Our Valentine's Party has been changed to Friday, February 10th at 1:30! Be sure to check the January 20th Newsletter to see if you signed up as a volunteer for this party! Call or email me with any questions! And a great big thank you to Mrs. Byers for volunteering to plan the activities for that afternoon!

         

Friday, January 27th was our 100th day of school! We learned about the 100s block in math in addition to our ones cubes and tens sticks. Then we wrote about what we would do if we had $100! We also created 100 year old portraits of ourselves using torn paper. I sure hope I'm this cute at 100!

We also created hats using 100 stickers and counting by 10s. At the end of the day we used a sorting mat to pick 10 pieces of 10 different snacks (thank you very much for sending these in last minute!) to have a 100 piece snack.

Last week we read "Snow Globe Family" and created our own snow globes and wrote about what it would be like to live inside a snow globe! These turned out A.DOR.A.BLE!

Cumulative Spelling: me  tree  see  be  keep  these  read  eat  street  feet  mean  please  so  go  home  hole  no  rope  joke  poke  stove  bone  chose  wrote  time  like kite  bike  white  drive  stripe  mice  came  make  brave  late  gave  shape  waves  chases  ship  shop  which  when  whip  fish  shell  graph  chin  chip  much  chop  rich  chick  match  pitch   that  then  this  them  with  bath  tenth  thick  us  sun  but fun  bus  run  jump  must  yes  let  red  ten  bed  get  sled  step  on  got  fox  hop  pop  not  block  clock  in  will  did  sit  six  big  trip  grin  an  bad  can  cat  had  ran  add  pass  up  bug  hug  nut  mud  tub  yet  web  wet  leg  pen  hen  log  hot  dot  lot  top  ox  if  is  him  fit  pin  rip  am  man  at  dad  sat  mat

Cumulative HFW: about  could  sure  by  don't  there  car  maybe  around  because  before  bring  carry  light  show  think  bird  both eyes  fly  long  or  those  walk four  five  into  over  starts  three  two  watch  down  fall  goes  green  grow  new  open  yellow  been  never  brown  off  know  out  own  very  blue  little  water  cold  live  far  their  water  where  eat  give  one  put  small take   after  draw  pictures  read  was  write  her  now  our  she  today  would  animal  how  make  of  some  why  who  do  find  funny  sing  no  they  for  what  have  he  look  too  and  be  help  play  with  you

We celebrated Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Birthday by reading "Happy Birthday, Martin Luther King, Jr.", creating a directed art project and writing about his special life.  Here are the results of my creative and hard-working class!

Here are some of our Christmas around the World projects on display in our classroom.

These are the gift bags we made for the ornaments pictured below.Our "hand"made gifts!

These are our "hand"made gifts we created! They turned out so cute!

We created full size snowmen during our Winter PJ Party! What fun! The mother's were great sports as the kids wrapped them in TP!

Ok, so the snowmen ended up looking like they had endured a vicious winter storm but it was a ton of fun anyway!!!! Thank you to all the parent volunteers who sent in snacks and/or volunteered their time and energy to our party!

I would also like to thank everyone who sent in donations for the Women and Children's Center. We also donated additional books from our own classroom libraries. Your generosity and compassion are truly appreciated!

 

Please check out the thinkcentral.com website for extra practice with the weekly reading lessons. Contact me if you need your password. We will be on lesson 14 when we return from Winter Break. All the paper books I have been sending home nightly for review/practice are located on this site for your child's practice (please return paper books Mon. through Thursday as we read them to our book buddies on Friday. You may keep them when they are all sent home on Friday). There is audio on the website, if your child is struggling with decoding he can click the audio icon for assistance. Thanks for monitoring your child's reading on our new reading logs! It really appears to be encouraging all of our students to read each night!!! I'll try to fill my treasure box this weekend with new incentives!

 

Rocket Math has blasted off in the first grade classrooms! Be sure to practice math fact fluency with your child a couple of times a week! Flashcards are easy to make and an easy way to practice fluency. Students progress from level A (1+1, 1+2) to level Z (9+9, 12+13) when they reach their personal accuracy goal during 1 minute timings! We have personal rockets that get colored in to show our level as well as, individually designed rockets on our classroom doorway displaying our progress!

