Sheryn Hodgson and Shu-chin Kang's Website

Welcome to First Grade! 

I've really enjoyed getting to know the incoming students by reading to them during their noon quiet time each day.  What a joy!

There will be a back to school gathering at RSA II (our site) scheduled for August 20th--a Thursday--from 5:30 to 7:30 in the evening.  More details to come from newsletters and such from the school.

Enjoy your summer, and keep the little folks reading. We hope you can visit the public library regularly. A good way to encourage writing is to buy them a little tablet and nice pencil. The lined newsprint tablets are good, but any kind will do. 

A fun way to practice addition and subtraction is to thoroughly wash ten pennies, two nickels, one dime, and one quarter, and place them in the middle of the kitchen table in a bowl.  Each day, perhaps before a meal, make a math story--addition or subtraction--with the pennies.  (If you have time you could write the math problem on paper or a little chalk board too.) As your child learns the value of the pennies, you can move up to the value of the nickel.  When he or she has mastered that five pennies equal one nickel, and ten pennies equal two nickels, you can begin to add the dime--and so on throughout the year. This will really be helpful.

The items that are helpful to bring to school on the first day will be pooled together as class supplies.  Therefore, please do not mark your child's name on any of these supplies or buy special ones.  Items needed in our class may differ slightly from the general list posted by the school. I want to emphasize that you are not obligated to donate these items, but only that it is appreciated.  Here is the list of things we can use:

• kleenex tissues
• individual pencil sharpeners that catch the shavings
• glue sticks
• scotch tape
• dry erase pens
• Ticonderoga Brand pencils

Students are encouraged NOT to bring backpacks as they are a tripping hazard.  Mrs. Johnson has allowed them for students riding the bus, if their parents feel they need one. 

Be sure to explore this whole web site, include the Files sections (under the picture of the panda) so you can see our usual daily schedule for example.

I'm sure it will be a great year and I look forward to working with all of you.  I love having parents in the room, all day, every day, and especially to listen to children during reading time.  So, there are plenty of volunteer opportunities!  I also want you to know I try to keep in close communication, so if you ever have any concerns or questions, be sure to come to me with them right away so we can work on a solution together. I want your child to have the greatest first grade experience ever!

Sincerely,

Mrs. Sheryn Hodgson

The weekly spelling list is in the "file" section (scroll up and go over to the right of the page and under the photo of the pandas.)  This is so that you can print the lists if you wish.

It is important for parents to realize that I do not assign specific spelling homework.  I do not expect students to memorize the list.  I do want them to recognize the phonograms and spelling patterns in the words.  When I give the spelling "test," it is really more of a dictation, as I give many Spalding phonetic clues. I hold up my fingers showing the number of letters, and I say which phonograms to use and so forth.  If students have been paying attention during our daily Spalding practice with Polly puppet, they should do fine.   I am not saying you cannot ask your child to write them over a few times a week, or practice orally in the car on the way to school, but please do not spend hours and hours on spelling practice.

New phonograms we are working on now are ci (as in special) and ti (as in education) both of which say /sh/and si that says /sh/ like in the word mission and also /zh/like in the word vision.  We have also been discussing a phonogram from the advanced set --tch that says /ch/ after short vowels.

We continue to review our Spalding phonograms with Polly puppet.  We are happy to report that she is recovering nicely from her double ocular transplant operation of mid December. Polly now has a toothbrush so that she can brush her teeth (!?) after her cracker each day.

We are also working on our Spalding notebooks, into which we put our Ayers List words, marking them carefully according to our Spalding phonics rules.  This notebook will be something that will go with us as we move through the grades. Our goal is to add five new words with their  correct markings each day in this little black notebook.  We also do spelling dictation practice with Spalding markings on our individual chalkboards of about six of our spelling words additionally each day.

 I've been adding Step-Up-To-Writing colors to the pages I want to send home to you and I'm just about finished.  Please save these and refer to them throughout the spring.  It will help explain what we are doing in class and help you to reinforce what your children are learning.  Another way we've been using our writing program is showing the children how to use the outline format (it can be called a T-chart or paragraph plan) as a quick way to take notes when reading a non-fiction passage in a book.  This is one of the many ways I work with the children on reading comprehension when we are reading together in the morning.  Finally, I have put together notebooks for the desks (I have completed all twenty so everyone has one now) that have many different kinds of learning helps, but especially the Step-Up-To-Writing "Handy Pages" in color that go along with what we are learning.Finally I'll be sending home a few pages to parents that explain our writing program (Step-Up-to-Writing), which I think is wonderful by the way, so you will get a feel for what it is we are doing in class and what it is your children are talking about when they mention the "colors" etc.  For example, the program uses the colors of the street light--the topic sentence is green for go, the main ideas are yellow for slow down, and the details are stop and tell more.  We think you'll like the results. . . and to think this is only first grade and they are putting out such a great writing product!  You should be very proud of them!