Recent ActivityAnnouncements Reminders!Please remember to have your child bring in a picture of doing something with a friend for Wednesday (Sept. 1st). Book orders are due Wednesday as well.
Welcome to First Grade!August 10, 2010
Dear Families, Welcome to first grade! My name is Ali Quinton, and I am delighted to be your child’s first grade teacher this year. This will be my seventh year teaching first grade at Strafford School, and I am very excited to meet new faces as well as to be able to work with some of you again. I have found first grade to be a wonderful period of curiosity, exploration, growth, and change, and I am thrilled to be teaching this age group once again. I am especially excited to begin this school year, as I am currently taking graduate courses at UNH, working towards a masters degree and Reading Specialist certification. I look forward to applying what I learn to our classroom this year, and expect it to have a positive impact on your children. Parent/Teacher Communication I am a firm believer that parent/teacher communication is crucial to your child’s success. Please do not hesitate to e-mail or call me with questions or concerns throughout the year. I can be reached by e-mail at aquinton@strafford.k12.nh.us or by phone at school: 664-2842 or at home: 742-1719. Your child will be given a home-school folder. Please check it each evening for notes, and return it the following morning. This is a great way to send in lunch money, notes to me, etc. Additionally, each week I will send home a brief note called Here’s the Scoop to let you know how your child is doing. Look for Here’s the Scoop on ______ day.
Volunteers Volunteers are a wonderful and important part of our classroom community. You are welcome to come in to help out on a weekly or bi-weekly basis, or by appointment. Volunteer activities range from reading and writing with kids to photo-copying, coloring, and cutting. I will send home a volunteer interest sheet shortly after school begins.
Sharing
Your child is invited to bring in something special to share one day each six day cycle. Your child’s share day is______. While toys are not allowed for sharing, I encourage things found in nature, art projects, and pictures of special events. Sometimes sharers choose to tell us about something special that has happened rather than to show something. This is wonderful as well.
Snack We will have snack time each day at approximately 10:25. Our lunch will be at 12:35. First graders need lots of energy, so I encourage children to bring snacks that are on the healthy side. Please do not send candy for snack. Snack milk or juice, as well as lunch milk can be purchased from the cafeteria.
Birthdays
You are welcome to send in a treat for snack time on your child’s birthday. Because feelings are easily hurt, I ask that you not send in birthday invitations to be handed out, unless there is one for each child in the class.
Specials
Each day our class will go to a special. The schedule is as follows:
A day: Computer Lab B day: Library C day: Health D day: Art E day: P.E. (Remember those sneakers!) F day: Music. I will send home a calendar each month to show when each letter day falls.
First Grade Curriculum
First grade is a wonderful time of exploration and growth. Your child will be encouraged to be a compassionate citizen, and a seeker of knowledge. I have found that the best learning happens when a child is making discoveries, and when he is interested and invested in what he is doing. Our lessons are shaped around this philosophy, and the majority of our activities are hands-on and exploratory. Due to this, you will see limited amounts of paperwork coming home. I assure you that your child is working hard!
Your child will participate in Writer’s Workshop each day, where students are encouraged to write about things that are important to them. Each child will keep a writing folder at school, as well as a portfolio containing his or her best work. I encourage you to pop in and see your child’s work throughout the year.
Homework
Children will have math homework from the Saxon Math program 2 to 3 nights a week. Beginning in October, children will have the opportunity to take a book home to read to you each night. I encourage them to read their book multiple times. Ideas include reading to you, siblings, the dog, even dolls make great reading buddies! Although we will study spelling all year long, spelling homework and quizzes will not begin until January. Children will be given a list of spelling words each week to study, with a spelling quiz each Friday.
Please feel free to stop in with your child to visit and see the classroom on Monday August 23rd or Tuesday August 24th. Sometimes a visit beforehand helps to ease first day jitters!
I hope this letter has given you a sense of what your child’s first grade experience will be like. I feel very fortunate to be teaching in a community as wonderful as Strafford, and I am confident that we will have a great year!
Sincerely,
Ali Quinton Welcome to First Grade!June NewsletterWhat’s New in 1Q?
June
Dear Families,
It is hard to believe that we are already approaching the end of the year! It has been wonderful working with your children and watching them grow and change. This has been a particularly memorable class to teach. They have each brought so much to our classroom, and I have learned a great deal from them.
As we wrap up the year, there are few dates that you should know. Our Author’s Tea will be on Friday, June 11th at 2:30. Please join us as each child shares his or her favorite piece of writing. Wednesday, June 16th will be Field Day. Please send your child to school in sneakers and with a water bottle on this day. It is sure to be a lot of fun!
Over the next 3 weeks, you will begin to notice a lot of your child’s work coming home. Any loose writing that is sent home is writing that is not your child’s most treasured work. This is work that your child has chosen not to publish or put in his or her portfolio. Your child’s best work will come home in the form of a published book as well as in his or her portfolio. Please take the time to look through this work and reflect on your child’s progress throughout the year. You will also receive math journals, book journals, and prompt journals, where children have solved math problems, reflected on books that they have read, and practiced writing on given topics.
