August 17, 2015
Dear Families,
Welcome back to school! I look forward to getting to know
all of you and hearing all of the fantastic stories about summer adventures. For
the people who don’t know me, this is my 12th year at Prairie Hills
and my 32nd year of teaching. I have spent equal amounts of time in
first and second grades, with one year in Kindergarten and one year in third. I
am happy to be in first grade this year. My husband and I have five children –
3 boys (39, 26, and 17) and two girls (12, 11) and one granddaughter (5). My
background in Special Education has given me the foundation to teach children
not curriculum. My desire is to reach every child where they are at. I truly
believe in the importance of our partnership as we go through the year. You
know your child better than anyone in the world and we work hard to keep up
with the best practices when it comes to teaching your child. Together we will
assure your child will have a successful year in first grade. 
I’d like to take a
minute to share with you my philosophy of teaching young writers. Written
language is learned in much the same way as oral language. Just as a baby
babbles, attempts sounds and words, puts words together and communicates, a
young writer follows a similar pattern of scribbling, attempting letters and
words, putting words together and communicates. With both forms of language
goes the assumption that with good modeling and lots of practice the learner
will achieve mastery. I believe all children will learn to write. I want to go
a step farther. I want all children to need to write in much the same way they
need to talk. I hope many will even love to write and will “live like a
writer.” Ralph Fletcher, in his book What a Writer Needs, urges us,
“Don’t be afraid to live like a writer. Writers explore.”
When I live like a writer, I become
a better writer myself. When I paid more particular attention to what a writer
needs, I found the students produced longer, more coherent pieces as well as
more pieces. Young writers need tremendous practice writing. You’ll probably
recall when your child went through the different stages of playing with words
and asking question upon question – What’s that? Where are we going? To more
thought-provoking questions – Why is the sky blue? Why did Grandma die? As
frustrating as this can be, your child was learning about language. In Katie
Wood Ray’s book, About the Authors, she tells us that young writers need
to make lots of stuff. “It’s this making of something that matters so much to
them and drives their work across the year.” I will continue this practice along
with implementing a Writers’ Workshop format.
We will begin the year making
“stuff” – books, journals, pictures, letters, notes, etc. As the year
progresses, we will cover many units of study in writing to refine our craft.
For first grade we are responsible for demonstrating proficiency in these
genres – personal narrative, opinion writing, and simple report – All About __ and
Question and Answer Report.
These will become units of study
for a time. We’ll also cover things that will help us become better writers –
writing clear description, choosing a topic, revision, how to structure text in
a new way, making illustrations work better with the written text and how to
peer conference to name a few of the areas covered.
The summer of 2011 permitted me the
luxury of reading two books to add to my knowledge base: CAFÉ and The
Daily Five. Mrs. Hastings purchased
It promises to be an exciting year.
Watch for my periodic newsletters on our blog and on the school’s website for
other notes about what is happening in our classroom. Look for the blog address
in my closing. It also will be connected to our school website. Some letters
like this one will focus on only one subject area. Others will cover all of the
subjects with just an update or two. I hope you will use this tool to help you
know what is going on to be an effective partner. I believe we need each other
to make your child’s year be the best! Please feel free to contact me with any
concerns or questions or just to talk about one of your favorite people.
Welcome to our community of learners.
Sincerely,
Susan Stark
720-972-8804
http://firststarkstars.blogspot.com/
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