Scholastic Book Orders

Each month your child will be bringing home Scholastic Book Club flyers. If you choose to order you may do so online or you can fill in the form on the back of the flyer and send in a check. When you visit the Scholastic website you will have the opportunity to search a larger variety of flyers. You may order from other grade levels as well. To place your order online click here.  If you are ordering this month, please have your order in no later than October 19th. Please let me know if you have any questions. Please also let me know if your order is a gift and I will contact you to pick it up at school. 

Our Special Schedule

Our school works on a day 1-5 schedule instead of a Monday-Friday schedule. Below you will find our specials schedule. You will also find our special schedule on our weekly newsletter.

Day 1 Music 2:00-2:30
Day 2 Music 1:30-2:00
Day 3 P.E. 1:30-2:15
Day 4 Art 11:30-12:15
Day 5 P.E. 11:00-11:45
           Library 2:15-3:00

What a Great Start!

We have had a wonderful start to the new school year. Our class is settling in to the routines and procedures of first grade. We are working on getting to know each other and building a family of learners. I can't wait to spend the year having fun and learning with each child.

Thank you to each parent that was able to attend our open house this past week. If you were not able to attend, please check your child's folder for the handouts that were handed out.

A view from our door. You can see many of our flexible seating option in our classroom. These include cushions, low table, scoop chairs, wobble seats, stools, carpet spots, yoga balls, leaning tables, floor spots, and standing spots.

Our carpet spot. This is where all of the magic happens in our classroom. We gather here several times throughout the day. This is where most of our instruction takes place.

Kindergarten Sight Word Review

Below you will find the Kindergarten sight words that your child learned last year.  During the last few weeks of summer vacation I would appreciate it if you would practice these words with your child. Students should be able identify them automatically and spell them.

Word List:

no      so      go      is      on      it      can      in      do      me 
up      an     you    am    the    and    we      my     he      like
to       at      see     a        I


Fountas and Pinnell Word List

2018-2019 Supply List

Below you will find a copy of our supply list. Please label the notebooks with your child's name. To help make our first morning run smoothly, I would appreciate it if you were to put your child's scissors, crayons, and 2 glue sticks in their pencil box.  Please label your child's pencil box. The remainder of the glue sticks, pencils, and dry erase markers will be collected as class supplies.

• Sturdy backpack or book bag
• 2 black & white composition notebooks (must be wide-ruled)
• 2 packages of #2 pencils sharpened (Ticonderoga suggested)
• 4 pack glue sticks (Elmer’s preferred)
• 1 – 4 pack Expo dry-erase markers
• 2 boxes of Crayola crayons (24 count)
• 1 pair scissors
• 1 plastic pencil box
• Oversized t-shirt or smock for art (in a labeled Ziploc bag)
• Large brown grocery bag to be used in Art
• 1 pair of headphones (in a labeled Ziploc bag)

Please note that some supplies may have to be replenished during the year.

Welcome New First Graders!

Dear First Graders,

    Welcome to our class. I am so excited to be your teacher this year. We are going to have so much fun. I can't wait to meet you on the first day of school. I would love to learn more about you. You can e-mail me at beverlyann.feuerstack@pinebushschools.org and tell me all about yourself or ask me a question. Check back throughout the summer to learn more our our classroom. Pictures of our room should be up at the end of August.

Ms. Feuerstack

Specials Schedule

We had a great first day of first grade. Below you will find our schedule for the year. We use a day 1-5 schedule for specials. Library will begin next week.

Day 1 - Music
Day 2 - Music and Library
Day 3 - P.E.
Day 4 - Art
Day 5 - P.E.

Lunch and Recess - 12:15-1:00

Welcome Back to School

Welcome to our class blog. I am so excited that I am going to be your teacher this year. I am looking foward to fun-filled year. I have been very busy getting our room ready. Here are some of the before pictures.

After a few days it is looking much better. All I need now are each one of you!

