CA FIRST GRADE

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.

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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.