I would like to have all borrowed books back by Friday, June 11th if possible. Once books are sent back, I will not be sending another book home, in effort to collect all the books by the end of the year. If the book your child has borrowed is missing, please jot me a quick note. They tend to turn up eventually, and even if it is two years from now, I am always glad to get them back.
To wrap up our year, we will be studying rocks and minerals as well as magnets. Children are welcome to bring in their own personal rock collections to show to the class. We will spend a lot of time examining rocks, and will learn how rocks are formed as well as what makes up a rock.
You may have noticed that paper hats came home a few weeks ago. We spent a week in May doing “hat math”. The project focused on many skills such as how to use a compass, how to turn a square into a circle, and how to measure circumference. The children also made a plan and “bought” all the supplies necessary to make their hats. We had a great deal of fun with this project, and learned quite a bit too!
It has truly been a pleasure to work with you and your child this year. I appreciate all of the support you have given to our classroom, and feel fortunate to work in such a wonderful community. I wish you a happy and safe summer, and look forward to seeing your child in the fall!
Fondly,
Ali Quinton April NewsletterWhat’s New in 1Q?
April
Dear Families,
Happy spring! As we get closer to the end of the year, it is amazing to watch your children grow and change. We read Leo the Late Bloomer yesterday, and all I could think about was how everyone in our class has bloomed! It’s a wonderful feeling to see them feel successful and accomplished as readers, writers, mathematicians, and most importantly as citizens of our classroom and community.
We spent this week preparing for a reader’s theater. We performed two plays, drawn from our study of the Sonoran Desert. The children were excited to practice their lines and to make costumes and scenery. The goal of reader’s theater is to develop fluency and expression when reading. They certainly met this goal, and thoroughly enjoyed performing their plays.
Next week we will begin our study of Mexico. We will learn about the culture, language and geography of our neighboring country. Our study will culminate with a fiesta to celebrate Cinco de May on May 5th. We’ll ask each child to bring in a Mexican dish to share on this day. I am happy to share recipes if you need ideas.
We have a field trip coming up! On Thursday April 15th, we will visit the Children’s Museum of New Hampshire in Dover. They have several exhibits revolving around our curriculum including Inuit masks and clothing, the river habitat (which we will study in May), and exhibits about communities and fairytales. While at the museum, the children will take a class on cultural mask making. After our visit to the museum, we will enjoy a picnic lunch in Henry Law Park. Parents are welcome to join us on our adventure!
As you know, report cards were sent home today. There are no official conferences for the 3rd quarter, but I am happy to meet with any of you who would like to discuss your child’s progress. Please send me a note or an e-mail if you would like to request a time to meet.
We are fortunate to have beautiful windows lining one wall of our classroom. While we love these windows, they make our classroom very hot on sunny days (even when the temperature is cold). I suggest sending your child to school in a short sleeve layer to avoid over heating. We will also open the windows and turn on the fans to keep the temperature down. Thanks for your help with this!
All the Best,
Ali Quinton
March 2010What’s New in 1Q? March Dear Families, It is so nice to see signs of spring budding all around us. The children are noticing flowers blooming, green grass growing, and birds chirping. Especially exciting for our class is that we are free from snow clothes for another year! Children no longer need to bring snow pants, hats and gloves to school. Boots are recommended, as our playground is quite muddy, but not required. We continue to write to our pen pals from We have also been busy getting ready for the leprechauns! We will make traps for them on Tuesday with the hope of catching any tricky leprechauns that visit us in the wee hours of St. Patrick’s Day. The children have wonderful and complex ideas for their traps. It is nice to see them working together and brainstorming ideas. With March comes our study of The Sonoran Desert. We are busy learning about the climate, animals, plants and people of this desert. We spent one day measuring out fifty feet in our hallway to see just how tall the Saguaro Cactus is. The children were shocked by its size! We discovered that it would take twelve first graders standing on each other’s heads to be as tall as this cactus. Wow! In writing, we continue to learn about what good writers do. This month, we are focusing on how to hook a reader into a story. So far, the favorite type of hook is the onomatopoeia hook. You wouldn’t believe some of the sounds the kids have come up with! We have also learned about hooking in a reader with an action. Next we will explore talking hooks. Our classroom is in need of a few items! We are looking for Clorox Wipes to keep clean and disinfected as well as cups for the children to get water from our sink. We also continue to collect egg cartons and paper towel tubes for art projects. Thanks for your help! Here are some important upcoming dates to remember: Friday March 19th: No School Friday April 9th: Report cards Thursday April 15th: Field trip to the Children’s As always, thank you for all you do! All Best, Ali Quinton Discussion Topics Files No "Files" exist(s) |
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