In our very first class together we discussed the importance of good manners in our daily school and home routine.  We covered in-classroom manners with teachers and classmates, lunchroom etiquette and at-home manners, with specific focus on calling a family member to the phone properly.  We did a rap song and a tune about the importance of these skills which can always be tied to the Golden Rule.  Please be sure to ask your children about the topics we demonstrated through our role-playing activities.

I played a phonics rhyme game with all three classrooms, trying to use the alphabet sequence to come up with new consonant or consonant blend beginnings to word endings such as “ine” (dine, fine, line) or “ack” (back, black, lack, Mack, pack.)

I will be working with the students to develop writing prompts to keep in their writing folder for free choice journal activities during the year (things I like to do, places I like to go, things I like to eat).

Students are also developing personal dictionaries in a special booklet.  They have begun entering the second grade words they are responsible for knowing and have plenty of room to enter words that they need help with throughout the year.

In the coming weeks we will be working on the “Silly Story” theme in the basal reader beginning with “Dragon Gets By,” a story about a dragon who goes shopping and has a very unique view of the basic food groups.  Students made very interesting predictions about what would happen next at various points in the story.   We worked together to summarize this story in four informative sentences and then found all the words we could with the short “a” sound. 

 In keeping with this theme, I will also be reading one of my personal favorite silly books “The Seven Silly Eaters” (ask your children what each of the seven “persnickety” children loved to eat) and “Arthur Writes a Story.”   Perhaps your child can recount the silly story that Arthur wrote for Mr. Ratburn’s class.

During this whole group instruction, the homeroom teachers will be doing the initial individual DRA (Directed Reading Assessments) with their students.