Thank You Vets!!

The students really enjoyed making Veteran's Day cards on Thursday. Another teacher at Parkwood is arranging to have the cards distributed to veterans to honor them on November 11th.

And the winner is.......

The students of Room 5 participated in the election process by voting for either "Duck" or "Clifford" for president! :)) After reading Duck For President , Clifford For President, Grace For President and Otto For President, we held our own 'election'. The students first had to present their Official Voter Registration Card to be eligible to vote. After throwing out several votes (some just couldn't decide I guess and voted for both candidates) , Clifford ended up being the winner. The school also held a mock election with our 'official' candidates on the ballot.

Reader's Theatre

Readers Theatre is a performance of a written script that demands repeated and assisted reading that is focused on delivering meaning to an audience. Since there are no acting, props, costumes, or scenery in Readers Theatre, readers must use their voices to carry the meaning. Thus, the goal of this fluency instruction is aimed at improving prosody and meaning. The repeated and assisted practice involved in rehearsal will improve accuracy and automaticity in word recognition. Research has demonstrated the potential of Readers Theatre to improve reading performance. Moreover, Readers Theatre has been found to be an engaging and motivational activity for students.

Earth and Space Performance Task

For our performance task for the Earth and Space Unit the students had to observe an item from the playground (acorn, leaf, stick, pinecone). They had to draw what they observed with and without a hand lens and explain the difference.

Destination Success

Information came home with your child last week on Destination Success. Please have your child practice typing in their username and password by themselves. They are expected to be able to do this independently when at the computer center. You will find activities loaded for your child that correlate to our weekly literacy skills. Additional activities have been loaded by the district. Please let me know if you have any trouble logging on from home.

Wendy's Spirit Night

What a great evening at Wendy's last night! So many Parkwood friends were there. I was so glad I got to see Arnes and his family before I had to leave :)

Stop Bullying Now!

The students in Room 5 all signed a pledge to Stop Bullying Now! We were very fortunate to have a special guest speaker who spoke to us about how wrong it is to bully and how we must all make an effort to make all students feel safe, secure and accepted.

Math Investigations

The students have been playing many math games lately that reinforce their addition facts. For two of these games, Roll and Record and Five-in-a-Row, the students practiced "counting on" by using a number cube and a dot cube.

Terry Parker Traveling Pep Rally

Thanks so much to the faculty and students of Terry Parker High School for making your annual visit to our school. The students of Parkwood love watching the cheerleaders and listening to the band. Good luck TP at your homecoming game this week!! Go Braves!!

Poems and Rhymes

Poems are a large part of our literacy skills block in first grade. We learn new sight words, listen for rhyming words and identify spelling patterns. Once the students learn the poem, they are given a copy to illustrate and add to their poetry notebooks. Those poems then become part of our 'poetry center'.