September 17, 2011

Happy Weekend! The first graders in Ms. Carrasquillo's class have almost mastered, yes, mastered The Fab Five!!!! Those all-too-necessary life skills that help the school day ease into ultimate success because students are and tend to stay engaged, yes, engaged, in the learning process. We are so excited to be getting there. Research is quick to point out that without engagement, student learning falls away or is never actually attained. How depressing that would be, huh! Fortunately, we will not allow that to happen here at The Academy of Hope. It is motivating to teach when students come up to you and say, " I found myself saying I actually want to write about..." and " I said to myself, I am going to reread because I know I can understand what I'm trying to write about much better!" For first graders to be integrating this kind of vocabulary into their everyday "talk" is just awesome. Yesterday, lots, and I mean, lots, of first graders were writing 15 to 18 word sentences! Now we're focusing on "retelling" stories we've read by identifying beginning, middle, and ending details of the story and describing those sequential events. Oral and written language and reading, reading, reading are soaring, soaring, soaring! In Social Studies, we've been studying mapping skills as well as communities around the country and world and good citizenship qualities. In Mathematics, we've conquered number concepts 1-100; counting by 2's, 5's, and 10's; tallying and it's strategic importance in math, and addition and subtraction fact family concepts; with rolling dice, we're learning about probability, and with BINGO, we're learning much-needed focused listening for numbers and letters and learning to look in strategic rows and columns to locate them---later, BINGO can extend to locating multi-syllabic words and triple-digit numbers. Only on more week until Intercession. Hang in there, everyone! Have a blessed weekend!!!!

Week Six and Where the Students Are...

We just completed week six at The Academy of Hope in Mrs. Carrasquillo's First Grade.  What a whirlwind of activity we have happening!  Students have virtually mastered the Fab Five Life Skills so important to student success!  Of course, daily "micro-drills" are essential for maintaining our lifeskill balance, so students will continue to upgrade from satisfactory to proficient use of these lifeskills.  They include:

• Take care of yourself.  (This essentially means monitor and adjust your behavior to keep yourself doing what needs to be done.)
• Take care of your things.  (Keep your materials organized so as not to invade another's space.)
• Take care of classroom materials.  (Keep classroom materials in good working condition.)
• Walk and talk quietly.  (Use good manners.)
• Come to The Academy of Hope each day prepared to discover and learn to the best of your ability so you can be successful.  (Have in mind that you are bringing your best self to school each day.)

Everyday Math is our Core Math series; Rigby is our Core ELA series; we are utilizing Social Studies for the first nine weeks and will utilize Science the second nine weeks.  Foreign Languages are a major hit so far, with students having learned The Academy of Hope Pledge in Spanish and Mandarin as well as in English!

Students are integrating technology in all phases of academic learning, utilizing Discovery Education Streaming video, document camera use for enhanced learning using texts, and Qwizdom use for test-taking and technology enhancement.  We just started using Qwizdom this past week.  We are still working on learning how to utilize all it has to offer, and what a great learning experience this is!
More to come next week!  Have a wonderful Labor Day week-end!!!