Weekly Update

This week in first grade, we finished up our writing unit on Small Moments/ Personal Narrative. We are finishing our final book for the unit and making a “published” copy.  In math, we took our test on Unit 5 and will be bringing this home next week.  We have started reading and writing non fiction as well for our next language arts units.  In social studies, we have been talking about families and traditions and had a visit from the Scotia Glenville Traveling Museum on Monday.  We would like to thank the PTO for funding this for us.  Ask your child about the games and chores they learned about from pioneer times.  In the computer lab this week, we used xtramath for fact practice, Starfall and some new games on jmathpage.  The links for these are on the side bar of our blog.  You are invited to join us WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 18^TH FROM 2:15-3:15 IN OUR CLASSROOM TO DECORATE GINGERBREAD HOUSES. Have a wonderful weekend. - Kristin

Week 12 update

Week 12 Update

We have completed our science unit on seeds and are working on our Family Unit for social studies. On Friday we started our family trees using gingerbread people. The kids did a great job on their Family mobile projects and enjoyed sharing them with their classmates.  We also made a first grade quilt that is on display in the front hallway based on our family holiday traditions.

On Monday we will be having a visit from the Scotia Glenville Traveling Museum and they will be teaching us about how families have changed from pioneer times until present day. 

In language arts, we are finishing up our personal narrative unit and moving on to reading and writing non-fiction.  As we finish up our final piece of writing for “small moments’ we are making a published book and cover that we will be bringing home along with our other stories from this unit. Last week we read some new books from the book room and discussed the “clues” that helped us know these were non-fiction books.  The kids have been reading captions and tables of contents.

I forgot to send home the reading log for his week with the kids on Friday. I will send it home tomorrow Sorry for the delay. 

Thank you for sending in donations for our holiday food box. We really appreciate your help! Please send in items for our gingerbread houses by next Monday if possible. That way we will be all ready to build on Tuesday! Please let me know if you will be joining us for decorating on Wednesday December 18^th. 

Thanks! I hope you had a wonderful weekend!

Week 11 Update

Week 11 Update

Wow! What a busy week we had at Eagle. Thank you to everyone who helped make this an exciting time for all of us. We really enjoyed sharing pour classroom with so many of you on Tuesday for American Education Week. We hope you enjoyed doing some reading, writing, social studies and math with us.  Thank you for supporting our book fair as well. It was a huge success! Our turkey trot on Friday was a wonderful way to end things and we loved running and cheering for our friends.

Please remember to have your child read at least 5 times each week and record it on their reading log.  Our next reading log is due on Friday December 6^th.  Since we have vacation, 5 reading entries is fine, but if you can do more that would be great!

Please remember to send in hats and gloves each day since our playground can get windy! As winter approaches, please also make sure to label all of your child’s belongings. Our lost and found always grows quickly!!!

Our class is still collecting donations of food, etc for local families in need. We have students also collecting change for victims of Typhoon Haiyan.  

I hope you had a wonderful weekend! – Kristin

Week 10 update

We had a very busy 4 day week last week. We played a few new math games:

Race for a dollar, Pumpkin Doubles and Catching Bugs Doubles Plus One. We made observations of our seedlings for our seed unit and read more books about seeds and how they grow.  In writing workshop, we worked on stretching out our story across our fingers as a pre-writing strategy. We also made holiday cards to send to servicemen and women who will be away from their families during the holidays.

