November 28, 2011
Dear families,
We hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday and a restful week off!
We have 3 short weeks until our winter holiday, so we will be busy. Remember, this Thursday is our field trip to the Cherry Creek mall to visit signing Santa and to shop for food at Whole Foods. We will see Santa first and then walk across the street to the Whole Foods grocery store to buy ingredients for a holiday/ cultural recipe (as we study different cultures and their traditions in S.S.). Then we will go back to the mall to get lunch. We would like to get pizza at Sbarro’s, so if you can, please send $7.00 along for pizza. If you cannot send the money, please send a bag lunch with your child (the school will provide a bag lunch to any child on the free/ reduced lunch program). Also, we would greatly appreciate any donation to go toward buying ingredients at Whole Foods.
Here is what we are doing during class for the week:
1st grade math: Addition facts to 10 & math games to wrap up our addition/ subtraction within 10 unit.
2nd grade math: We will be learning on comparing numbers, skip counting, ordinal numbers, odd and even numbers.
Lisa’s reading groups: We will continue our new books, The Meanies and The Napping House, learning and applying new vocabulary words, recalling sequence of the story and using the story pattern to create our own story.
Stephanie’s reading group: We will begin a new book this week. The students will have their own guided reading book and will be doing a book report on them.
Eileen’s reading group:
Lisa’s writing group: We will practice our friendly letter writing by creating a letter to Santa. We are also working on Fry’s vocabulary list(high frequency words) and creating simple sentences.
Stephanie’s writing group: We will write a friendly letter to Santa. We will be using different graphic organizers to help us to organize our thoughts when creating a story.
Social Studies: We are beginning a unit on land formations around the US and the migration of people to and from different areas. We will also begin discussing cultures around the world and focus on some of their traditions/ food.
ASL: We are wrapping up our discussions, investigation and analysis of subject and predicate use in ASL. We will begin to practice our winter performance.
Reminders:
· Field trip to Cherry Creek mall : Signing Santa and Whole Foods shopping trip
· December 16- Jan 3 Winter break
Have a great week! Please feel free to contact us if you have any concerns or questions.
Stephanie Carson and Lisa Hann
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Dear families, November 14th , 2011
We hope you all had a wonderful weekend!
There has been one update to the RMDS calendar, unfortunately the RMDS family Thanksgiving will be cancelled this year due to difficulty in obtaining a venue. Sorry! Last week we ended the week with a fun little recognition of 11.11.11! The kids also presented their wonderful Social Studies projects. They were fantastic! Remember next week we have the whole week off due to Thanksgiving vacation.
Please note that we are planning a trip to visit Cherry Creek mall. The Signing Santa Claus will be there, but we are also planning to go to Whole Foods to shop for a recipe to make from another culture. We will be spending December researching and learning about how cultures across the world celebrate holidays. While the Signing Santa is somewhat of a tradition for the Deaf and hard of hearing programs in the metro area, we want to be respectful to all families and cultures in recognizing differences. Please let us know if you would rather your child not attend this field trip or if you have any feedback for the trip.
1st grade math: Review of subtraction within 10 and addition both vertically and horizontally
2nd grade math: We are working on identifying the place values and reading the numbers up to 100.
Guided Reading groups:
Lisa’s groups: We will begin new books. We will focus on predicting, making connections (text to self, text to text) and on increasing vocabulary.
Stephanie’s group: We are learning on how to write a summary on our book. We will be learning different ways on how to write a summary.
Eileen’s group: We are working on how to retell on our guided reading book.
Lisa’s writing group: We are continuing our friendly letter writing and will conclude this week with a letter to Olivia. We are also working on Fry list vocabulary (both in reading and writing) and creating simple sentences
Stephanie’s writing group: We are working on our noun and verb sentences. We are continuing our friendly letter writing, identifying and naming the parts that a friendly letter has.
Science: We are continuing our weather unit with a study of air
ASL: We are continuing our discussions, investigation and analysis of subject and predicate use in ASL.
Reminders:
· November 21-25th Thanksgiving/ fall holiday break NO SCHOOL
· December 1st- Field trip to Cherry Creek Mall (Signing Santa and Whole Foods)
Have a great week. Please feel free to contact us if you have any concerns or questions!
Stephanie Carson and Lisa Hann
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Dear families, November 7th , 2011
We hope you all had a wonderful weekend and that you are adjusting to the time change. We look forward to a more “normal” week of school! Last week was a very good time and the kids really loved Halloween, spirit week and our field trip. Our class won third place for participation in spirit week. Each kid got to pick a little prize. We also celebrated Savannah’s 8th birthday on Friday! This is what our week looks like:
1st grade math: Building numbers 7-9 and practice with building numbers 4-6 (making different combinations of the sum).
