December News 

It's a short but busy month as we finish up this second nine weeks of 1st grade. We are busy assessing for the report card, as well as school wide data updates for reading, writing, and math. Even with all of this we are still having fun with our math geometry unit, learning about great people of the US like Lewis and Clark and Thomas Jefferson, continuing with phonics and many other great things.

Can goods will be collected through the 18th. Please try to help by sending in a can or two. We have been watching to see how many cans other classes are collecting as we walk through the halls.

Just a reminder that our Holiday Party will be held on Friday, December 19th starting at 9:30.

Make sure you take a look at our Reindeer Exemplars and reindeer art work in the hallway. Reindeer are fun winter animals!

School will be closed for 2 weeks and 1 day for the Winter Holiday Break. Students will return on January 6th.

  Please look for Parent/Teacher conference request forms that will be sent home the week of December 15th. This is only request form. I will do my best to meet your requests. Your scheduled date and time will then be sent in January. Conferences will be held the last week of January.

I hope all of you have a Wonderful Holiday Season filled with the joy and love of family and friends. Weather permitting...I will be heading north to Chicago for the holidays. Maybe I'll get to build a snowman!

November News

It is very hard to believe how fast the year is flying by. We are one third of the way through first grade with only two and a half weeks until Thanksgiving.

Be sure to come for our Grandparents or Special Friends Day luncheon on Thursday the 20th. We will have a short program before lunch in our classroom starting around 11:25 – lunch is at 11:45. Hope you can all attend! Don’t forget to return the RSVP sheets. The lunchroom would like a count for food preparation. Parking will be at a premium so try to get here a little early.

The Book Fair is coming! November 17 - 21 - Open Late on Tuesday.

During Book Fair Week which is November 17 – 21 you will be able to bid on desserts made by the wonderful teachers and other staff at Garrison Mill. I’m not sure what I’ll be auctioning yet but I hope you all have time to stop in the media center during the week and bid on a dessert favorite that you find. All proceeds from this auction go support our Garrison Mill Relay for Life team.

Curriculum News

MATH:

This nine weeks (now through December) will be concentrating on the following skills:

·        place value (tens and ones to 100)

·        more practice adding and subtracting to 12 with new strategies such as doubles, doubles plus or minus one, counting on, counting back

·        greater than , less than , and equal to

·        fact families, or " related facts" (the adding and subtracting families such as 4,3 and 7 that can make related addition and subtraction facts) We are pretty good at this!

·        graphing and interpreting data

·        skip counting by 2's and 5’s – almost everybody has done this to earn their share bag

·        making fair trades with coins (to 75 cents) and bills (using $1, $5, $10, and $20 bills not $100!!)

·        working with 2- and 3-dimensional geometric shapes

SCIENCE: This nine weeks we have been working with magnets and sound. Mrs. McLeod has done a fabulous job helping us enjoy science!

SOCIAL STUDIES: We will begin discussing settlers including the pilgrims; then moving on to explorers such as Lewis and Clark and their friend Sacagewea. We will try to get a little in about Thomas Jefferson and his times before the Winter Break. The important ideas for these interesting historical figures include the history of the

USA

WRITING: We have been working on writing narratives, and the children are really becoming very good writers! We encourage the use of adjectives to add a little zing as well as having a clear beginning, middle and ending to our writings. Our writing is typically connected to other things we're studying, holiday themes, or things we've read as a class. Our next big narrative piece will be after Thanksgiving. I will be anxious to read the writings about all the things that the class did during the Thanksgiving Break.

: We are slowing down to two lessons per week. I want to be sure that what we have learned is understood before moving on. The children are doing great but there were quite a few difficult concepts that came quickly so this slow down allows for some review time as well. Remember to remind your child to use the phonics skills he/she knows when reading and writing. I’m starting to see the application in the room. I believe many of the children are starting to see how to use what we are learning.

Mrs. McLeod will be leaving us soon. November 14th will be her last day. She has helped us get off to a great start this year. We wish her well as she is now ready to have a class of her own!

FYI... The Cobb County Network System will be out the week of Thanksgiving break. You will not be able to contact me through email until maintenance is finished.

Have a great month and a wonderful Thanksgiving. I know this is the start to a very crazy time of year but I appreciate your continued support at home with homework, review, and encouragement.

Yummy, Yummy for your Tummy!

