moving to first grade By Cathy-Dee

For your first week especially you need to be prepared for students who miss their moms, students who do not know how to print their name, who can't sit still, etc., I have a list of neat ideas for classroom management for younger grades if you are interested just send me an email.

Other little things.....

- they need a lot of breaks and movement especially in the first couple of months of school. Most work assignments shouldn't be longer than 15 minutes and then a little movement break before moving on to the next activity.
- you have to think through your classroom routines carefully. Where do you want their books stored, how will sharpening of pencils be handled, etc.,
- everything revolves around the letters, sounds and reading along with basic number concepts. So even within your social studies and science you will most likely do a lot of extra reading and writing, graphs, etc., to get everything covered.
- marking is much easier, but prep work is more. I find I spend way more time preparing work, displays, organizing things than I did when I taught older grades. With older grades I also had them help out a lot with displays, etc., and grade 1 students are not usually good at this type of helping until around Easter onwards.

Guided reading as mentioned in the other post is one good method for teaching reading in your class, but there are other good methods as well. Find out what the other grade 1 teachers are doing in your school or division and take their lead for now. I do not use guided reading myself, but I do incorporate some of it's philosophies. A lot depends on your group of students. I have a class this year with 8 students who require basically one-on-one attention 95% of the time even if it means just keeping them on task.

You will need to do things like a calendar time, weather charts and other morning activities that you probably do not do as extensively in your grade 4/5 classes.

If your school will allow it, see if you can spend 1 or 2 days in a grade 1 room in the next month. This will give you a much better idea of some of the changes and routines you will be finding in the Fall. It might even be beneficial to spend even a 1/2 day in the kindergarten class. The kids will be pretty close to where they will be at in September so you can get a better idea as well of their levels right now.

I just looked at my student's binders (I keep a binder of sample work throughout the year to use mainly at parent-teacher interviews). On the first day I had them trace their names and then print their names (15-20 minutes) and most traced the first line and printed their name once or twice. Now they could do that same page in about 10 minutes completely done. And of course many could not print their names properly either. It is amazing to see the development in one year.

For the next 2-3 months, find a grade one teacher who might be willing to share some of their materials - i.e. when they photocopy work for their class, make one extra copy to give to you. This way you can start building up materials to use with your new class.

I also advise purchasing a primary fonts package -I found one through my local teacher supply store. They have interlined dotted fonts so you can make up those early printing pages, etc., yourself.

Feel free to email me if you have any questions. I do love first grade, work and all! It is one of the grades where you do see the growth happening right before your eyes. And the little ones love you and respect you which sometimes we do not find in those older grades.