Meet the Teacher Night

Dear Parents,

It was lovely to meet many of you again last night. For those that missed it, I've attached a copy of my 2018 brochure that outlines our year together.

2018 Brochure

Students were super excited to share student journals, family trees and their portraits with their parents. Stamps, lego, and our book centre also came up.  I'll update this post with a few pictures later as well.

I would like to be a dragon

I would like to be me

Student self portaits in our classroom

Who Am I? Student Questionaires

A family tree--students have compared similarities and differences

Some excellent questions were asked about schedule and routine. Here are some notes:

1. Having a pair of indoor shoes that stay at school is so helpful. Please send in a pair to help spare our carpets and keep the inside clean. 

2. Gym is Day 2 and Day 4. Students need to wear clothing they can move in and running shoes on these days. Mr. Dantowitz is our gym teacher. 

3. Library is every Day 4. It is normally taught by Ms. Smith, but please send library books back to school in Mr. Zippy and I'll make sure they are returned. 

4. Music is Day 1, 3, and 5. Ms. Fraser has asked students to bring in music from home for next week. (A note detailing this was sent home in Mr. Zippy)

5. Reading buddies are also Day 5. We're paired with Ms. Oseghale's class. 

6. If you forget any of this, or don't know when Day 1 is (right now, Tuesdays, but it will change!), you can always check our schedule posted right outside our door. If you would like a copy of this schedule for your fridge, email me and I'll send you a copy. 

(Disclaimer: It's meant to be a working document and a rough guide...we might do more art one day and make up social studies the next, for example.)

See you tomorrow!

Sincerely,

Ms. Goegan

P.S. Pizza Money has come due. I have not received as many forms as I would expect. It's online and was emailed to you. If you need a physical form, let me know.

P.P.S. Snack forms went home yesterday. Please send back the form and monies as soon as possible.

Week 2

Dear Parents,

First, I want to welcome 3 new students to my classroom starting on Monday.

Next I want to celebrate all our hard work and fun this past week.

You'll see our family trees in the hall, which celebrate each student's family. This is the beginning of our Social Studies unit all about Roles, Relationships, and Responsibilities, where students will be asked to reflect on their lives.

In math, we're continuing to work on composing and decomposing numbers. We've been focusing on fact families.



In Language, I've set initial reading levels for all students. All students have their own books they can read and we're practicing building stamina with focused reading. You should have seen this initial assessment come home in Mr. Zippy and I've adjusted reading levels on Raz Kids to match what I'm seeing in class.

I'm watching who's been using Raz so far, and hope that it's a valuable resource to you. In learning to read, daily practice is very helpful, so we hope to balance that between home and school.

While I've been doing that one on one work, we've also been playing games with letters and sounds. I call this "word work" and here are some examples from this week:

Students are working on putting these letters into alpha order and putting plastic animals that match initial letters (Can you spot the mistakes?)

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separating vowels from consonants 

Stamping words

These are fun activities that students can work on independently, while I do more focused work with small groups or individuals. Students have been enthusiastic about this play and my biggest challenge is to take pictures of the learning while all this is going on. 

Sincerely, 

Ms. Goegan

Science Literacy Week at Annette Library

Just a neat afterschool stem workshop in our neighbourhood:

Build it with Keva Planks!

Celebrate Science Literacy Week & foster STEM skills with creative building challenges for ages 6 and up. Build a skyscraper, a flock of geese, a plane and more, with solid wood Keva planks.

Wednesday, September 19th

4-:00- 5:00pm

Annette Street Branch

145 Annette Street

(416) 393-7692

Week 1

Dear Parents,

We had a very productive first week. Student portraits are up in the classroom and look for a wall of mystery outside the classroom: Try to see if you can discover which student is which!

In this first week, I'm introducing students to routines and expectations, but also classroom resources. 

In math, students have been learning to show numbers on ten frames and hundreds charts by rolling 6 sided and 10 sided dice. They are using counters and other materials to help them make numbers concrete. Students have also been learning to "add on" or "count down" to get to their number rather than starting from zero each time, which gives them a number sensibility that helps when they are eventually working on addition and subtraction. We've been playing Chutes and Ladders (also known as Snakes and Ladders), to help practice these skills as well. 

In language, I'm working to determine every student's reading level with levelled books and introducing letter concepts with a variety of alphabet books. Students are helping me read and get a sense of the alpha order by using letters to organize themselves around the carpet, which was surprisingly difficult for even my higher readers. 

We also practiced stamping, writing on white boards, writing on chalk boards and writing in journals this week. I have a variety of different letter games, which students used to help complete rhymes as you can see in the pictures below. We're trying to build pattern recognition and chunking, as well as just practicing the letter sounds. 

Trying to find as many real words as possible 

Working on distinguishing consonants and vowels

Add caption

I'm looking forward to building on these concepts as we slide into week two.

Sincerely, 

Ms. Goegan

Welcome to Room 105, 2018/19 Edition

Dear Parents,

I'm excited to welcome your children to my class for this year and am looking forward to a lot of exciting things, like a series of field trips for High Park Through the Seasons, Scientists in the School, and getting to know the students and their families.

My class membership to RazKids started late last year, so I've started early by adding all my current students to my list and sending you the login information in the Mr. Zippy bag today. (Students from last year who logged in over summer were kept on as well, just in case you're still reading as well.) Razkids is an online reading program that provides levelled books and online incentives to support regular reading. Students can also use the program independently once they are familiar with its layout.

I'm also attaching Durham Board's Parent Guide to curriculum expectations in Grade 1, for your reference: Parent Guide to Curriculum in Grade 1 and look forward to meeting many more of you during the Meet the Teacher evening.

On Wednesday, expect the full package to come home from the school with all your permissions and information. If you have any questions about these or anything else, please do feel free to be in contact.

This is my third year teaching Grade 1 at Indian Road and I'm always astounded at how much progress students have made at the end of the year when I look back at where they started. I'll do my best to update here regularly with information that I hope will be helpful to you in the Grade 1 journey. If you wish to be notified of when these posts happen, please subscribe on the left.

Sincerely,

Ms. Goegan