First Grade Fun in Room 106

Lily Wressell, a fourth grader in Mrs. Huizenga’s class, is asking her fellow Georgetown students and families to join her in supporting the Pediatric Oncology Resource Team, P.O.R.T., that operates with Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital. 

P.O.R.T. provides much needed resources and hands-on support for families with a child diagnosed with cancer or life-threatening blood disorders. 

Lily will be collecting items to put into theme baskets for the P.O.R.T. Winter Night Out fundraiser in February. 

In particular she is requesting items related to kids arts and crafts such as; paints, crayons, paper, stencils, stickers, etc. 

She is also looking for gift wrap items; paper, bags, bows, ribbon, cards, etc. 

If you are interested in donating items there will be a box located in the lobby until Monday, Feb 6 that you may put them in. 

Thank you for helping Lily reach her goal of providing two baskets to help P.O.R.T.

Our Valentine’s Party will take place Tuesday, February 14, from 2:45-3:25ish.

All parents are invited to join us for the party! 

Tomorrow, I will be sending out an e-mail to those parents who signed up to help at the party (way back in August).  This time around the first grade teachers came up with a craft and game idea.  We would love your help to gather donations, run each station and plan/prepare the snack.  Please send me an e-mail if you would like to be added to this list of volunteers!

We will also have a classroom valentine exchange before the Valentine’s Party.  Below, I’ve included our class list for your reference as your child has fun creating, writing, and/or filling-out their valentines.  Plan to send your child’s valentines into school in a bag labeled with his or her name as soon as they are ready.  Please send in enough valentines for everyone in our class – 28 students.

I would love to have all the valentines to school by Monday, February 13.  Our valentine exchange will take place before our party, so please don’t wait until the party to bring them in.

Mrs. Stadt :)

Room 106 is in need of dry erase markers. Apparently we eat our way through these very quickly with all the math work we do on our white boards each day. If you are willing, we would appreciate some donations of dry erase white board markers to the classroom stash. Thanks so much!

Mrs. Stadt :)

Your student may have received something in the mail last week… and if it hasn’t gotten there yet– it’s coming soon!  We will continue working on practicing and learning our own addresses and would love extra practice at home, too!

This week we continued the man made vs. nature made learning.  We talked about different kinds of landforms:  river, lake, ocean, plain, mountain, and forest.  We know that each of these things are nature made.

We read the book, The Little House and talked about how the land around us can change when we modify it.  The students were shocked to see the transformation from a little house in the country to an entire city being built up around it.  We introduced the word adapt to the students– getting used to something new.

This week, we will learn about regions of similar areas on a map and use the words “left” and “right” to help us locate different places.

Mrs. Stadt :)

We have a lot of birthdays and half-birthdays coming up this week and next week.   Bring on the celebrations!!! :)

January  26 – Kailey’s Birthday

January 27 – Conner’s 1/2 Birthday

Stay tuned this week for more information about our upcoming Valentine‘s Day party!!

Also, be sure to check out our sweet Bethany on the Georgetown blog.  Her family went sledding at Charlie’s Dump this weekend.  If your family goes sledding, send Mrs. Reagan your photos and your child will be posted on the blog too!!!

Finally, if you have not completed the survey about my upcoming Maternity Leave, please do!!!  Thank you so much!!!  We really appreciate your feedback about this upcoming transition.

Mrs. Stadt :)

In Readers’ Workshop this week, the students continued to practice making connections to stories we read. While reading the book Ira Sleeps Over, we jotted down their different connections.  Later, we looked over the connections to see if they helped us to understand the book better.  We’ve learned that the best connections are the ones that connect to the heart of the story/page or the ones that help us understand what a character is feeling in a story.  If we’ve had a similar experience, we know just how the character feels. Sometimes these connections can even help us predict what might come next in a story.  The students have really enjoyed sharing their connections with the rest of the class.

We also spent time reviewing the different sounds that vowels can make.  In our spelling words, we have noticed a pattern that sometimes S says /s/ and other times S says /z/.  We discussed how there are consonants that make more than one sound (just like our vowels).  We introduced the kids to a new FLIPPY THE DOLPHIN tool that helps them to remember the different sounds that our vowels and the letters c, s, y, & g can make.

Mrs. Stadt :)

Our first graders worked hard this week to prepare for our Unit 3 assessment.  We spent our math switch time on Monday and part of Tuesday solving missing total, missing partner and subtraction stories using the great strategies that we’ve learned during this unit.  We also practiced with our red, yellow and orange quilt cards to prepare our brains to solve all different types of equations.

The kids were definitely ready for the assessment and performed very well.  Woohoo!!!

Still, they will be asked throughout the rest of this year to solve stories, and we don’t want your child to lose any of the great strategies that they’ve gained from our learning.

To support your child at home, please encourage him or her to always PROVE THEIR ANSWER when solving a story.  For a missing total story, your child can write an addition equation and count on.  For a subtraction story, your child can write a subtraction equation and use a circle drawing or our counting up strategy to find the answer.  For a missing partner story, we have encouraged our students to make a math mountain (with the total on top) to find the answer.

We appreciate all the time that you take to encourage your child on their math homework.  Practice makes permanent and we don’t want our first graders to lose any of these wonderful strategies!!!

Next week, we will dive into our new learning in Unit 4 which focuses on teen numbers, place value and strategies for solving equations with larger numbers.  On Friday, every first grader was given a pre-test to evaluate their skills and prior knowledge to determine the best fit math group and math teacher for this new unit.

We look forward to helping your child grow even more as a mathematician!

Mrs. Stadt :)

We started this week by allowing the students to start a brand new story, while using all the new techniques that we have learned that good writers use to make their stories better: reread their stories, visualize the story in your brain, add details to the words, add details to the pictures, add dialogue, take away details that don’t make your story better, and make your lead sentence exciting.  These stories are just incredibly filled with details and so much fun to read!  Such great progress from the first day of school!

We then worked hard to revise our stories by adding details to SHOW, NOT TELL.  This means that instead of just telling us they were happy, they are thinking about what they looked like and adding those details to show their readers, not tell them.

Here’s an example…

Tell:  I was sad.

Show:  I had tears rolling down my cheeks.

We ended the week by focusing on making our endings special by tying them into the big idea or heart of our stories.  We also tried to make our endings warm and fuzzy like real authors do!!!  If you have the following books at home – check out their warm and fuzzy endings!!

Mrs. Stadt :)

Just a couple of pictures from our Jet’s Pizza Party and Justin and Amelia’s visit.

Room 106 sure does love pizza.  We are hoping for a third pizza party later this year!!!! :)

Thank you again for supporting our school.

Mrs. Stadt :)

In less than one month Baby Stadt is set to make his or her debut!

Miss Field and I have been working hard at school to prepare for the transition that will take place once the baby is born.  We would love to hear from you about any concerns or questions that you may have about my upcoming leave.  I am very excited about Miss Field taking over for me – I couldn’t think of a better person for the job! :)   But, I want to make sure that you and your child feel comfortable about the change too!

Please take some time to fill out the following survey to help Heather and I make this transition as smooth as possible for your child!

 Mrs. Stadt’s Maternity Leave Survey

Thank you!

Mrs. Stadt :)