Mrs. Sieverding, First Grade
Phone: 747-3117, ext. 2217
tsieverding@edbqhs.org
Welcome to first grade. I am looking forward to the school year and working with you and your child. I would like to take this opportunity to explain a few items that you will see coming home throughout the year.
First of all, I want to share with you our class behavior plan. School wide the CHARACTER COUNTS PROGRAM will be enforced. This is based on the Six Pillars of Character that are referred to as “TRRCC”:
Trustworthiness
Respect
Responsibility
Fairness
Caring
Citizenship
I will expect the Six Pillars of Character to be demonstrated everyday. I also have 5 general classroom rules that go along with these pillars. We will use the green, yellow and red stoplight idea. All students will start the day fresh being on green. If a child receives 2 verbal warnings he/she will move their name to yellow. If he/she continues to break a rule or has a severe incident then he/she will place their name on red. If on red the student may go to a time out area and reflect on what he/she has done. A note home or phone call may be warranted. At the beginning of each week, students will receive a new CHARACTER COUNTS sheet that has a circle, the Six Pillars of Character listed, a blank spot for comments, and a box for your initials each night. At the end of each day, students will color their circle (green, yellow or red). If your child is on red I will try to write a brief explanation. I ask that you initial every day so I know you have seen and discussed with your child their character. I will staple this sheet to their assignment notebook each Monday. I will collect these sheets at the end of the week. We will begin this as soon as we receive the assignment notebooks from the office. It may be after Labor Day.
Your child will bring home a red folder every night. You will find school notes, corrected papers and maybe homework in this folder. Please take the time each evening to review the papers and to empty the folder. If you need to send a note or homework back to school, please put these items in the red folder. I will check these folders with the children each morning. It is very difficult for a child to know what’s what when the folder is full of papers, so please empty it. This red folder needs to come back to school every day.
One of our pillars of our Character Counts program is responsibility. What better way of teaching this than through homework. Each child will be given a file folder marked “Homework”. From time to time, you will see this folder, with unfinished work, come home. Here is an opportunity to help your child become responsible. He/she will need to finish the work and return all completed work in the folder to school the next day. Most children will need a little help learning this at first, but will soon catch on. Please try to oversee this. I would like to mention that if you see this “Homework” folder frequently it may indicate that your child must learn to use his/her independent work time more wisely.
Your child will bring home a new sheet of reading words every 6th day. Please practice these words each night until the child knows these well. You may cut them apart and use them as flashcards, or keep them as a whole sheet in the zip lock bag. I will also send home little paper books for them to practice reading. Keep these stories in the bag also. Please send this bag back each day so we can practice the stories together in class. On the 6th day of these stories I will test the children over the words, as well as, the oral reading of the stories. I encourage my students to point to each word that he/she reads. Then I know if the child is reading the words or just memorizing the book. Memorizing is the first stage of learning to read, but then they need to take the next step to recognizing the words and decoding. When the children have been tested then I will give them a new list of words with new stories. Please keep the old words at home in a box, a big envelope or keep them in their plastic bag and review these now and then. All the paper stories will be collected after the test is completed.
Each child will have an assignment notebook. He/she will write a very brief version of assignments, i.e.: Practice vocab (reading words), read story. Some days there will not be any assignments, especially at the beginning of the year. However, once we get going in our reading, expect to see assignments. Please check and initial this notebook everyday and help your child get in the practice of doing his homework. This assignment notebook also includes the school handbook. The office will not be sending home a separate handbook this year. Please read over this handbook and review throughout the year. Also, send this notebook back to school each morning!
You will see a black binder come home in the coming weeks. This is our “Homelinks”. Inside the binder are 5 minute math assignments that go with the day’s math lesson. Please help your child complete this assignment and return the binder to school the next day. I will send a more detailed note explaining this binder on your first night of Homelinks.
Thursday is our library day. You should find a library book in your child’s book bag on this day. Your child may keep the book for one week. If your child forgets the book on Thursday he/she will not be able to check out another book until the previous book is returned to the library.
