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Harper's Happenings! This blog is designed to allow both the teacher and students to write about our school day. Mrs. Harper maintains this blog and reserves the right to remove any writings that do not meet this blogs objectives. Happy Reading!
Welcome to First Grade
August 26, 2008
Today Mrs. Fleming returned to bear hugs from her Room 103 friends! We were all so excited that she came back to us!
We started literacy workshop today. With only 10 friends in our classroom we only have three groups! This is such a change for us! We are used to five groups and barely fitting it all in each week! Mrs. Fleming's group read two decodable readers. When a student finishes a story he/she will take it home to keep. The decodable readers go along with the phonics skills taught. For some students they are very easy to read. I think of it as a great time to review skills - grammar and phonics. If a student is struggling with a decodable reader we will keep the book at school and work on it more before sending the book home.
The weather has kept us inside. We have all missed our playground time this week - Mrs. Harper the most (okay maybe a few children have missed it too!) We explored the basement of our building today because we heard Mrs. McDuffie say on the intercom that we may have to go down there for a bad weather drill and it sounded scarey. We looked all around the basement in several rooms and realized that it is not a scarey place at all!
We had our first visit to the library on Monday and loved getting to go back today. Each student is trying to earn a star on our name tags. The star means we can go to the library without an adult! Four students went to the library with Mrs. Fleming today she watched while they tried to earn a star, but no stars earned on tags yet!
Today we had our first visit to the computer lab! We learned how to log in a laptop, open Word, type a sentence, close out Word, and log off the laptop. This took about 45 minutes with two exhausted teachers at the end!!!
Today was a great day in Room 103 and tomorrow will be even better!
posted 8/26/2008 11:25 PM
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August 18, 2008
We started week two!
A day full of speed! Mrs. Harper started speding up the pace today. The kids could still hang in there, but some commented on how much faster the lessons were today. I think the children do not realize that what slowed us down last week was the process of learning how to use a supply box and an individual desk.
Everyone is doing a great job with coming in to school ready to unpack their own backpack, putting the LION Keeper on the checking desk, graphing their lunch, hanging up their backpack and getting striaght to work.
We love our checking pens! It is so much fun to check our own work - some of us feel like we are grading papers!
Another fun day in Room 103!
posted 8/18/2008 10:41 PM
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August 15, 2008
Today we come to the end of our first week together. Our children are wonderful, kind, smart, and helpful to each other.
This morning we made a picture frame - it needed all day to dry. Then Mrs. Fleming added our pictures with hot glue so we could take them home today!
Today we continued our pattern of phonics, math, and handwriting - no one was surprised! We reviewed the Kevin Henkes books from the week and some children asked to bring one of the books home and of course I said yes!
We used our LION cards in lunch and went to music right after lunch. Then we has a three ring circus in our classroom... Mrs. Fleming helped children put fingerprints on a page with their picture, Mrs. Harper helped children make movie star glasses, some children checked out books, and everyone made pictures of themselves. And believe it or not we did this ALL at the same time! We turned up the praise music, sang and talked and worked so hard on all of the projects!
We have learned alot this week. We end with love in our hearts and knowledge in our heads, and a backpack full of joyful surprises. We have the BEST class ever!
posted 8/15/2008 3:23 PM
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August 14, 2008
Another wonderful day!
Lots of computer issues today so if you e-mailed me and did not hear back that's why!
Today we finished our "Me" posters that we started yesterday.
We had our first Spanish class with Mrs. Heisler. She was very impressed with how well the children were behaved and how fast they learned new Spanish words.
We went to our second PE class with Mrs. Bunn and came back very sweaty!
We did phonics, math and handwriting, of course. We practiced moving at a quicker pace! We are learning how to get our supplies out of our desk quickly and how to put them back up quickly! That is a skill all in its self!
Mrs. Fleming put our giant puzzle pieces together and made a door decoration with them. She hung them on the door. The children will be surprised when they come to school tomorrow.
