I am very excited that I will be working with your child this year! In my class I will be focusing on building the foundational skills students need to succeed. We will be concentrating on learning phonics and word attack strategies, which will help your child become a more fluent reader. We will also be aiming to master math facts, which will help your student in the various forms of arithmetic.
Your student will be tracking his/her progress on our classroom “Go for the Gold” wall. Every time your child beats five personal records on the weekly sight word and math fact assessments, he/she will move up one level. All students are working to reach the “gold” level by the end of the year!
Your student will be bringing home a list of sight words and math facts to study. The students will also be practicing every day in class. On Friday, they will be tested to see how many words/facts they can read in one minute. Each week your child will be attempting to beat his/her record from the previous week.
The following quote represent my classroom philosophy:
“Fair isn’t everybody getting the same thing….. Fair is everybody getting what they need in order to be successful.”
My class room rules are as follows: 1. Eyes are watching. 2. Ears are listening. 3. Mouths are quiet. 4. Hands are to myself. 5. Hearts are caring.
Students have homework everyday in room B7.
In my classroom, I try to reiterate the importance of reading. So this year I found a wonderful incentive to get kids reading at home too with the BOOK IT!® Program by Pizza Hut®. They also agree that the only way to get better at reading is to do it. The Pizza Hut® BOOK IT!® Program motivates children to read more by rewarding them for their reading accomplishments. It can be used to enhance programs that teach children how to read, support comprehension and intervention programs, and encourage parents to spend more time reading with their children at home. Every month, each child in my class will receive a new calendar to color in the days that they read for 20 minutes at home. At the end of the month, students need to return their calendar to me and in return I give them a certificate that they can take to any Pizza Hut®. In return, Pizza Hut® will give the student a free personal pan pizza with one topping.
For math, I remind the students how important it is to master their addition and subtraction facts. In addition, to daily worksheets that coincide with the lesson I taught for the day, I expect them to practice their addition and subtraction facts.