2nd grade math: Identifying the place values up to 100.
Guided Reading groups:
Lisa’s group: We will publish our own versions of our “needs” books and will begin new stories still focusing on good reading behaviors and vocabulary building
Stephanie’s group: We are learning how to write a summary on our guided reading book.
Eileen’s group: Concluding Green Wilma with comprehension checks and beginning a new book
Writing: We will reflect on Flat Stanley and write about our favorite parts of the book and the play. We will begin a short unit on Friendly letter writing.
Science: We will begin part 1 of our weather unit
ASL: We will start discussions, investigation and analysis of subject and predicate use in ASL.
Reminders:
· Please continue your Social Studies project. This project is meant for parents and families to be involved. The final product can be as creative or as simple as you wish.
· November 16th RMDS Thanksgiving feast has been cancelled
· November 21-25th Thanksgiving/ fall holiday break NO SCHOOL
· December 1st- Field trip to Cherry Creek Mall
Have a great week. Please feel free to contact us if you have any concerns or questions!
Stephanie Carson and Lisa Hann
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Happy Halloween from the first and second grade class! We did a lot of Halloween literacy, math, and science activites. We had a spookalicious day! Enjoy the pictures!
The pirates of 1st and 2nd grade class!
The witches of RMDS!
The Glee Club performed “The Thriller” and we loved it!
Noal made a pumpkin face during snack time.
Kaydence writing Halloween words during literacy time.
We counted the pumpkin seeds by group of tens during science/math time.
Savannah read aloud the book she wrote during her writing class, “The Boy Who Didn’t Pay Attention”.
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Dear families, October 24, 2011
Hello! We look forward to a good but maybe colder week here at school! We are now into our 2nd grading quarter. Your child’s progress report and IEP updates have been mailed. You should receive them soon. Wednesday is our afternoon and evening for Parent Teacher conferences. We look forward to meeting with you all! The next couple weeks are busy, please check the reminders below!
1st grade math: We are working on ordering numbers and discussing before, after and between. We will also start addition and subtraction sentences (equations).
2nd grade math: We will be working on identifying the fact families.
Guided Reading groups:
Lisa’s group: Working on making connections to our new stories, text to self and text to text. We will be learning new vocabulary and increasing our reading fluency.
Stephanie’s group: We are learning how to answer comprehension questions and how to write the complete answer. We will learn how to respond to text on the book.
Eileen’s group: We are starting a new book. We will work on several reading strategies and fluency.
Writing: We will be adding text to our Halloween stories
Social Studies: We are learning about how to deal with our emotions and respect authority this week.
ASL: Practicing complete idea expressions and analyzing “sentences” for meaning (does it make sense?)
Reminders:
· Wednesday, October, 26th: Early release day (students dismissed at 12:30, buses will be running) and parent/ teacher conferences
· Saturday, October 29th: Fall Festival- 10 a.m.- 2 p.m. Come and bring your friends and family!
· Monday, October 31st, we will have a parade and then go into class for treats and Halloween fun. Students should arrive with a costume (if they are planning to participate in the parade) but either wear street clothes underneath or send an EASY change of clothes for after the festivities. Parents please feel welcome to watch and volunteer to help with some of the fun.
· Thursday, November 3rd: Elementary field trip to the Arvada Center for the Adventures of Flat Stanley performance (this is a shadowed interpreted performance).
· Next week is spirit week. RMDS will have a theme for everyday, have your child dress up and have fun (schedule is attached). On Friday, we will wrap-up the spirit week by having the staff compete against each other in some pajama games!
Have a great week. Please feel free to contact us if you have any concerns or questions!
Stephanie Carson and Lisa Hann
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October 10, 2011
The pumpkin farm trip was a hands-on experience and a lot of language modeling was happening. We picked out several vegetables and brought the pumpkins home. We had a grand time!
Olivia pulled the onions out from the ground.
Noal found an indian corn!
Kaydence and Savannah have carrots!
Savannah found a beautiful pumpkin!
The class made a vegetable soup. We used the vegetables from our trip. This fit perfectly into our Science unit about plants unit for science and enforced many of the standards we had learned from that unit. In addition we were able to use reading skills, measuring skills and sequencing to follow a recipe. The soup turned out to be delicious! Yummy!J
We read aloud, "Growing Vegetable Soup"
We identified the names of the vegetables.
We husked the corn.
Our Vegetable Soup!
Savannah thought the vegetable soup was delicious!