It is already late. Mrs. Harper is watching the Olympic swimmers and playing with our new kitten, Jasmine. Ready for her to fall asleep!
posted 8/14/2008 11:09 PM
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August 13, 2008
Another great day! The rain held us back from chapel this morning. Between the rain and the tornado warnings we did not head across campus (and neither did anyone else!). We could not go to the playground this afternoon since the equipment was wet and it was raining! We did another phonics lesson, another math lesson, and more handwriting. Anyone starting see see a pattern! Someone asked when first grade is going to start to get hard!!! I told them just wait until next week! We started "ME" posters. The children are having lots of fun fillin in all of the different sections especially the list of friends! We wrote in Lukesters jounal today - we were the first class in the "whole entire" school to write in his journal. Lukester is one of three lions that travel thoughout St. Luke. After he visits for a day or two we write in his journal about what we did with Lukester and send him to another class. We brought him to Mrs. Renner's room so her class could participate.
Another fun day! Mrs. Harper is heading home and hoping the Olympics has something good on so she can prop up her feet and relax!
posted 8/13/2008 6:24 PM
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August 12, 2008
Another great day in Room 103!
Today we started our day by drawing pictures of ourselves. The drawing will go in our year long scrapbooks. We reviewed and then re-read "Wimberly Worried". Then each student wrote his/her own worries and drew pictures about his/her worries. Hopefully Mrs. Harper will have time to post the pictures on our website before Friday! We read "Julius Baby of the World" This story is about a big sister, Lily, who does not like the baby brother, Julius, that has just joined her family. She talks ugly about her brother until her cousin does the same. She then stands up for her brother and in doing so falls in love with him. The student have homework tonight about themselves being "The baby of the world". Parents can help with the information, but the handwritng must be the childs! In phonics we reviewed the short "o" sound. Another easy phonics paper we all agreed! After lunch we had our first quiet reading time and learned how to return and check out books from the "book nook". Some children wanted to keep their book another night. Mrs. Harper was OK with that idea! Then we headed to the playground, but had to come in early because it began raining! We did our first math sheet. For math homework Mrs. Harper gave the children some special directions that were not on the worksheet. We will see who can remember the special directions when the homework comes back tomorrow. No fair e-mailing Mrs. Harper and asking! We made posters about ourselves to hang in the classroom and puzzle pieces to hang on the classroom door. Another busy day in first grade! Mrs. Harper is tired again and ready for another long hot bath (with bubbles!).
posted 8/12/2008 3:47 PM
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August 10, 2008
8:00AM It is hard to believe that summer is over and school is beginning. If you click on the "RSS" on the right hand side of the screen you will be able to receive updates to this blog as they happen. Hey it's beats trying to remember one more thing in our busy day! As soon as the students leave today we will add a posting to this blog about our day. 3:45PM WOW! What a day! The kids are awesome! We have the best first grade class! This morning we made our LION Keeper covers and colored puzzle pieces that will make a new door decoration after we add photos of the children! We took lots of photos today! Then we looked at our LION Keepers and searched through every section! Phonics was next with our first lesson on the sound "n". We all agreed that it was easy, but that was a good thing since today is the first day of school! We went to PE in the gym with Mrs. Bunn,Art with Mrs. Johnson in the Middle School building, and lunch in the ELC building! We did lots of walking! We made a list of things that we worry about. We read "Wimberly Worried" about a mouse that worries too much. We learned than some of our class mates worry alot, but no one was as worrisome as Wimberly! We checked out books from the "book nook" and have them at home tonight to share with mom and dad. We all promised to bring them back tomorrow looking as nice as they did when we brought them home!
Today was a good day and now Mrs. Harper is headed home to soak in the tub and rest up for tomorrow!
posted 8/10/2008 3:45 PM
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Room 103 !
Mrs. Harper's First Grade
dharper@stlukeum.com
St. Luke School
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