I can't wait to meet you on September 6th, for the first day of school. 

Thank You

Thank you to all the parents and special guests that were able to help us out with our gingerbread houses. They were a lot of fun to make. I hope they all made it home before they were eaten. I also want to give a big thank you for all of my holiday gifts. I was really spoiled. Have a wonderful holiday and a relaxing break. 

Welcome New First Graders!

Dear First Graders,

I am so happy that I will get to spend the year with you learning and having fun. I am very excited about the first day of school. I have been busy getting our classroom ready. We have 18 students in our class (10 girls and 8 boys). I hope you have received my welcome letter and you have learned a little about me. I would love to learn more about you too. You can e-mail me and tell me about yourself and what you are excited about this year. Here is a tour our classroom. First here are the before pictures. My dad helped me paint the back wall of our classroom, I think it looks much better now.

Now for the after pictures. 

 The view from our door.

 The view from our carpet area.

 The view from our window.

All our room needs now are our 18 first grade friends. I am looking forward to meeting you on September 6th. 

Love,

Ms. Feuerstack

Museum Village

Our class trip to Museum Village is on Wednesday, June 1st. Please remember to send your child in with a bag lunch labeled with their name. Students should also be dressed comfortably since we will be walking outside. The trip is rain or shine so please have your child dress accordingly. We will be leaving first thing in the morning so please make sure that your child is to school on time. If you are chaperoning please be to school by 9:00. Those parents that were not selected to ride the bus as a chaperone may follow behind the bus or meet us there. Parents not riding the bus will need to pay their entry fee when they arrive.

School House Rocks

We have been learning all about our nation's early history. We have been using read alouds through Engage NY and different vidoes to help us understand long ago. Some of our favorite videos are School House Rocks videos. Below you will find links to some of our favorites.

No More Kings

The Shot Heard Round the World 

Fireworks

I hope you enjoy them as much as we have. Hopefully they don't get stuck in your head :)

A Few Dates to Remember

A Few Dates to Remember:

May 4th- Scholastic book orders are due

May 6th - Field Trip permission slips are due

I am allowed to bring 5 parents with us on the class trip. At this time I have 9 parents that want to chaperone. I will be putting all the names in a hat and I will pick 5 names on Friday or Monday. I will contact all parents that volunteered to let them know if they were picked. Those who were not picked may still follow behind the bus and pay to enter when they arrive at Museum Village.

May 11th - Scholastic Book Fair  

 (Please remember that there will be tax applied to all purchases)

It's been a while...

We have been very busy in our classroom over the past few months. I am so proud of how our hard the students have been working. We are growing so much as readers and writers. At math we are developing such a strong number sense. 

This week during our literacy block we are reading Pigeon books by Mo Willems. We read Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! and Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog. We are working on making connections, character traits, problem/solution, retelling, and opinion writing. I love how we are developing as writers.

This week we are beginning our study of  early Amercian history. We are learning about the original 13 colonies. Throughout this unit we will be learning about important people in our countries history and how we expanded to 50 states. 

At science time we are learning about plants. On Monday we planted grass seeds. We are learning about what plants need to survive. To help us understand the importance of water, sun, soil, and air, we will be doing some experiments. We have one plant that will get sunlight, but no water. Another plant will be watered, but it will have no sun. We predicted that they will not grow.

One of our favorite things to do in our classroom is to watch Kid President. Below you will see a link to one of the videos we watched this week. 

Have a wonderful week!

A Peek in Our Classroom

        We have been very busy first graders in room 107. First, I want to thank all of the parents who came out for Open House and Math Night. It was so nice to meet everyone. I also want to thank everyone who completed the parent survey. I gained so much insight into your children and I am excited to help them reach the goals that you have for them this year.

      We just wrapped up our first domain on Fables and Stories. We read a variety of stories that taught us important lessons. Each time we read a story we discussed the characters, the moral, and if the story had personification. 