This week will be an exciting one at Eagle! We will celebrate American Education week and are looking forward to having our parents visit on Tuesday from 11 – 12pm.  The book fair will be at Eagle from Tuesday – Friday this week. On Friday we will have our school wide Turkey Trot at the High School track at 2:15. Parents are invited to watch! It will be a very busy, fun week for all! If you have not RSVP’d yet about Tuesday, please send me an e-mail to let me know if you will be joining us. Thanks! I hope you had a great weekend. – Kristin

P.S. – Family Projects are due on Tuesday! J Our word wall words for last week were: look, make, good, use, friend

Week 9 Update

Week 9 Update

Dear Parents,

We planted some seeds this past week and are experimenting with some seeds that have no soil to grow in and some that have no light. Ask your child about where our seeds are located in the classroom. We started some work reading non-fiction books about spiders. In writing, we told our stories in “itsy bitsy” parts like the itsy bitsy spider song. We worked on retell based on Diary of a Spider by Doreen Cronin and Scarecrow by Cynthia Rylant.   We went to the computer lab and started using a fact fluency program called Xtra math. We will be using it a few times in school and then I will be sending home information so the students can work on it at home as well.

HOMEWORK: Thank you for helping your child read each night and fill out their calendar. I have copied the calendars back to back to save paper. Unfortunately, I forgot to send them home with the kids on Friday, so they will be coming home tomorrow. Feel free to attach a slip of paper with reading info rather than rewriting book titles. Thanks!

PROJECT:  I hope you and your families are enjoying working on the Family Unit project. Your child brought home information about this last Wednesday.  The project is due next Tuesday, November 19^th.  Feel free to send it in early if you are done. J We can’t wait to share them!

PARENT VISITS:  We will be celebrating American Education Week on Tuesday November 19^th from 11 – 12 in our classroom with a variety of lessons and activities to give you a sample of what first grade is all about! We hope you can join us.

DECEMBER CELEBRATION: We would like to invite you to decorate gingerbread houses with us on Wednesday December 18^th from 2:15 – 3:15 pm. This is a change from our originally planned celebration. There is a conflict with the Eagle December Assembly on the 22^nd. I apologize for the inconvenience and hope that you will be able to join us.

I hope you and your family have had a wonderful long weekend together. Looking forward to a fun filled week ahead!  - Kristin

week 8 update

What a great week!  We had a fun time with our pumpkin camp and talking about Fire Safety. On Wednesday the Delmar Fire Department came to Eagle and we got to learn about fire safety. Please check your smoke alarms and replace the batteries. We also discussed how each family should have a designated meeting place in front of their house in case of a fire. The firefighters explained that this will help them make sure that everyone has gotten out of the house safely.  The ladder truck was here and we got to watch a very brave firefighter climb the ladder. We also met a rescue dog. He was very excited to see the kids! Thank you to the firefighters for their visit and to Mrs. Spain for arranging this for our school. 

Thank you to everyone who helped provide treats for out Halloween celebration. They were delicious.  It was great having so many of you join us for the celebration as well.  I hope you had a fun Halloween! 

Our word wall words for this week were: 

which

many

want

could

can

Please have your child practice reading and writing these words at home. Thanks!

REMINDERS – We have an early dismissal on Tuesday Nov. 5^th at 12:10. 

Tuesday night at 6 pm – Eagle’s Amazing Silent Auction J

I hope you enjoyed this first weekend of November!

- Kristin

Week 7 Update

Week 7 Update

It has been wonderful meeting with parents over the past few weeks. Thank you for taking the time to come to school to discuss your child’s progress with me.  We have our last half-day for parents conferences on Tuesday of this week.  We will be having our “Pumpkin Camp” this week – on Wednesday and Thursday.  We will be having our Halloween celebration on Thursday afternoon and parents are invited to join us from 2:30 – 3:15 for treats and a few Halloween games.  Please let me know if you will be attending so I can reassure your child when they ask. 

In the computer lab this week, we went online to Johnny’s Math Page (jmathpage.com) and played games on the ten frame. These games are located in the number section of the website and would be great to practice at home as well. 

Our guided reading groups have been meeting and we are really building our stamina during “read to self” and “read to someone”.  Ask your child to tell you about the decoding strategies they are using.  In writing, we are working on “bringing our characters to life” by adding details and maybe even some dialogue. We will continue working on this over the next few weeks.