We took a survey to see who liked the soup.
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October 10, 2011
Dear first and second grade families,
Hello! I trust that you all had a great weekend despite the rainy/snowy weather. Last Thursday, we went to the pumpkin farm. The field trip was a hands-on experience and a lot of language modeling was happening. We picked out several vegetables and brought the pumpkins home. There was a dust storm at the end of our trip but we all made it back to school safely. Please take a look at our class website for few pictures of our trip. We had a great time! On Friday, the class made a vegetable soup. We used the vegetables from our trip. This fit perfectly into our Science unit about plants unit for science and enforced many of the standards we had learned from that unit. In addition we were able to use reading skills, measuring skills and sequencing to follow a recipe. The soup turned out to be delicious! Yummy!J
This Wednesday is Unity Day for RMDS. We will be promoting bullying prevention by UNITING our entire school. Please help your child remember to wear something orange. If your child doesn’t own orange, he/she can wear a white shirt and we can use masking tape to “write” UNITY on the front of the shirt.
This Friday is end of the first quarter. All the grades will be in the gradebook so please take the time to enter the website, www.gradebook.com to check your child’s grades. Your username and password was handed out at back to school night and it should be in your parent packet. If you have any questions regarding on your child’s grades, please do contact us.
This week we are learning:
Math:
1st Grade: We are continuing working on tens and ones and will comparing more and less. We will learn the terms greater than and less than.
2nd Grade: We are doing math word problems and will have chapter 3 test end of this week.
Literacy:
Stephanie’s group: We are working on context clues and comparing/contrast the characters in our guided reading book.
Lisa’s group: We will be doing role play our book. We will be focusing the story elements in our role play. We will begin new book by end of this week about needs of people and pets.
Eileen’s group: We are reading, “Scarecrow”. We will be working on identifying the story elements.
cience: We are wrapping up the plants unit. The students will have a quiz today. We will be checking our celery experiment this week.
Social Studies: We will begin Social Studies on Tuesday. We will be learning about bullying prevention and unity.
Sincerely,
Stephanie and Lisa
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Dear families, October 3, 2011
We are happy to look forward to a more structured week here at school. We hope you all enjoyed a little extra time with your child over the long weekend! The kids did a fantastic job last week at the Deaf Children’s Festival. It was awesome to see all the kids from age 3-17 perform at such a high caliber. We also enjoyed watching Angelynne the Deaf Dog do her tricks.
** Remember Thursday is our field trip to the pumpkin farm. You child must return the signed permission forms to school by tomorrow if you haven’t signed them.
Here’s what to expect for the week:
1st grade math: Continue to work on place value through 20 and begin numbers 20-30
2nd grade math: We will be doing reading for math this week: Compare and Contrast math situations.
Guided Reading groups
Lisa’s group: Complete discussing the story, Are You My Mother? Begin to practice re-tell
Stephanie’s group: Starting a new story that will focus on predicting what the character will do next using text for information
Eileen’s group: Discussing the concept of vocabulary and starting a book called Scarecrow
Writing: Introduction to nouns and work on a Halloween story with a beginning, middle and end
Science: wrap-up plant investigation, make vegetable soup on Friday
ASL: Handshape patterns and begin introduction of subject and predicate in ASL
Reminders:
· Please wear good walking shoes and appropriate clothes for the weather to the farm on Thursday!
Have a great week. Please feel free to contact us if you have any concerns or questions!
Stephanie Carson and Lisa Hann
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September 26, 2011
Our Student of the Week! Hooray to Savannah!!
There are a lot of things that will be happening this week! Tomorrow is The Deaf Children’s Festival. We will be doing ASL and Deaf Studies activities, performing our ASL pattern poem, and meeting other Deaf students from other schools. Parents and community are welcome to watch our performance at 1 p.m. at RMDS. If you are interested to have your child eat pizza tomorrow for lunch, our Student Body Government will be selling pizza for $1.
We would like to remind you that RMDS will be having half day on Wednesday. Your child will be dismissed at 12:30. Buses will be running as scheduled. Also, there will be no school on Friday due to professional development day. Since there is no school on Friday, homework can be turned in on Monday morning. Due to being off schedule this week, we will only be sending home Reading Logs for homework.
We are proud and excited to recognize that one of our students, Savannah Jones became student of the week for the ECE/Elementary section of the school! She has met the criteria to become student of the week. She has demonstrated our ROAR expectations (R=Respect, O=Optimistic Attitude, A=Achieve, R=Responsibility). HOORAY to Savannah! Keep up with the great work!
