October News

Handy Information for Accelerated Reader

http://www.classreading.com/rtb/RL_AR_Books2.mvc?Zfile=rtb_citrusco&Zschool=CC_RL_03&schoolname=Central%20Ridge%20Elementary%20School&var2=OFF&YEAP=A0002

 

http://www.centralridgeelementary.org/index.html

 

This awesome link can be found on Central Ridge’s Home Site. You can browse the Library Catalog, check the AR level of a book, and see the number of AR points.

 

I think another bonus is that you will be able to search titles of books that your child owns to see if there are AR tests and/or level correlations available for their books.

Proud Teacher - love receiving compliments about our kids...

On Monday I was out of the classroom for FAIR Testing. Our substitute gladly appointed our kids as her best class so far this school year!!! I was very proud to hear the news. I anticipate that our kids will keep up the fantastic work!

First Graders will receive Letter Grades

This school year First Grade students will receive letter grades. This is a change from our previous P, I, E, and N grading scales.

Our Grading Scale is as follows:

100-90 - A
89-80 -  B
79-70 -  C
69-60 - D
59-50 - F


****We do NOT record any grade lower than 50% in our gradebook. A child may have only had one answer correct out of ten (which would usually give them a 10%), but I do not record that grade as a 10%; I record it as a 50%. The chance of a student recovering from a 10% is minimal, while the 50% doesn't make their data fall as low.

We will be having our first conference shortly. Please make sure that you turn in the form with your 3 preferred dates so that I can promptly schedule our conference.

We will be discussing:

q  Grade Level Expectations and Proficiencies

q  Midterm/Report Card/Grading System

q  Skyward – Biweekly Grade Reports   

q  Common Core State Standards

q  Present Levels of Performance

q  Mandatory Retention Law (FS 1008.25)

 

 

I am always available to help and/or discuss your child. Thank you for your support!

 

-Trishia Mikel

 

Daily Folder, Homework, etc.

In your child's daily folder, you will find a number of materials on any given day.

As previously noted, the colorful math workbook pages are from classwork. You will often notice that these pages haven't been completed. Your child can complete them at home, but they do NOT need to be returned to school. Some families are under the impression that those pages are homework and that is not the case.

The Math Homework pages are the grey/black/white pages that also appear to be workbook pages.

Our Tuesday Folders were delivered so those will start coming home each Tuesday. In the Tuesday Folders you will find newsletters, communication from the school, graded assessments, etc. Please review all information. Often, there are documents that need to be signed and returned to school.

Thank you for taking the time to review the information in your child's folder!

Parent University

On September 20th from 6-8 p.m., parents are invited to visit CRE and attend educational sessions based on various aspects of our school. There will be breakout sessions that correlate to primary subjects; so as to meet the needs of all of our parents.

Please stay tuned for more information.

We hope to see you there!

Great Readers Make Connections

Last week we used our schema to connect to text in different ways. The most obvious connections to our children are usually the text to self connections. These occur when something they read from a text reminds them of something from their own life. The next type of connection that will occur naturally is usually a text to text connection. A text to text connection occurs when they are reading from a text and they read something that reminds them of something that happened in another text. Finally, we have text to world connections. Text to world connections happen when we think of what we're reading and a text and think of where we've seen this in the real world; or more importantly, what we're learning about the real world.
Readers don't just make these connections and leave them hanging; they take these connections and learn to understand characters, text, and the world in a more meaningful way.
The kids needed to connect in a way that would be deep; as opposed to flat. They need to say that "I am making a T2S Connection because I have a pesky little sibling that gets into trouble and drives me crazy; so I know how the character is feeling".
A flat connection would be "I'm making a connection because I have a dog, too". Having a dog like someone else isn't important; the experiences and feelings that come with the pet are what help us as thinkers.

The following visual helps to explain that their connections need to bring them back to the text. We need to understand how the character is thinking, feeling, and how the character may respond/react to problems.

When readers make T2T Connections, it is important that they pull out specific parts to relate from the texts they are connecting. There are many ways to connect to text and it is a strategy that we will talk about year round.

 

My first step in teaching the comprehension strategies is providing a teacher model via think aloud. I read a text and I model the strategy by sharing my thinking voice. Comprehension Strategies need to be explicitly taught because not all children know that they have this thinking power; especially when we are teaching them to read words.

 

It is a pleasure to have such an imaginative and enthusiastic bunch of children this year. They are ready to take on challenges and they are so much fun to be around. Thank you for all you do!

Proud Teacher :-)

Two of our kids were chosen to go on the morning show to read their individual sentences for last week's Top Dog Word of the Week; proficient. I was so proud to have an overwhelming response from my kids; a number of them participated and they were excited that they were able to use the word.......well.........proficiently!

 

Another student made me super proud today. He came in this morning SO excited that he could read the first poem from his poetry journal. (Just having him excited about the poem was enough for me to be proud of.) This afternoon I had him read the poem to the class and he read it beautifully; I could hear the rhyme and flow of language. After he finished reading, he informed me that he could also read it without holding his journal. He memorized the poem! Wow.  I love when children are excited to learn.

 

Box-Tops, Campbells, Etc.

