Sign in

Parents, please don't forget to sign in at the front office if you are attending our Reader's Theatre this afternoon at 2:15.  For the safety of our children, all visitors MUST sign in at the front office and get a badge!!!

One more thing for today...

I am encouraging all the children to bring their own hats/gloves/scarves for our Reader's Theatre presentations on Wednesday and Thursday!!

Polar Express Day TOMORRROW!!

I wanted to remind you all that tomorrow is Polar Express day!  You children are welcome to bring pillows and blankets to get nice and comfy for our movie!!  Don't forget their PJ's too:)

Freebie

We certainly have a lot going on this week with Polar Express Day, Grinch Day and our presentations of 'Snowmen at Night'.  Due to all of our fun craziness...we are not going to have a spelling test this week!! 

Also, I just wanted to let you all know that I will not be here this Friday...so the children will have a substitute teacher that day.  I will be starting my LONG drive back to my hometown in Pennsylvania for the Holidays.  I hope to see you all on Thursday for our Reader's Theatre!! 

Polar Express

Hello all!  Don't forget that our Polar Express day is this Wednesday!!  We are doing several activities based on the book throughout the day.  Later on in the day, we will be watching the movie and drinking hot chocolate.  And yes...they may wear their pj's!  (please have regular shoes, no slippers)

I'm also asking for some donations of hot chocolate packets and insulated cups!! 

Thanks

What education is all about...

"Tell me and I'll forget.  Show me and I may not remember.  Involve me and I'll understand"

*Author Unknown

Reader’s Theatre

Please join us next Thursday December 20^th at 2:15pm for 1A’s presentation of

‘Snowmen at Night’

All of our friends in Ms. Baum’s First Grade classroom have been working daily on our story of ‘Snowmen at Night’.  We are ready to present our hard work to all of our families!  We have a 15 minute presentation where we will be reading our story as well as acting out the characters. 

All families are welcome!!  For those of you that cannot attend, I will post a video of our presentation on my blog.

Please sign in at the front office and walk back to our classroom in the portables!  We will start performing at 2:15 sharp so please be on time…we don’t want you to miss a minute of this!

Hope to see you all there!!

Ms. Baum

Morning Drop-off

Just a friendly reminder parents...for the safety of our children...if you are running a bit late in the morning please do not drop your children off in the back if there are NO teachers standing out there.  Most of the time, our classroom doors are closed and locked so we may not know that your little one is standing outside our door (we also do not always hear the knocks).  If the teachers have already gone inside, please drive back around to the front and sign them in at the front office.  One of our secretaries will happily walk them back to our classroom.  Thanks so much for your support!

Spelling Bee

Congratulations to all our friends who made it to the top 5 for our classroom Spelling Bee!!  We have just completed our Spelling Bee with Mrs. Coleman's classroom and have our top 5 winners from both classrooms.  THE WINNERS ARE....Teena, Akhilesh, Swayam, Sharath, and Ehan(1B).  I'm so proud of all of them!  They will be moving on to compete with all the other 1st Graders from the other Harmony Schools!  Way to go!!

Chaper/Series Books

Hello all!

 

It was so wonderful meeting with you during Parent/Teacher conferences.  One subject that was brought up several times was the interest in chapter books for your children.  Many of your children are now at the reading level where they are onto chapter books.   I spoke with our Librarian, Ms. Birman, to see what chapter books they would be able to read as well as what is appropriate for them.  The following is the list that she provided....Hope this helps!!

 

Junie B. Jones - popular for girls and boys

Magic Tree House - great adventure series

Goosebumps - only if the readers are okay with slight violence and scary/mystery themes (this series might be inappropriate for some)

Ready Freddy series - if girls like Junie B. Jones, then girls and boys will like Ready Freddy

Horrible Harry series - similar to Junie B. Jones

Judy Moody - for slightly advanced readers at a 3rd grade level

My Weird School Daze - humor and school genre

Wayside School - humor and school genre

Rainbow Magic - fantasy/adventure - only for advanced readers. The reading range varies from third to fourth grade level

Working in our Literacy Stations...

Star Student of the Week

RYAN!

Picture re-take is this coming Monday October 22nd!

'Max's Words'

I will try to make a long story short about a new project that we are getting ready for in our classroom.  Our Reading Specialist, Ms. Blangger, let us borrow one of her books titled 'Max's Words'.  We absolutely loved it!  The main character in the story, Max, started cutting words out of magazines, newspapers, etc.  He then had the brilliant idea of putting these words together to make a story.  As a class, we decided to try and do the same thing as Max.  We are going to add old newspapers and magazines to one of our Literacy Stations "Working with Words".  After a couple weeks (when we have plenty of cut-out words) we are going to start creating our own book!!  We are asking for any donations of old reading materials that we can cut up! (so please do not send anything with your child that you want back in one piece:)) Thanks parents!!