This week we are learning…
Math:
1st Grade: We are working on tens and ones.
2nd Grade: We are using related facts to find missing numbers.
Reading:
Lisa’s Group: We are continuing working on our story elements.
Stephanie’s Group: We are wrapping up our retelling strategy and wrapping up our guided reading book.
Eileen’s Group: We worked on sequencing and will be starting a new book this week.
Science:
We learned to identify and label the seed parts. We will be planting our beans in a soil.
***Reminder: We will be going to the Miller Farm on October 6th. The field trip form has been sent home. Please return the form by this Thursday.
Thank you,
Stephanie Carson and Lisa Hann
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Guided Reading
The students are practicing retelling skills on the book they are reading in guided reading time. They have learned to:
1. Tell the story. Don’t memorize the author’s words.
2. Be expressive.
3. Pick what is most important to tell.
4. Tell details in the right order.
5. Use role-shifting to represent a character.
6. Reread constantly to check the facts.
7. It really takes a lot of practice to get retelling right.
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Seed and plant exploration
We have done several interesting investigations related to seeds and plants. First, we made our own greenhouses. We discussed the concept of greenhouses and why plants grow so well in them (they let the sun in, they are warm and moist inside). Our version of a greenhouse is with a plastic glove. We put a wet cotton ball and a bean seed in each finger. We are now observing them clearly through the glove. They are sprouting and growing! Then, we did an investigation of a seed. We dissected a lima bean that had been soaked in water. We opened it up and examined the inside. The kids were fascinated to learn that a seed has an embryo (small plant), food storage and a seed coat. Each child had their own seed to open and examine with a magnifying glass. It was a great hands-on learning experience. Ask your child to tell you about it!
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Dear families, September 19, 2011
Welcome to another great week at RMDS.
We have been incredibly busy in the classroom! Thanks to all of you who were able to attend our back to school night on Wednesday. The students were excited to read your notes during our journal time. Also, last week, we changed aqua’s aquarium to a larger tank. We were able to watch her move around and get settled in! We also sorted and examined seeds. We also made “greenhouses” for our pinto bean seeds (they should begin to grow this week). This week in class we will be covering the following concepts:
1st grade math: Completing our data assessment unit and starting to explore numbers (introducing tens and ones place value).
2nd grade math: We just completed our chapter 2 test/unit. We will be working on chapter 3 which focuses heavily on subtraction. We will review and practice our subtraction strategies.
Guided Reading groups:
Lisa’s group: Shared reading and discussing and identifying various story elements (character, setting, plot).
Stephanie’s group: We will identify the problem and solution of our story. We will be practicing on how to read fluently with our guided reading book.
Eileen’s group: Will work on story re-tell and building vocabulary
Writing: Creating a complete idea through ASL and translating to writing
Science: continue plant investigation
ASL: Handshape patterns
Reminders:
· Reading logs start today! Please make time to read with or have your child read nightly.
· September 27th, Deaf children’s festival
· September 28th- Early Release (buses will be running)
· September 30th- No School- Professional Development Day
Have a great week. Please feel free to contact us if you have any concerns or questions!
Stephanie Carson and Lisa Hann
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Science Unit: Plants
Seeds
Everyone sorted these seeds.
We discussed that seeds come from plants.
We noticed some differences.
Vanessa noticed they are different colors
Noal noticed they are different sizes.
Amya noticed they have different textures.
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Happy Birthday, Kaydence and Amya!
September 12, 2011
Dear Parents,
We had a great week last week. We celebrated two birthdays last week! We sang a happy birthday, had a cake and made birthday hats. The birthday girls were excited to be a year older. J The students have been observing and taking care of our class pet, Aqua Star, our hermit crab. Aqua is more alert during nights and leaves prints on the sand for us to see in the mornings. We are hoping that he will become more alert in the day so we can see him move, eat, and play in his aquarium.
This Wednesday is Back to School Night from 5:30-7:00 p.m. We hope you can attend this important event to learn what is going on in your child’s classroom. We will be covering our classroom expectations, homework system, and our goal for the year. We also will be handing out a Parent Packet for you to look through and to keep. We hope to see you this Wednesday!
This week we are learning:
Math:
1st Grade: Finishing data analysis and beginning to work on number sense for simple addition and subtraction which we will continue to build on throughout the year.
Second Grade: We are learning to add three numbers and solving word problems by drawing a picture. We will have chapter 2 test this Friday.
Reading: We are working on story elements and retelling strategy.
Writing: We will be working on making our summer vacation summary this week.
Science: We are observing and identifying different parts the plants have.
Many Thanks!
