Miss Allison de Hoop 444-4444 (school) 222-3333 (home) Email: a.dehoop@someschool.sk.

ca September 9, 2012

Dear Students, Parents, Guardians and Families, I am Allison de Hoop, or Miss d. as your child may know me. I will be your childs teacher for the year. I am excited to meet all of the students families and hope that you can help me get to know your students. We will be spending time each day for the first few weeks of class getting to know each other. We are already planning, as a class, a meet and greet party for all our families. I am suggesting a potluck supper on September 20 after school 3:30PM-6:00PM with supper happening around 5:00. This would be a come and go event, since I know you as parents are very busy. More information will come soon! It is important to keep communication with you as parents and I will send out regular newsletters and other small notes. I would like to share information in the most convenient way for you. If the best option for you is by email, paper copy, quick phone call, or other means, please indicate this below and return, or contact me using the information above. If info is required for families in separate homes is necessary, please indicate. Name _____________________________________ Relationship to Child________________________ Name_____________________________________ Relationship to Child________________________ Childs Name_______________________________ Contact Style, __ E-mail ________________________________ __ Paper newsletter __Phone _________________________________ __In Person: Before/After school, Evenings, Weekends? __Other____________________________________

Other important Information___________________________________________________________________________ opportunity to apply those strategies immediately. This also gives me the freedom to work with similarly grouped students or one-on-one with your child as he or she progresses. ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS The goals of Saskatchewans ELA curriculum cover three main goals:
1) Reading, viewing, listening for understanding 2) Speaking, drawing, writing, acting for communication 3) Understanding ones own language skills and setting goals for the future

In Grade One we will be learning to read, speak, write, draw, and communicate with others. I will be working closely with your child to help her or him develop these skills. Readers Workshop: A daily reading experience. Children have the opportunity to read independently, with others, or with myself for assessment purposes. Students will acquire specific reading strategies in a short lesson, and have the

Writers Workshop: A regular time for students to experiment, play, and learn to write. Specific strategies will be taught in short lessons to be directly used in student writing. Students will create narrative, poems, songs or picture stories during a writing workshop. They will have the opportunity to share their writing with other students and work collaboratively in while growing skills in this important form of creativity and communication. At the end of the year I will encourage each student to submit their favorite or best piece of writing to be published in a class booklet as a keepsake for each student.

Word Study: Our school has a mandated spelling program. We will be following this program but I will be structuring this program in a different way than is traditional. We will be studying the weekly words through a word study process. Students will become familiar with these words in daily situations such as word sorts, reading passages, writing and spelling strategies, and comparing words to already known words. Students will learn to recognize patterns that will help them in learning to spell. Our goal is to learn these words well and use them in our classroom so that if a spelling test situation were to arise students would have the skills to be successful. Story Study: There is so much valuable childrens literature available for classroom use. Stories read in classroom will be directly related to strategies we are learning in readers or writers workshops, word studies and other topics related to Science, Social Studies, Health, Math and more. We will be learning how to talk about books and practicing large and small group discussions. Creating Love for Literature My goal is for students to come to enjoy and love reading for their own purposes, not because they are expected to in school. I will make childrens books available in the topics and genres of interest in my classroom. It would help a lot to learn what students specific interests are from those that know them best: YOU! FOR SEPTEMBER Our first ELA unit will extend to the end of September. We will explore childrens literature based on Friends, Family, and Relationships. This will go along with our first Social Studies unit on Relationships and topics in Health. These titles include Byrd Baylor's The Table Where Rich People Sit, Remember Me by Margaret Wild, Love Is a Family by Roma Downey and Richardson, Parnell & Coles And Tango Makes Three. I plan to send a booklist for those who are interested and I will jointly facilitate (with Gr. 2 teacher Mary Jo Glissen) a free library and library card workshop in late September for anyone needing assistance accessing books for children, personal use, or other reasons.

We are, as mentioned above, spending time getting to know each person in our classroom. We are focusing on our common interests and will be using those interests to decide on a community building activity. This would be a project that we work on together and that each student would have a specific part and place in. We are very open to ideas from parents too! We would appreciate any parent help with our project as well. Once the class jointly decides on a project, we will communicate this to you. LEARNING AT HOME Many rich learning experiences for children happen at home! Choose a time when you (or other family/ friends) and your child can participate fully without distraction. Do not worry if your time is limited. Many childrens books take ten minutes or less to read after supper, before bed, on the weekend, and at your leisure. Reading: your child will have the opportunity to bring home daily books at their reading level. I encourage you and your child to read these and other childrens books together. Many find this to be valuable bonding time, especially working parents. Siblings, cousins, neighbours or grandparents will benefit from this experience as well. Writing: Your child will occasionally have optional homework related to writing. The topics will vary related to different subjects we are learning about. Spend time writing with your child, or do the same topic and then compare your writing. Keep in mind that many children beginning in grade one may draw and or use single letters to represent words. This is Gr. One writing! Your child will progress to traditional words and printing as they are ready. Communicating: Talk with your child about school (OR) about events that happen in your family or their day. Encourage your child to ask questions, and ask questions of your child. Make connections between books and real life. Communicating effectively is an important life skill which is best learned early on. If you have any questions about your childs literacy please dont hesitate to ask.
Miss Allison de Hoop: 444-4444 (school) 222-3333 (home) Email: a.dehoop@someschool.sk.ca