Our Word Wall words for the past two weeks were: saw, him, her, when, why, had, not, note, those, these. I will try to remember to post them weekly so you can help your child practice them at home as well.
Thank you to everyone who contributed to our Family Game Night basket for the PTO Auction. I hope you will be able to attend on November 5th at 6pm. This is a great fundraiser for our amazing PTO! 

Enjoy this beautiful fall weekend!  Please make sure your child has a jacket for recess this week. The winds are blowing! :) 

Week 6 Update

Evan though week 6 was a short week for us, we accomplished a LOT! We have started our seed unit and are learning about what a seed needs to grow and how they travel.  We pulled apart a lima bean seed that had been soaked in water to see the baby plant inside. Ask your child if they can tell you the 3 parts of the inside of the lima bean seed. In reading, we added Listen to Reading to our Daily Five stations, using the laptop computers.  The kids did a great job listening to a story and writing about their favorite part. Ask your child to tell you about the story Owen, what they liked best about it and why that was their favorite part. We are still working on our "small moment" stories in writing and are adding transition words and more details.  We are using a checklist to make sure we have included all the elements of a personal narrative, as well as an editing checklist.  In math, we have finished our second unit on subtraction.  We will be adding some math games this week to help us build our fact fluency.  Thank you for continuing to work on facts to ten at home as well.  Please send in a small pumpkin with your child by the end of this week as we will be using them for Pumpkin Camp next week. It should be a lot of fun! I hope you had a great weekend. - Kristin

week 5 update

I hope you have all had a wonderful long weekend! We have a short, but busy week ahead of us.  We have a half day on Thursday for Parent teacher Conferences with dismissal at 11:45 am.  Please send a note to school on Thursday if your child is doing something DIFFERENT from their normal routine.  

Our conference schedule is: 

Thursday October 17th  Parent Teacher Conferences

8:40 – 9:00 am  Erin and Chris Pajak

12:30 – 12:50 Kristen May

12:50 – 1:10   Teresa Robinson

1:10 – 1:30     Ben Fugitt

1:30 – 1:50     _______________________

1:50 – 2:20     Shawna Vatter

2:20 – 2:50     _______________________

2:50 – 3:10     _______________________

3:10 – 3:30    Caryl Baltis

Wednesday October 23rd

8:40 – 9:00 am     Jaime Greenfield

12:30 – 12:50      Judy Kibrick

12:50 – 1:10        Shoham Huli

1:10 – 1:30        Jen and Brandon Curry

1:30 – 1:50        Michael Gough

1:50 – 2:20        Ann Oke

2:20 – 2:50     Paula Mendez

2:50 – 3:10     Kelsey vonWedel

3:10 – 3:30     Chloe Kosoc

Tuesday October 29th

8:40 – 9:00 am  Trish and Don Robbins

12:30 – 12:50 Vardan and Anna Amirbekian

12:50 – 1:10   Wyatt Williams

1:10 – 1:30    Dwayne Tutunjian

1:30 – 1:50     _______________________

1:50 – 2:20     Max Waldenmaier

2:20 – 2:50  Donnamarie and DeAnne Martocci

2:50 – 3:10     Susan Salzer

3:10 – 3:30     Siobhan and Paul Matrose

Thank you to everyone who sent in food for our food drive and for encouraging your child to bring in healthy snacks this past week! In reading workshop, we are starting to add more stations to our Daily Five routine and read to self and read to someone are really coming along nicely! The kids are working on staying "in the zone" while reading.  

In writing workshop, we started using transitional words to help signal movement in our personal narrative stories. Ask your child to tell you 4 or 5 words they can use to show transitions.  

In math, we are finishing up our second unit this week, which focuses on missing parts for subtraction.  