Stephanie Carson and Lisa Hann
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September 6, 2011
Dear 1st and 2nd Grade Families,
Hello! We hope you had a fun-filled weekend! The students had plenty to tell about their weekend in their journals during writing class. The students were given a topic on to write about their Labor’s Day weekend where they drew a picture and wrote a sentence or two about their weekend. We started modeling on how to use a journal and our expectations on what needs to be in the journal.
Homework will still be sent home today and are due on Friday. Last week, we are proud to say that 100% of our students turned in their assignments on time! Yay! Keep it up! They earned a ROAR ticket as they were responsible to turn in their assignments on time.
The first and second grade class is excited to introduce you to our new class pet. Our classroom has transformed into ‘Ocean’ themed room and we have been reading aloud different books based on ocean life, sea animals, and anything related to the ocean theme. Last week, we read “Does Anyone Know Where a Hermit Crab Goes?” and we all agreed to have a hermit crab in the classroom. The students have voted that we will name our crab, Aqua Star. The students will share responsibilities to take care of the crab and will do observations on the crab during our science class. Please do stop by and meet our new class pet! J
This week we are learning about:
Writing: We completed our ASL version of Introduction, Body, and Conclusion and now we will be working on translating our ASL model into English print.
Reading: We have begun reading our guided reading book. We are learning new vocabulary words from our book.
Math:
1st Grade Math: We are continuing our study of data analysis. We are working with tally marks and will be doing picture graphs. The kids need to continue to use Venn diagrams as well.
2nd Grade Math: We are working on order property and addition patterns this week.
Science: We are having our science class for the next few weeks! We will be learning about plants and its functions.
ASL: We are developing location patterns about me.
Sincerely,
Stephanie and Lisa
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SURF’s UP for a new school year!! We are doing an ocean theme in our classroom, come by to visit our cool ocean room!
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Dear families, August 29, 2011
Welcome to another great week at RMDS.
We have been learning routines and rituals in the classroom. We also are discussing a lot about expectations. At RMDS, we use “ROAR” to describe great behavior in the elementary school. R=Respect, O= Optimistic attitude, A=Achievement, R=Responsibility. If we see any of the students using this behavior, we will write them a ROAR ticket. They can use these tickets to “buy” small rewards at the ROAR store on Fridays.
Thank you for supporting your child with their homework last week. Remember, your child will receive a ROAR ticket if they bring it back completed on Fridays.
This week in class we will be covering the following concepts:
1st grade math: Exploring data with Venn diagrams, graphs and tally marks
2nd grade math: Review simple number concepts
Reading : What are the behaviors of good readers? Why do we read?
Begin Guided Reading groups
Writing: Creating a complete idea through ASL and translating to writing
Social Studies: All about me
ASL: Location of signs
Reminders:
· No school on Monday, September, 5th –Labor Day holiday
· Please send a small nutritious snack with your child everyday
· Wear sneakers or activity shoes on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays (for PE class)
Have a great week. Please feel free to contact us if you have any concerns or questions!
Stephanie Carson and Lisa Hann
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Dear 1st and 2nd grade Families,
We are very excited to start off the year with your children. It was nice to work with them and get to know them this week during the assessment days. Today was a fun, productive day for everyone. We would like to explain briefly a few of our expectations and systems for the classroom:
Snack:
We will have a short snack time daily (late morning). Please send a small, nutritious snack for your child to eat everyday.
Supplies:
Thank you for sending school supplies with your child today (If you did not send all the supplies today, please send them with your child next week). However, we realized there are some additional items we omitted from the list and will need for this school year:
2 packs of index cards (100 count) 1 index card box (like a recipe box)
1 Three ring binder (1 ½”) 1 pack of Tab dividers
2 pocket folders 1 change of clothes (please send in a ziplock bag with child’s name)
1 pack of #2 pencils (at least 10 count)
Homework/ Monday folders:
On Mondays students will bring home their “Monday folders.” Inside you will find school related information and their homework packet. Please make sure to check this each week, and send back any necessary information with your child the next day. The homework packet is due on Fridays.
Contact Information:
You can contact us via e-mail.
Lisa Hann’s e-mail address: lhann@jeffco.k12.co.us
Stephanie Carson’s e-mail address: sdecot@jeffco.k12.co.us
You are more than welcome to see us before and after school hours.
Save the Date: September 14th: Back to School Night
Please come on this important event as you will learn more in depth about your child’s classroom.
Many Thanks! We look forward working with your child this year!
Stephanie Carson (2nd Grade Teacher) and Lisa Hann (1st Grade Teacher)
