Good To Be Back

I just love the first morning back to school after Christmas break.  The children come back excited to be here, feeling at ease and comfortable.  I missed them, too.
We are back at it full force this week with a new list of Word Journal vocabulary.  We will also continue with the math homework through the week..
Now that we are in the third quarter, we will begin taking spelling tests.  The children are so excited about starting this.  On Monday a list of eight words should have come home in the book bag.  These are words taken from the Sitton Spelling Program.  They are considered to be the most used words in the first grade written language.  Each week the children will be tested over eight words from this Sitton list.  Sometimes the words will be new words.  Some weeks you will see words repeated.  It all depends on how well they are spelled on the previous tests.
This week the main things to remember are, NO CAPITAL LETTERS in the words.  Sometimes words need capital letter but these words do not.  Also, they have to print neatly and correctly.
Usually each week, I will send the new spelling list on the first day of the week.  Then, two days later, we take the pretest.  It helps to see how much they need to practice and it gives them a second chance. If they get them all correct on the pretest, they don't have to take the final test! The final test will be on the last day of the week.  I can't wait to see how well they do this Wednesday and Friday!