders end the year with a writing genre study and a focus on writing. Students celebrate in style by sharing their writing during Author Celebrations.