Foundation’s Pancake Breakfast this Saturday, October 25th from 7:00 – 11:00 a. m.

Come support the great things the foundation does for your children. For example, we have been using a Promethean board in the classroom and hope to have one in the room at all times before the end of the year. The GM foundation helps make things like this possible for our school. Come Saturday, get a great breakfast and do wonderful things to support your child's education!

EARLY BIRD SPECIAL $22*
Nov. 1st price increast to $25*

On-line ordering available at:  http://www.myyear.com
*Note:  cost includes taxes.  Does not include 1x $1.75 processing fee per transaction, multiple items per order allowed.  Be sure to print & keep your confirmation for proof of payment.

ORDER FORMS ARE ALSO AVAILABLE ON THE CREDENZA OUTSIDE OF THE OFFICE.

October is here with 36 school days behind us and many new days and things to learn ahead of us.

The focus of each subject for the month of October is listed below.

•  Math
  • Subtraction facts and strategies (much like we have been working with for addition)….using a number line, counting back, using pictures, and so on.
  • Graphing data
  • More with money
  • Greater than and Less than

• Language Arts
  • Phonics Lessons are going great. I know you are amazed at what your child can do. More neat rules are coming our way this month like when to use c or k to spell a word --- if the /k/ sound is followed by an e, i, or y you spell with the letter “k” like in kite, key, skip, milky, --- if the /k/ sound is followed by an a, o, u, or any consonant you spell with the letter “c” like in cat, coat, cup, clock. Another neat rule is when a word is spelled with a ci, ce, or cy.... the c sounds like a "s". Examples... city, cent, cycle...  Did you ever dream your first grader would be learning all of this!

  • Reading

    groups are working hard on main idea, details, retelling, observing punctuation marks and using them to read with expression.
  • Writing is becoming easier as we gain more confidence with the writing process. It is very cool to see our phonics lessons being applied to the writing process. Please encourage neat writing when completing homework each night. We are hoping our high expectations are also expected at home.

• Science / Social Studies
  • For the first two weeks of October, we will be looking at how the weather changes with the seasons, how to measure the weather, and weather instruments.
• We will also take a quick peak into the terrific life of Ben Franklin

•   News from Mrs. Gabriel:

• Please look carefully at the homework assignments for each day. Please complete all assignments for the day but do not work ahead. We've seen many interesting things coming back this week. Adding spelling work may have thrown a few of you off but all of this has been explained to the children and they should be able to come home and let you know what the new things are.
• Some of the reading books are coming back the very next day. Please reread the materials. Ask your child to retell the story from the beginning. Look at all of the punctuation marks. Make sure your child can name the punctuation mark and tell you what it is used for. Look for words that have endings added to them. Ask what the root work is and what the ending is. There are so many more things to do with these books than just read them. That is why the materials are a little easier to read. These books are not sent as "challenge" reading. You are always welcome to come use the school's media center to check out additional materials for your child to read at home. I highly encourage my parents to use this wonderful service that Mrs. Haas offers.

• New things we are working on:
• We are finishing our subtraction unit and we will use next week to review and strengthen our adding and subtraction skills.
• We have started a new social studies unit using maps. The students will be learning about various landforms as this is part of our curriculum. They will be graded on their knowledge of mountains, deserts, valleys, plains, plateaus and coasts.
• During our math review and practice portion of calendar we are working on place value using tens and ones. For example yesterday was the 21st day of school. This number is the same as 2 tens and 1 one. We work with tens being a "joined" group and ones being single units.
• Up Coming:
• Remember next Tuesday, September 16th is an early release day. School will be released 2 hours early (12:20). I will send your child home the "normal" way unless I have a note telling me otherwise.
• Testing next Wednesday through Friday. We will start at 8:00 so please have your child at school on time each day. If children arrive after testing begins they cannot enter the classroom until we take a break and they will miss that portion of the testing in the classroom. Another teacher will have to pull the child out of class to make up the testing and then this results in missed learning. So as you can see it helps the children to be here on time each day.
• 
• A reminder from PTA - this is a great service (PAWS on line). This blurb below was taken out of the last PAWS. Please register if you are not getting PAWS online - saves paper, easier for you to look over, not as much for us to send home! Oh and we could possibly get free ice cream!!!