     Our class did an amazing job on our first math test of the year. We have moved onto learning about number bonds. I am so impressed with how our class is doing. Our kindergarten teachers did such a great job preparing our students for first grade math. We are going to be spending about another week on number bonds before we move onto addition to 10. 

   As part of Daily Five we are working on developing good reading strategies. We have been focusing on checking for understanding to help our comprehension and blending/stretching our words to help with accuracy.

Reminders:

• Picture Day Thursday, October 15th 
• Q-Tip Skeletons Friday, October 23rd 

No Place For Hate

Tomorrow our school will be kicking off our No Place for Hate initiative. We will be having an Omegaman assembly at school and we will be talking about what No Place for Hate stands for. You will be receiving a yellow pamphlet in your child's folder for you to read and sign. Please send these back as soon as possible.

Our Schedule

Our Schedule

Day 1 - Music

Day 2 - P.E.

Day 3 - Music

Day 4 - P.E.

Day 5 - Art and Library

Lunch and Recess - 12:30-1:15

Please remember that students need to wear sneakers on P.E. days. Students also need art smocks, if you have not sent in a smock please do so as soon as possible. 

Our First Week

Wow! What a great first week of school. I really enjoyed our first 3 days together. I am so impressed with my new first graders. We have been getting to know each other and our classroom routines. I must say that they all were very quick in learning procedures. 

Last week we read many stories about the first day of school and being a good friend. One story that we read is called Have You Filled a Bucket Today? In this book we learn that everyone walks around with an invisible bucket and that we can fill each others buckets by doing and saying kind things. We have decided to be a classroom full of bucketfillers, not bucket dippers. Bucket dippers are bullies and other people who are not kind. You can learn more about the book HERE.

Last week we also began learning about Daily Five and Math Daily 3. Daily Five is the structure that I use to organize our literacy block. In our classroom we do not do centers, instead we work on five meaningful literacy tasks that we self-selcet as the teacher works with small groups of students on one-on-one with a child. The tasks are Read to Self, Work on Writing, Read to Someone, Word Work, and Listening to Reading. Each choice is explicitly taught and modeled with the class and then we practice and build stamina. New choices are not added until we are able to work for at least 10 minutes independently at our choice. Math Daily 3 consists of the same structure, but it has different choices. These are Math by Myself, Math with Someone, and Math Writing. I am going to be sharing more about these at open house. 

This coming week we will continue to build our stamina during Read to Self and Math by Myself. We will also dive into our writing program and learn about where writer's get ideas from. Please contact me at any time if you have any questions or concerns.

Welcome!

I am so excited about beginning another school year at Circlevillle Elementary. This year marks my 14th year teaching. I have been very busy this past week getting our classroom ready for my 19 new first graders. Below you will find some pictures of our classroom. A full classroom tour will be coming soon.

The before picture

The after picture

January and February Recap

It has been a while since I have posted, but that doesn't mean we haven't been hard at work in first grade. We have been learning about penguins, the history of our Earth, and dinosaurs in between all of our snow days and delays. Let's think spring! Keep reading to see photos of some of our wonderful work.

First up we learned about penguins. We read a variety of non-fiction penguin texts to collect research. We collected facts on our penguin schema chart. Then we used the information to write penguin reports. They are located under our cute penguin pictures. We worked together to write about what penguins eat, how they move, what they are like as babies, and their enemies. We also wrote a class paragraph on penguins.

During our study of the history of the Earth, we had the chance to learn about dinosaurs. We were very excited about this, many students even brought in dinosaurs and wore dinosaur shirts. We read books about dinosaurs, watched a video clip of a real paleontologist that works at the American Museum of Natural History and we worked in small groups to write about some our our favorite dinosaurs.

 I want to give a big THANK YOU for all of my Valentine's that I recieved. I feel quite spoiled.

If the weather cooperates we will be celebrating our 100th day of school on Friday. I can't believe we are more than half way through the year.