I am looking forward to our upcoming conferences. I will be giving you the AIMS web reports for reading and math and showing you the new report card we will be using in January, as well as discussing how your child has been adjusting to first grade.  Please feel free to bring any questions you or your child has to our conference. Thanks! - Kristin 

 

Week 4 Update

Week 4 Update

Word Wall: This past week we added new words to our word wall. So far our list includes,

dog, he, is, me, my, name, said, she, this, to, they, that, of, was, with.  Ask your child to tell you what it means when we add a word to our wall. These are words you can practice reading and spelling at home as well. 

Writing workshop: We are adding details to our small moment stories in writing by asking the 5 Ws: who, what, when, where and why. We also worked with our writing buddy to help with editing conferences.

In reading, we have been building our stamina and everyone in the class read for 20 minutes straight on Wednesday! Wow! It was really terrific.  We will try to consistently read for 15 – 20 minutes while staying “in the zone” and really staying focused on our reading. This is something you can practice at home while completing your reading homework as well. 

For reading homework, please make sure that at least PART of each night’s reading is your child reading to you.  The percentage of them reading to you should be increasing a little bit each night to try to achieve 20 minutes each night. It is still beneficial for you to read aloud to them as well to help them with fluency, but this should be outside of their 20 minutes.  Reading logs are due every Friday. 

MATH FACTS: Please help your child practice their math facts at home for 5 – 10 minutes each night. We will be starting to have addition fact quizzes soon.  In Kindergarten they should have mastered their facts up to 5 and in first grade, we will be working up to ten.  Thanks so much for your help with this.

Coming up this week at school:

*We will be celebrating the Farm To You Fest Week. In our classroom we will are encouraging kids to have healthy snacks and will be making a class graph during our snack time, listing students who have a healthy snack choice for the day.  More details on Farm to You Fest and our food drive are on the Eagle website. 

* School pictures for our class will be taken on Wednesday October 9th from 11 – 11:15 am.  Please return your order form by Wednesday if you are interested in purchasing pictures.   

Week 3 Highlights

We had a very busy third week of school. The class is really starting to get into a routine and we are working really well together.  I am so proud of them! What a great group! I hope you are enjoying this beautiful weekend.

Week 3 Highlights:

• ·      Short a sound activities
• ·      Monday – Journal writing – one thing I did this weekend was…
• ·      Monday – Friday: Small moment writing – started editing – will work more on this during week 4 as well as revising
• ·      Building stamina for “Read to Self” using leveled texts from our book boxes – Goal: 12 – 15 minutes
• ·      Started “Read to Someone” using our poetry notebooks
• ·      Capital and lower case letters – work on this at home as well – especially our names
• ·      Kevin Henkes author study – using his books as mentor texts
• ·      Making predictions as we read – story retell – characters, setting and story events
• ·      Math – finished unit 1 on addition – started unit 2 subtraction – focus on missing addends- 
•     Math - watched Youtube video - Harry Kindergarten's Song: When You Subtract Like a Pirate :) Great song for key vocabulary.
• ·      Started Handwriting Without Tears program
• ·      Social Studies – Community Workers

Rainbow chart

Dear Parents, 

         This year we will be using a colored “clip chart” to monitor our behavior and classroom choices.  Your child will have a clip in the classroom that they will physically move up or down the chart, depending on their choices.  Please keep in mind that your child may not move every single day!  In order to move up, students must go above and beyond in their behavior choices.  The chart below explains how the clip chart works. 

Pink Outstanding!	Students who reach the pink level will be rewarded for their positive choices.
Purple Great Choice!	Students who continue to make positive choices move up to the purple level.  They are one step closer to having outstanding classroom behavior!
Blue Good Choice!	Students who make positive choices will receive recognition as they move up the chart.
Green Ready to Learn!	Everyone starts the day “Ready to Learn”! Students can “clip up” or “clip down” throughout the day depending on their behavior choices.
Yellow Slow Down!	Students who receive a warning will move to yellow.  This serves as a reminder to students to think about the choices they make.
Orange Think About It!	Students who continue to make poor choices will move to orange and will be given a consequence.
Red Parent Contact…	Students who move to red will miss recess in its entirety.  Parents will be contacted that day if their child is on red.

