Compass Odyssey

Since the computer lab has opened we've been able to get on the computers as a class this last month. We mostly log on an educational site called Compass Odyssey. This website is great because after students finish a test, it creates a Learning Path full of games to help them work on the items they missed on the test. I will be sending home your child's personal login tomorrow along with the website link. It would be great if your child could log at home over the holidays! They should almost be finished with their test so the games will be under Reading Assignments -- Learning Path.

Please call me if you have any further questions about Compass Odyssey! https://odyssey.duvalschools.org/

Classroom Updates

We've been so busy having fun and learning in Room 16 :)

Here are a few pictures to show what we have been up to this last month!

Double Birthday Celebration!

Field Trip to the Zoo!

 

After signing a reading contract, promising to do our best reading, we had a reading celebration! We had  graham crackers, frosting, topped with a gummy worm! Yum!

This week is Red Ribbon Week! We have been pledging to be Drug and Alcohol Free with a variety of activities! Pictures from that will be coming soon!

Another week gone!

We have been having so much fun it's hard to believe two weeks have gone by already! Today we had our monthly (hopefully) flag raising! Please enjoy some pictures from this fun event!

such good listeners :)

Our Principal Mrs. Gray

I hope you all enjoy the nice long weekend with NO HOMEWORK!! (unless they missed some sight words, then please study the missed words!)

Open House is next weekend, I hope to see you all there!

K. Bowes

Name Graphs

Ahhh resource time (: That gives me time to give you an update about our day!

Today in skills block we talked about noticing letters in our names. As a class, we sorted everyones name by the first letter, then by the second letter, then by the upstairs letters and downstairs letters! (they came up with these ways themselves!) Then they got to work with partners to sort the names how they wanted to and put them into a graph like we did together.

Your children are SO creative! Take a look at all the different ways they thought of to sort!

"We sorted by first letter, then arranged them in ABC order"

"We sorted by the number of letters in our names"

"We sorted by boys... and girls"

"We sorted by names with N and names without N"

" We sorted by the second letters in our names"

"We sorted by boys and girls"

"We put our names in ABC order"

" We sorted by the first letter"

"I sorted mine by the vowels in the names!"

Looking good first graders! I am so proud of you (: Thank you for reading and watching us bloom this year in first grade!

Sunny D Book Spree

Sunny D is offering a great chance to get books for our classroom! Just save the UPC lables from the eligible products, send them into school and I will enter the codes. Once we get 20 codes, we can get 20 books!!!

Please see this site for full details!
http://www.sunnyd.com/bookspree/Eligible-Products-UPCs.aspx

Thanks :)

First pictures of the year!

I finally have a camera for school and I the means to post the pictures! Here are a few pictures from Math Investigations this week. We got to explore the different math tools we'll be using often in first grade!

Geoblocks

Cubes

Pattern Blocks

  

Check back for more pictures! I will try to upload them as often as possible so you can see whats going on in our classroom :)

Did you notice?

Today I added your child's student number to the inside of their homework folder. This number is important when sending in lunch money! Writing this number on the lunch money envelope helps make sure the money makes it to the right place! :)

Sight words are in the back of your child's homework folder, I hope you have been studying them all week! I will be testing students on Friday. Remember.. students do not need to spell these words, they just need to be able to read them to me!

Feels so good to be back! :)

WOWWIE WOW! What a day! We we certainly busy today! I enjoyed starting to get to know my new students and I can tell it's going to be a good one!

Forgot to mention snack to parents, so we didn't get to snack today.. but we're covered for tomorrow! Good snack ideas would be: goldfish, pretzles, crackers, fruit snacks...

Thank you everyone for the supplies! :) We have enough tissues to last protect a first grade army! We could still use some disinfection wipes (clorox, lysol...) to keep our classroom clean and germ free!!

Homework and Book in the Bag won't start until next week but start studying sight words. The list is in the back of the homework folder. Please get in the routine of checking your child's homework folder for important information and also sign the behavior grade on the calendar. If your chlid writes me a sentence or two about their first days of school they will earn a free trip to the treasure box!

Thank you again for a great first day, I am so blessed to work with your children :)

K. Bowes

Welcome Back!

I am so excited to start off this new school year! It has been a great summer but I am get back in school and meet all my new students. I look forward to meeting everyone at Orientation August 19 @ 1:45 and Open House September 8th @6:30! Please check back for up up to date classroom information and pictures!

A million thanks!!

Wow. I don't think words can express how truely appreciated I feel after a week of "Teacher Appreciation". Thank you for all the thoughtful gifts and gestures. It was a great week!

I want to wish all the mothers a wonderful Mothers Day on Sunday. I hope you get the time to relax and enjoy the day with your wonderful children!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

It was another great holiday celebrated in our classroom! I loved seeing all the green and shamrocks today. What I love most about St. Patty's day is that it means spring is on it's way! :)

This week we started doing subtraction problems in math. I was very pleased with how easily students were able to catch on to this new skill.Next week we will talk about the relationship between addition and subtraction and learn about fact families.

We also started during research and taking notes for our individual reports in writing. Ask your child a fact they learned today about their selected animal :)

Have a great weekend :)

Sight Words

Good evening,

This week will be our next sight word test. The following sight words will be on this list!

kind, hand, place, again, change
play, spell, present, about, year
different, point, page, letter, mother
answer, found, study, still, work
should, another, high, ask, wear
write, food, between, own, off

I am pleased to say that your children consistently do well on their sight word tests! Please keep up the hard work. These words are found in higher level texts and will increase reading fluency! :)

This week is our zoo field trip! I need at least one more chaperon to make the group sizes managable. The smaller the groups - the better!! 

We will be making a craft for our trip on Wednesday. If you are able to lend a hand for about an hour it would be a huge help! :) Let me know a time you are available and I can work around it!

Sadly I am having trouble posting while at school, I hope is only a temporary problem!

Thanks for reading,
K. Bowes

Happy Birthday Theodore Seuss Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss!

I'll never forget how much joy your books brought me as a young reader, I hope that I am passing this joy on to my students!! My favorite Dr. Seuss book is The Lorax!

To celebrate his birthday, and Read Across America, we will be reading several Dr. Seuss books and completing activities related to Mr. Geisel's work!

Hopefully your child will come home and tell you about our day :)

K. Bowes

Welcome to what I hope will be a wonderfully useful tool to connect what is happening in our class,  to you at home! I wish to use this as a primary source of information about new and great things happening in our class.

And now... my first topic for --

Things I Love:

I LOVE these books and I am slowly building my classroom library with lots of STEP 2 and STEP 3 books. I love that they are based off characters and things our children love, this makes them more engaging and fun! They even have non fiction books. I highly recommend these books!

Please click on the link below to find a very useful guide to the Step into Reading series. These books are designed to be interesting for your young reader, and usually cost less than 5 dollars a book! First graders can read level 2 and 3 books (with support)!
Step into Reading: Levels
^^ Link


Thank you for stopping by, Check back daily to stay connected!

K. Bowes