I have a few reminders for you. First, if your child is absent you need to do two things. First, call the office to report the absence. Second, when your child returns to school you need to send a note explaining the absence. Also, if your child usually takes the bus home at night and for some reason you or someone else needs to pick him/her up from school, please send a note. If your child does not have a note and you are not at school because you are running late or stuck in traffic, we must put your child on the bus. Also, if a friend’s parent is picking up your child, we need a note from you stating permission that your child may leave with that person. If you forget to write a note one day, you may call Gina or Debi in the office about any changes in transportation.
Finally, birthday invitations may be passed out at school under the following conditions. If a student is having a party he/she must invite all the girls, all the boys, or the entire class. If your child wants to invite only some from my class and some from the other first grade classe, I will not allow the invitations to be handed out at school. I certainly understand why you limit the number of children, but first graders do not understand and I see many tears if they are not invited.
Thank you so much for coming to your child’s open house. I enjoyed meeting you. If you have any questions or concerns throughout the year, please feel free to call (815) 747-3117 ext. 2210, or send a note with your first grader. I am always willing to help you and your child in any way. It is very important that we all work together so that your child has a positive first grade experience.
You may want to keep this letter for future reference!
Let’s Have A Terrific Year!
Mrs. Sieverding’s
Classroom Management Plan
My goal is to provide a safe learning environment for all my students, so they can learn at their full potential. When creating a safe environment for learning, a management plan has to be in place.
I run my classroom mainly on positive reinforcement. I believe reinforcing the good behaviors only makes them occur more often. Although, just rewarding the positive behaviors and good choices students make, doesn’t always work. Unfortunately, some students choose to make bad choices sometimes and students need to be held accountable for those choices, therefore consequences will take place. My classroom behavior plan is based on individual choices. Each student has the choice to make either good decisions or bad decisions and I have rewards and consequences for both.
My Reward System
When I observe a student showing good character, consistently following directions, helping others, or just simply doing what they are suppose to be doing, I will spontaneously acknowledge them for the positive choices they are making by giving them a reward. I will announce to the class what I like about the positive behaviors being portrayed and anticipate others to model the same positive behaviors.
On each student’s desk there is a small white paper and a firefly bug jar with 10 fireflies inside. The white paper is used for giving tally marks to students who make positive choices. When a student earns 10 tally marks, they will release 1 firefly from their jar and put it on their camping scene. The students will then graph their 10 tally marks onto the good behavior chart. I will then erase the 10 marks they earned on their white paper and the student will start again and try to earn another 10 tally marks to release another firefly to put on their camping scene. This process will continue until the student puts all 10 fireflies onto their camping scene.
When the student reaches their goal of releasing all 10 fireflies, this will mean they have met their individual goal of 100 recognized good choices! The student will then get to pick a well deserved prize from my classroom store. This process continues throughout the year.
If all the students in the class reach their goal of 100 good choices, the entire class will be rewarded with a pizza fun day provided by myself.
My Behavior Consequence Plan
When a student decides that he/she is not going to follow the rules and make a bad decision, I will give them a chance to change their behavior by reviewing and explaining my expectations of what good behavior looks like and what consequences will be enforced; this will be a verbal warning. If the student still chooses to make bad choices, they will be asked to move their name…
On my back wall there is a behavior chart. Every student has a bumblebee with their name on it. There are three beehives: Green = good choices; Yellow = warning zone (remember to make better choices; and Red = stop and think how to change behavior.
After a student is given a verbal warning and they still choose not to follow directions, I will ask them to move their bee to the yellow beehive. This means the student is under a warning. If the student still chooses to move forward with bad choices, I will ask the student to move their bee to the red beehive. This means the student will have a 10 minute meeting with myself to discuss the inappropriate behavior and discuss better ways to act in class. If meeting with the student doesn’t change the behavior then in certain instances a parent conference or principal intervention may be warranted.
In some special instances there may be a student who may need more then the stop light system. In that case I will work with the elementary counselor to design a behavior intervention plan that is best suited to meet their needs.
This behavior plan has proved to be very effective in past years and it’s a plan that holds each individual student accountable for their own actions and the decisions they make. This plan will help teach students how to think before they act and it reinforces positive character development, because after all CHARACTER COUNTS!