         I believe that this system will be a positive way for students to monitor their choices and will give them behavior goals to strive for!  If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me!

                             Sincerely,

                                    Mrs. Kristin Crawley

Week 2

Thank you for attending our Open House.  It was a pleasure meeting the parents of my new students and I appreciate your taking the time to come to school on Thursday evening.   If you have questions after reading the information I provided, please do not hesitate to contact me. We had a busy week in first grade.  We started reading "just right" books in our reading boxes. We are also working on building our stamina and being able to stay "in the zone" and read for longer periods of time. We worked on writing about our weekend and wrote some small moment stories as well. We will be moving on to lessons on how to edit and revise our writing this week.We talked about school rules and read the book No David by David Shannon.  We had a lesson on friendship with our counselor, Ms. Suhrhoff. We met our firth grade buddies on Friday, listened to the story The Dot and made our own dots that celebrate our being unique individuals.  In math, we are working on number bonds and building number sense. I know many of you had questions about our behavior chart and the colors, so I will attach that to our blog as well for easy reference.  The kids are really responding well to this and it is helping us get off to a great start in first grade. I hope you and your families are having a wonderful weekend.  My family is celebrating my son's 15th birthday.  It seems like yesterday that he was in first grade. - Kristin      

First Week of School

Dear Parents and Families, Our first week of first grade has gone really well.  What a great group.  We are adjusting to first grade and getting to know each other. Thank you for returning their green homework folders each day and for checking their calendar to see how their day went. The behavior plan seems to be helping to remind of us of the rules and expectations for school. I am proud of them for working so hard. Starting with a full 5 day week of school was a challenge, especially with the hot weather. I hope your child has been telling you about things we are doing at school. Please ask them about our apple prints, skittles math, Chrysanthemum, number Bingo, snapping an clapping for our word wall words and our offices! Its wonderful to be back and I can't wait to see you at Open House on Thursday night from 6:15 - 7pm. Open House is for parents only. Thank you, in advance,  for arranging for child care.  I hope you are having a great weekend. - Kristin Crawley 

Monthly celebrations this year

Our class celebrations will be held from 2:30 – 3:15 pm in our classroom and all parents are invited to attend. We cannot invite siblings from other classes to attend as it would interrupt their learning. If any changes are made, I will notify parents through BC@Home or on our class blog.

THURSDAY October 31st (Halloween party –no costumes)   

Friday November 22 (Thanksgiving)

Friday December 20^th    

Friday February 14^th           

Friday March 21^st

Friday April 25^th   

THURSDAY May 22^nd     

June’s celebration date TBA – probably Monday June 16^th for a picnic from 11:15 – 12:00

Please add these dates to your calendar.  I will be asking you to RSVP each month so we will know how many parents will be able to join us. The students really look forward to being able to share this time with their parents and we hope that you will be able to attend! 

Welcome to First Grade!

Welcome to Mrs. Crawley's first grade! I hope you and your families have been having a wonderful summer.  The weather has been great for being outside! My family and I have spent a lot of time swimming and traveling to Maine, Cape Cod and Washington D.C. I have also been reading and preparing for school to begin. It's hard to believe its right around the corner. I am excited to be teaching first grade again and meeting new students and families as well as seeing some familiar faces! 
I will be communicating with families using this blog and I will update it at least once a week - usually on Sundays. You will be able to read weekly classroom updates, see classroom pictures, and other cool things we are doing. Please bookmark this page for easy reference. It will also be linked to the Eagle page of the district website under Teacher Pages. In an effort to save paper, I will not be sending home weekly newsletters and will provide all important information here. I am looking forward to a great year with all of you. I cannot wait to meet the kids and hear all about their summer adventures!  Enjoy these last few gorgeous days of summer. See you on September 9th!

From, 
Mrs. Crawley