Things to Know!! 

The Christian County Public School District has implemented a new literacy program last year called Literacy Benchmark. This is just one resource I will use throughout the year to help your children learn the skills they will need to know in order to progress to the second grade. First grade readers are very busy and you will notice that I send home nightly reading and hit it really hard after Fall Break. By the end of first grade students should be reading on a level J.

Important!!:

• Read with your child 15-20 mins a night. Students will have a plastic ziploc bag with a couple of leveled books to read nightly. The books need to read every night to develop fluency and accuracy in their reading skills. It may seem boring, but it is necessary to develop these important skills. It is very important that you read with your child for 15-20 mins nightly, ask a few questions that I have on the book log, and sign their reading log.
• Students will also have spelling words that will be in the classroom newsletter on Mondays. The test will be the next Monday, giving students a full week to practice reading, writing, manipulating, and spelling the words. Spelling words are phonic based and tie into the weekly phonics lesson. It is a good idea to also practice these at home. It is not a goal to memorize the words then forget them. It is important that they remember the spelling patterns and listen to the sounds as they spell.
• Sightwords are also listed on the weekly newsletter. I list all of the sightwords weekly on the newsletter. At the end of the month students will be given an assessment that will indicate they can read the words and use them correctly in sentence phrases. Students will make their own sightword flashcards that they will keep in their ziploc bags to practice at home nightly. It is important that the students by the end of the month can "See it, Say it" when they see a sightword. 70% of what your child reads is sight words.
• If you have access to the internet it is strongly encouraged but not required to have your student practice independent reading with their Raz-Kids account and their phonic skills with their iRead account. When using Raz-Kids students need to listen to the story twice (2Xs), read the story twice (2Xs) and take the quiz. If they do not feel comfortable enough to take the quiz, they can listen more and read more to be able to comprehend. After all of the reading literature and reading informational standards have been taught I will take a commulative grade over all of their completed quizes for the week. I look at the time stamp and do not take grades from quizzes that are completed at home. I also watch closely to make sure students are following all of the directions before I take a grade. Grades are only taken from "My Assignments" that are posted.
• There are also phrases on the weekly newsletter that the students practice in class and I would like for them to practice at home. It is very important that your student learns to read these phrases with fluency and accurracy. 

If you have any questions please feel free to contact me.