• PAWS Online

  WAY TO GO! Congratulations to Mrs. Dion, Mrs. Snook,

  and Mrs. White’s classes for having 100% PAWS online

  subscribers! As a reward, the teachers and students

  were treated to an ice cream party. To date, over 420

  families have subscribed to PAWS online. If you haven’t

  signed up for PAWS online yet, it’s not too late! It’s

  easy, it saves money and paper, and it is in color! Simply send an email to www.gmpta@comcast.net 

  and include your name, your child(ren)’s name(s), teacher’s

  name(s), and the email address(es) at which you wish to

  receive the notifications. If you are already one of our

  many GM families that receives PAWS online, THANK YOU!

• Well, we are off to a TERRIFIC beginning to our First Grade year at Garrison Mill.

The students are settling in nicely and we are covering lessons in all curriculum areas. Our day is very busy but we keep plugging along as we accomplish more and more each day.

The homework folders are coming back every day with the homework looking pretty good.

Math homework will begin the Tuesday after Labor Day it will of course be in the blue homework folder each day.

One of our favorite math activities is of course Calendar! We not only work on math standards that cover days of the week and months of the year but we also work extensively in the areas of place value, money, odd and even numbers, and more skills will be added each month. Calendar time is our time to review, practice, and look ahead at all areas of our math standards. Of course, we are just having fun so we don’t always realize how much we learn during this time.

• 

  During our afternoon Science block we have worked through mini units on “observing” and “inquiry”. These skills are used repeatedly throughout our science curriculum. We are beginning our unit on The Water Cycle. This unit will take about 2 weeks.

• 

  Our Language Arts is picking up pace rapidly. While we have a very nice uninterrupted block of time we have SO, SO much to cover. The phonics is moving along. We all seem to understand the difference between vowels and consonants. We are coding vowels and beginning to remember the rules that explain “Why” we code the vowels. We will continue to review each letter of the alphabet while adding information about suffixes, diagraphs, and spelling rules. While we are covering each letter we are learning correct letter formation. I discussed this at Open House but I’d once again like to stress the importance of carrying this proper handwriting over at home.

  Why do we spend so much time on phonics…it carries over to all of our spelling, reading skills, and writing. As you see the phonics homework sheets come home you should know what types of expectations you can have for your child’s reading, spelling and written work. Application of these phonics skills is essential for a successful year in first grade.

• 

  I would like to thank all of you for your wonderful donations. Our treat jar is well stocked, we have many neat stickers. The paper towel is helping us keep our room cleaner and I’ve received one camera to begin our classroom picture collection. Disposable cameras and stickers are always welcome at any point in the year.

• Other items of interest…

  Since we eat towards the end of the lunch schedule, feel free to send a note in ordering your lunch if you know ahead of time that you will be joining your child. This way we may have a better chance of you getting the food item of your choice. I would also like to remind you that bringing in fast food when you come for lunch is discouraged. This was also mentioned in the behavior handbook.

  Continue to check the monthly behavior calendar and the homework sheets for updates on what’s going on in our classroom and in the school.

•                                     Welcome To First Grade
• I hope you had a great summer and are ready to start a brand new year!
• First Grade is a lot of fun just like kindergarten but we learn so many new things.
• I am looking forward to meeting all of my new students at Sneak-A-Peek on Friday, August 8th.
• Last Names A-K your time will be from 9:00 - 9:30
• Last Names L-Z your time will be from 9:30 - 10:00
• If you have your school supplies bring them with you.

• Look for the big frogs on the wall as you find your new room - 207.

• Parents you may want to plan ahead for our Open House on Tuesday, August 19th starting at 6:30. This is a VERY important meeting so I hope a parent for each child will be able to attend. This is not a good meeting for children so you may want to try to arrange childcare if you feel it would work out best for your family. Of course we always welcome both parents!

While it is hot outside the building is often chilly so you may want to put a light jacket in your child's bookbag. We will have PE every Monday and Wednesday, and many Friday's so your child will need to wear appropriate shoes. Flip Flops should not be worn on any days. The school dress code asks that thin    strapped shirts or dresses have a cover over them.

• Please send a healthy snack each day. This should not include a drink. We do have a water fountain in the room.
• Our lunch time is from 12:35 -1:05.

• We will have a student teacher with us until mid November. Mrs. McLeod is quite fun and you are going to love her!