Story Time

One of our Literacy Stations is "Story Time".  In this small group activity, the students choose a picture card and create their own story and illustrations related to the card.  This is a great example of how these 5 friends worked together to create their story.  They were so proud of their work (and I was so proud of them)!

Science

Our focus in Science is how Scientists use "Tools".  I showed the class a picture of an Astronaut using a tool.  They dictated to me what they thought the Astronaut was using and why.  I wrote down what they said...word for word.

Behavior Chart

We have 8 friends that have already received a RED clip!  Remember...every time a student lands on purple "AMAZING" for the day, they get a star sticker on their clip.  If they get 5 star stickers on their clip, they then move to a red clip!  Some friends are already working their way to an orange clip!  Awesome job!

STAR STUDENT OF THE WEEK...JOSHUA!

Open "Mic" Friday

We have started yet another fun activity in our classroom called Open "Mic" Friday.  Throughout the week, each student is encouraged to choose their absolute best writing piece and put it in our Open "Mic" Friday folder.  Once they add their writing piece, they highlight their name on the checklist so that I know they added a sample of their writing.  Every Friday, I will choose a certain number of students at random to read their stories over the microphone in front of our class.  This activity will begin to build their self confidence, writing skills, and reading fluency!! These writing samples will then be added to their Writer's Portfolio.  During Parent/Teacher conferences I will show you their work so you can all see your child's improvement in their writing. 

Writing Assessment results are getting sent home today!  They are already improving their writing skills.  We are continuing to practice our writing strategies everyday!!  These include Capitalization, Punctuation, Spelling, Spacing, etc.

Learning Subtraction

It was the students' turn up on the document camera...they came up one at a time to create their own subtraction sentence.  Their work was displayed on the board for all of us to see!  We are SO ready for our test on Friday:)  Great work friends!

STAR STUDENT OF THE WEEK

                                                                           Valerie

"Rewards"

We have a fun new "reward" system that we are starting!  At the beginning of the year, each group (there are 5 of them) voted on their own group names.  We now have Blue Group, Rangers, Winners, Cool Group, and Texas Rangers.  At the end of every day, the group with the most points (for great teamwork) gets a star by their group name.  Every Friday, we count which group has the most stars.  The winning group will now chose a Coupon.  As a class, we created 10 different coupons to choose from.  I encouraged all students to think of something fun that they would like to be able to do in the classroom that they normally wouldn't get to do!  Here are our Reward Coupons....* Take your shoes off during Silent Reading and sit wherever you want!  * 5 names in the basket!  *Bring an object from home and show it to the class!  *Bring a book from home and read it to the class!  *Sit in the front row for morning meeting!  *Start on BLUE everyday next week!  *Choose whichever Literacy Station you want to work at all next week!  *Write/Draw about your weekend and share it to the class!  *Display all of your writing/drawings for the week on our classroom bulletin board!

Star Student

We have had several students become "Star Student".  The way a student gets to be Star Student is when they go above and beyond throughout the course of the entire week!  We have 2 baskets labeled "I saw you doing something good" and "I saw  you stretching your brain".  I add a name to one of the baskets everytime I see this happening.  Every Friday afternoon we have a very SUSPENSEFUL tally of everyone's names.  The friend with the most names gets to be Star Student for the following week!  Some of their responsibilities include: line leader, morning meeting helper, sharpen pencils, pass out papers, reporter, and many many more!! 

Happy 3 Day Weekend everyone!!  Don't forget that school is closed on Monday October 1st for Fair Day!  Hope you can all make it to a fun day at the fair!!

Science

 

At last...our documentation of some of our work samples of our Science Investigations! Our tri-fold board is filled with student work, including their writing and illustrations.  Pretty amazing for 1st Graders!

