About Me
- Caroline Serafino
- CT, United States
- Wife to Sean. Mommy to Casey and our 7 year old Jack Russell Shih tzu Gizmo.
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Important End of the Year School Dates
Dear Parents and Families,
The end is near! As I am getting overwhelmed with the entire end of the year hoopla I thought you might be feeling the same way. In an attempt to organize myself I made a list of important dates and thought it might be beneficial to all of you as well. There is a lot of going on. So here are some important dates for you as we wrap up our school year.
June 8th- Dance Recital for all my little dancers
June 9th- Enrichment
June 10th- Anthony Crossman birthday celebration & Yearbook Signing
If you bought a yearbook for your child they will get the yearbook that morning. The children will have time to have friends from all grades to sign it. Please don’t let your child keep bringing in the book after that day as it is a distraction.
June 14th- Book Swap in 1st Grade
We will have our own book swap in our classroom. Each student may bring books to trade with their classmates. If your child does not bring in books they may not participate. Each student who does participate will go home with the same amount of books as they brought in for the exchange.
June 17th- Summer birthday celebration & Sound Waters Visits
We will be celebrating Madeline Maxfield and Kaarlo Serrano’s birthday since their birthdays fall during the summer months when we are not in school.
Sound Waters will visit our first grade classroom with some cool creatures. Students will get the chance to see all the creatures up close. Students will also get the chance to go out and explore at the beach with the guidance of the Sound Waters teachers. Please have your child wear an older pair of sneakers as I know some of them have fancy sneakers (Twinkle Toes) that we don’t want to get ruined.
June 21- End of Year Celebration & Beach Party
End of Year Celebration will be in our 1st Grade Classroom at 9am. We would like to invite our parents in for a special wrap up of the year. We hope that you can all join us. I will also be giving students their moving up certificates that day Refreshments will be served.
Beach Party – see extra beach note. Students should wear sunscreen, gym uniform and sneakers to school. Students may bring a brown bag lunch, water bottle, a towel, a hat, beach toys, and beach shoes in a bag.
June 22-Awards Ceremony for grades K-4
10:45am in Gym/Auditorium
Students will be given a certificate by Mrs. Serafino and Sr. Anne Landry for completing their school year. Students will also receive an ice pop at lunch to celebrate.
June 23- Last Day of School (½ Day of School)
Unfortunately, I will not be here for the last day of school. About a year ago, my best friend from California asked me to be her Matron of Honor. She then asked me when school would be out so she could pick her wedding date and to make sure I would be out of school. Well, it was a great plan until we hit the month of January and we had ALL that snow. The snow came and kept coming! So there is my story. Mrs. Bigelow will be here as my substitute. I am so sorry for missing the last day.
Hope this agenda helps and I thank you for your support all year. Please let me know if you have any questions about any of the events. You can email me at cserafino@diobptedu.org or send a message in your child’s folder.
Warmest Regards,
Caroline Serafino
1st Grade Teacher
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Field Trip
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Friday, April 29, 2011
What's Been Going On In 1st Grade??
In Language Arts, we have been working with antonyms, synonyms and homophones. We did a lot of fun excercises on the SmartBoard to practice these concepts. I have listed some websites below to practice these skills below. We also read a great book together called Tops & Bottoms in which we learned about antonyms and other new vocabulary.
Word Frog http://www.arcademicskillbuilders.com/games/frog/frog.html
Opposites Attract http://school.eb.com/lm/games/GE_4_4/GE_4_4.htm
Synonym Toast http://www.scholastic.com/wordgirl/synonym_toast.htm
Walk the Plank http://www.firstschoolyears.com/literacy/word/other/synonyms/interactive/synonyms.htm
Synonyms Sam's Lab http://pbskids.org/lions/games/synsam.html
In Phonics, we have been practicing reading, writing and spelling with words that have l blends and s blends. We also have been reading words that end in y. Y is a tricky letter. It is sometimes considered a vowel. This week we called it the chameleon letter or Tricky Y the Robber Guy because it takes or steals the sound of 'i' like in try or 'e' like in the word funny.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Prayer Leader Schedule
Friday, April 8, 2011
Weekly Wrap Up
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
CHECK IT OUT!!!! Live Decorah Eagles Webcam!
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Weekly News for March 21-March 25
Language Arts:
Contractions are a shortened form of one or two words. An apostrophe takes the place of the missing letter/s.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Get Your Hands on a Good Book!!
activation code: GQ8X9
Please take time to explore the book club flyer either online or the paper copy previously sent home. Online ordering is fast and easy. If you order online, we earn a free book for the classroom library.
Some recommendations include:
Lucky April Book Club Order
*You will notice I have included a lot of chapter books in this list because I think at this point in the year the children could/should be challenging themselves a little more. We have discussed finding "just right books" which are not too hard and not to easy for us. JUST RIGHT! The Lucky Book Order form are for grades 2 and 3 and I would definitely say we have some great readers in this class that are up for a challenge.
30. Geronimo Stilton Save the White Whale
37. HOP The Chapter Book
67. Rainbow Magic: Emma the Easter Fairy
48. Magic Tree House Research Pack
19. Cam Jansen Pack
74. Scooby - Doo! Reader Pack
13. Black Lagoon Pack
70. Ready Freddy! Collection
Spring Gift Books Order:
80. Silverlicious
66. The Olivia Pack
48. Junie B. Jones Complete Collection
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Friday, March 18, 2011
Weekly Rap Up March 14-March 18
I decided to start a blog for our class so that you could stay up to date with all of our information. I am hoping you find it as useful and as informative as our weekly newsletter as I would like to phase that out and replace it with this blog. I hope that you will enjoy reading the parent tips and reading tips from Reading Rockets. We will see how this goes...fingers crossed.
- Reading/Language Arts/Phonics: We did a lot of writing this week and read a lot of stories themed around St. Patrick's Day. Students are working on spelling, reading and writing with long vowels in phonics. Mrs Hajjar brought in a reader for us from the high school who read us a book for Read Across America. He read a book to us about Jimmy Hendrix. We also worked on fluency. Fluency is having the ability to read with speed, accuracy, and proper expression. Children who do not read with fluency sound choppy or awkward. Children time eachother while reading a passage to figure out our words per minute.Reading and Timing our Partners
- Social Studies: We worked on understanding our place on the map. Thank you for sending your children in with their addresses. They worked on knowing their addresses, town/city, state, country. We even worked onn working on our continents. Students also learned abour types of land and water that make up our beautiful country and resources we use including wood, gas, water, and soil.
"Me on the Map" mapping projects on bulletin board
- Religon: We took our test on the Good Samaritan story. Tests will be given back on Monday. Please remember to send back the text book if it has not already been returned.
Our First Grade Classroom is in need of donations! We need paper towel, clorox wipes, tissues and antibacterial hand sanitiezer. If you did not donate in the beginning of the school year please think about donating now.
Please see our school website for up to date calendar information. We have a half day next Friday! http://www.ourladystaroftheseaschool.org/
Go to the Daily Stamford and vote for your favorite OLSS teacher so that our school can win a $5, 000 dollars and the teacher can win a $100 gift card to Staples. Voting continues until April 11th and you have one vote each day until voting ends.