I feel like I just hung these turkey critters and I love how they brighten the room with their bold fall colors. Is it really time for winter decorations already???? Guess these handsome fellas will be coming home soon!

Check out the 50th day pictures link under Classroom Pictures/Activities

 

Check out the link Fall Fun for pictures of pumpkin carving and Fall Parade!

 

Our classroom has received a grant through the Tri-City Education Foundation! This year I wrote for chapter books on audio as well as organizational supplies for our library. I am trying to obtain paper copies to accompany the audio text. If you have used copies of any of the following series we would love to add them to our listening library: Geronimo Stilton, A-Z Mysteries, Amelia Bedelia, Junie B. Jones and Magic Tree House. These books are our on Scholastic.com classroom wish list.

 

We have a grant published onlline at DonorChoose.org/Mrs.Bredehoft be sure to spread the word to any Horace Mann employee friends or relatives as they are sponsors of this organization! Our class would love to have more art supplies in our room for creating new masterpieces!

 

We will be sending student Reading Books home on Wednesdays in order to review the focus story of the week. In addition to phonics, weekly reading strategy and the High Frequency Words, students are tested on comprehension of this story. Please take some time to read through and discuss the story with your child each Wednesday. If paper books come home please have your child read these himself a couple times for fluency practice and return the next day (Fridays you may keep all the books that come home). These paper books are great reading confidence builders, be sure to compliment your child on his fabulous first grade reading skills! If your child does happen to struggle with any of these books, let me know and I can send an extra set of books to keep at home for practice if you would like. I randomly assess children on these paper books as they cover the skills we learn in class and practice daily.

 

 

A note on the math worksheets...You may have noticed that one side of your child's math worksheet is not completed. The "Practice" page is done independently for a grade (after guided workbook practice) and sometimes on the reverse side of that worksheet will be an "Enrichment" page. The enrichment side is made available for those students who answer every question correct on the practice side. If they answer all the enrichment questions correctly as well they receive a "4" for that paper as opposed to 3. Students are not required to do this side and I do not check it UNLESS they have scored perfectly on the first side. Feel free to go over the enrichment portion at home with your child but keep in mind they will likely need your guidance! Occasionally we will do enrichment exercises together if time is available and the lesson does not appear too difficult (as lesson 4.2 Math), in this case there will be no enrichment grade.

 

 

This year our school is promoting PAW PRIDE!

At Tri-City Elementary we expect:

 

Our school-wide expectations are based on Respect: Respect Ourselves, Respect Others and Respect Property. We will teach these expectations to students and reward them frequently with positive comments, paw stickers and/or stamps for their great behavior. Students will be recognized through both individual and team level incentives for demonstrating our school expectations.

 

 

In addition, we will be introducing Character Education in the classrooms. Teachers will be provided with resources to teach a specific character trait for each month. The monthly character education trait will be displayed on a bulletin board outside of the office beginning in September. A Good Citizenship Activity will be held monthly for those students who have displayed positive behaviors successfully 85% of days. We are tentatively scheduling this activity for the 1st Friday of every month. Students needing interventions may receive small group instruction at this time.

 

 

Consequences are similar to our Stoplight Behavior System from last year:

 

1. Verbal Warning (stay on green)

 

2. Loss of 10 minutes of recess (move to yellow), yellow form may be sent home

 

3. Loss of entire recess (move to red), red form may be sent home

 

4. Paw clip comes down and communication form sent home

 

5. Office referral (this may include lunch or after school detention, in-school suspension, out of school suspension, or expulsion.)

 

 

In addition, in our classroom, I will be adding purple (great choice!) and orange (outstanding!) colors to our behavior monitoring chart to accentuate and encourage positive choices in the classroom! Each time a student reaches "Outstanding" they will be rewarded with a color paw sticker or jewel on their chart clip and an orange "Hooray" note will be sent home! Several students are reaching purple but there have been only a handful of orange OUTSTANDING achievements so please be sure to congratulate your child if he/she comes home with that special orange "Hooray" slip! All clips start at green each day and may move up and down the chart as behaviors indicate.

 

We are also still involved in Bucket-Filling. This year the students are writing notes to each other to fill buckets! We check our "buckets" each Friday! Have you filled a Bucket Today???