Field Trip

We are going the pumpkin patch!!  Our field trip is on October 24th to Owen Spring Creek Farm.  Thank you to those parents who already filled out the paperwork and send the money in with your child.  2 THINGS:  We cannot accept checks...EXACT CASH ONLY!!  My apologies to those of you who filled out checks and sent them in today.  The office will not accept any checks.  Also, please make sure all the paperwork is filled out entirely (including the Emergency Medical Release Form on the back of the last paper)

Science Lessons

Hi all!  Wanted to give a quick update on how hard we are working in Science.  We are working on Investigating and Reasoning.  This can be quite a challenging concept for 1st Graders and they are doing amazing!  Our last investigation was "Who brought more lunches today, Boys or Girls?"  We were all surpised at how many steps we had to go through to reach our answer.  We documented all of our data through writing and drawing in our science journals and on paper.  We have been learning new Science terms such as: investigate, reason, predict, observe, data, etc.   We created a tri-fold board with all of our work samples...I will post a picture for you all to see!!  I encouraged them all to write about what they wanted to investigate next either in the classroom, in the big school building, or outside.  We took a vote on our next investigation.  Ryan's choice won!  He wanted to know which one of our friends can kick the ball the farthest.  I will keep you updated with our further investigations!

Book Fair

Book Fair is next week!!  We are signed up for next Wednesday 9/19 and Friday 9/21.  Students will have a chance to go on Wednesday and create their "wish list" and then bring their money (cash only) on Friday!!

As many of you may know, I was not in school yesterday.  I received a WONDERFUL report from all the substitute teachers that helped out yesterday.  What a great class we have!  We are truly off to a wonderful start of our new school year.  We are focused on teamwork in our classroom and it showed yesterday:)  I'm so proud of all of my students!

Assessments

We have started our beginning of the year assessments!  These include: Letter Recognition of Upper and Lowercase letters, Letter Sounds, Writing for Upper and Lowercase letters, and Sight Word recognition (100 words or more).  These results will be sent home by the end of next week:)  Thanks everyone!!

Remember that school is closed on Monday!  Happy 3 day weekend everyone!!

Hi Parents!
Some of you have asked questions about our spelling words on SpellingCity.com  Try going onto the website SpellingCity.com: click on Students, then Find A List. Type in: Colemanbaum and click on username.  Hope this help all of you! 

Tomorrow will be our first Spelling Test!!  Our Spelling homework is also due tomorrow!!

Picture Day is this FRIDAY!!  I have only received a few picture envelopes so far.  Please remember that your children must wear their school uniforms for their pictures.  These will be used for their yearbook pictures...Thanks!

Hello Parents,

I'm so glad a lot of my students have their water bottles this week.  I strongly believe that they should remain hydrated throughout the day.  For the safety of our students, we are not able to send the children inside the school individually to get water breaks.  The only group time for water break for our class is right after recess.  Just a reminder about their water bottles, please make sure that they can open/close them easily.  We have had a few spills (which is to be expected), but I want to make sure that they they can open/close them by themselves easily and that they have a good lid so in case it falls the water doesn't spill out.  Thanks so much!!

We have started our first full week of first grade!  We had some new friends start today.  We all did our best to work together and make everyone feel safe and welcome in their new classroom.  Last week was really spent getting to know each other and our classroom rules and routines.  This week we are continuing to go over our rules but we have also started our actual daily routine.  We began implementing ELA, Science, and Math.  We started adding to our word wall and choral reading all together.  We have our first set of Spelling words which we already started practicing.  Our spelling tests will always be on Fridays.  In Math, we are working on grouping numbers.  We began talking about safe practices during Science.  Happy Monday everyone!  I'm looking forward to a great week!

First Day!!

We had a really great first day!  There were a lot of nervous bellies at first...but everyone did such a great job!  I am so proud of all of my new students.  We did many activities that involved what they did over the summer and our new classroom rules and routines.  We had our first Gymnastics class and our first Music class.  A BIG thank you to all the parents for all your patience and support as we implement our new pick-up/drop off route.  Thanks again everyone!!

Teaching Philosophy: "Process over Product"

Welcome to First Grade!!

We are about to start the beginning of another exciting school year!  I can't wait to meet all of you and all of your first graders!  I know your children may be feeling a bit uneasy and anxious about their first few days in first grade but I will do my best to make sure all of my students feel very welcomed!!  This is my second year teaching first grade here at Harmony and I'm looking forward to another fun and exciting school year.  Please continue checking my blog on a continuous basis.  We will be implementing MANY MANY lessons and activities that just won't be able to be taken home with them.  This will be a fabulous way to keep you all posted with our "hands-on" activities happening everyday in our classroom.  I will always be adding pictures, descriptions, and student words.  This will also allow you to then talk with your child at home about specific things like "I saw a picture on Ms. Baum's blog that you are learning about the Moon...what did you learn about the moon so far?"  I truly believe in the importance of family and school connection so this will be one more way for you all to know how much your child is learning in First Grade!