We collect a lot of things to raise money for Central Ridge. If you have any of the following, please collect them and send them in with your child (preferably in an envelope or ziploc bag that is labeled with my name and your child's name).
The following are examples of things we collect: BoxTops, Campbell Labels, Tyson Rewards (Support Your School), Coke Rewards, and soda can tabs.

You can find labels on many snack products, such as Goldfish and Pepperidge Farm Products.

Every bit helps our school!

Chants, Movement, and Songs!

See if your little can recall the chant and movements we've been doing!

Chant and Movement: When you have one vowel in a consonant-vowel-consonant, or a vowel-consonant, the vowel will (usually) say its short sound.
(vowels that are closed in by a consonant will say their short sound - like cat and at)

Movement:
Good readers Activate their Schema to understand what they've read.

Metacognition Song:
I think I can think about thinking
Do you understand what I've said
It's all about Metacognition
What's going on in my head!

Schema Song:
Schema, Schema
Schema, Schema
What I know
Watch it Grow
I can read a new book
I can take a good look
Schema grows
Schema grows

Schema, Schema, What we Know

This week we were metacognitive about our schema! Schema are all of the things we know. All of our experiences help define what we know and how we feel. We looked at how our brain works like a file cabinet; housed with many individual file folders full of information. (You'll see a orange file in one of the pictures - that housed all of our Schema about spiders.) I wanted them to see how their schema helps them in many ways . One of our next steps was to use what they know about spiders (their spider schema) and predict the vocabulary that would be in the text. They came up with words like: venom, fangs, brown recleuse, black widow, poisonous, jump, bite, insect, etc. The next step in the lesson was for me to show them what happens to our schema while we read/learn. I showed how sometimes our schema is wrong and other times it just needs to be updated/changed. I told them we had to not only take stuff out of the files, but we had to be prepared to add stuff to the files. So, while we read, we were sure to stop and record new schema about spiders. At the end we went through our first round of Spider Schema (that was in the Orange File) and sorted through it. We needed to see what could stay in the file and what needed to be shredded (those things are our misconceptions). The misconceptions were put in the spider web - hopefully being trapped there forever. Some of the misconceptions were: spiders are insects (new schema:they are arachnids), spiders are black (new schema:some spiders are black - we have to be very specific), and spiders are poisonous (new schema:many spiders are poisonous and few are dangerous to humans).

Finally, we wanted to fill our web of understanding. I wanted the children to understand that we now all have new schema (and some of our old schema) but we all walked away from the text with different thoughts. We all had to share something new we learned from reading and with each new fact, the yarn was handed to the next person to form our Web of Understanding!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Observing Rocks. We used our Inquiry Skills to Observe Properties of Rocks and recorded them in our Science Journals.

Cozy Writing Spots

The adorable kiddos finding a perfect writing spot

Target is giving back to the community!

Target is running this awesome community support event through their Facebook app!  If you go through Target's Facebook app you can vote for a school of your choice... once that school gets to 25 votes they receive a $25 Target gift card!  You can vote every week and the campaign runs July 26th through September 8th.. just think if you get 50 votes a week over the next 5 weeks that's $250!  Please help us reach out to our friends and families!

Write on!

Now that routines and procedures are looking good and running smoothly we are able to start more of the "fun stuff". We are in the introductory stage of Writers' Workshop and the children are enjoying themselves. My hope is that they develop a passion for writing - instead of becoming masters at writing a set number of sentences or write just because they "have to". Writers' Workshop is so wonderful because children can develop as writers and make progress at their own rate; while taking certain mini-lessons and applying them to their current skill level.

The anchor charts above touch on the following Essential Questions:
-Why do Writers write? (plus: things we want to write about this year)
-How do authors generate ideas to write about?
-How can we use our imaginations as writers?

A crucial part to Writers Workshop is the teacher's model of writing. Of course, we aim to write as close to our students' level as possible. There will be times in the future where I include a number of errors in a writing piece in attempts to have successful editing mini-lessons.

First Day of our First Full Week!

Wow - I can not believe how much the kiddos have absorbed since their first day of school.
They are an incredibly enthusiastic bunch; I love their energy and how eager they are to learn.

Today we looked at what clues help us to make predictions. We concluded that the title and cover help us make predictions, as well as the pictures and words in the text. Our predictions changed while we read; while the title and cover clues can tell us a lot - they leave too wide of a gap because we all have different experiences (schema). As we get into the story, our schema helps us make predictions - but we're really using our knowledge of fictional text/stories.

I wanted the children to look at how their predictions changed and how their initial predictions were important because they were thinking about the text, but they were very likely incorrect. It is difficult to admit your prediction was "wrong" in first grade - so we just make sure to celebrate thinking (and of course being able to prove your thinking).

The littles were excited to start borrowing some books from the classroom library.

Penny, Penny

Easily Spent

Copper Brown

and worth one cent.

Today, we talked about manipulatives in math. We won't be learning about money in depth right now, but money will be a useful tool in counting (one-to-one, and skip counting using nickels and dimes). The children were excited to explore pennies. We didn't do much with the pennies; the lesson was really a lesson in manipulative exploring. We looked at how we put the manipulatives on math mats, how we sit side by side with a partner, carefully empty the bags out on to the mat, and keeping the bags as flat as possible while sealing.

Some of the students shared their Me Bags, today. They did an exceptional job - there were some very clever things inside of those bags. Thank you for helping them put the bags together!

Now Showing in Our Class....