1st Grade
(1A) Miss Andrea Assenza graduated from the University of Florida, cum laude, with a Bachelor of Arts in Education. Her major was elementary education. Miss Assenza is a St. Joan of Arc Alumni and this is her third year teaching.
(1B) Miss Tiffany Alexopoulos holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Early Childhood Education and a Master’s Degree in Pre-K/ Primary education from Nova Southeastern University, FL. She has been an educator since 2003.
FAITH FORMATION HIGHLIGHTS
• Celebrate the life and teachings of Jesus
• Learn about the lives of saints
• Pray daily by saying learned prayers as well as spontaneous prayer and song
• Attend school Masses and Prayer Services
• Learn to share our time, talents and treasure with those in need
MATH
• Sadlier-Oxford
• Daily lessons begin with hands on activities
• Discover clues to solve word problems
• Practice flash cards and speed tests to learn math facts
• Incorporate Matletics.com at school and at home to compete with children around the world and to practice skills such as: addition and subtraction from 20, regrouping while adding, solving word problems, telling time to hour and half hour, using coins, adding three addends, shapes (solids and three dimensional), skip counting by 2’s, 5’s and 10’s, place value
• Daily class work, homework (no H.W. on Fridays), manipulatives and cooperative learning to reinforce concepts and skills
LANGUAGE ARTS
Journeys Series
• Reading-understand characters, compare and contrast, read to comprehend, learning sight words (“Words to Know”), discover an author’s purpose, read fiction and non-fiction, make inferences and predictions
• Phonics-learn decoding skills to discover new words
• Spelling-correlate to weekly stories, apply to story writing
• Writing-create stories in a variety of genres: biographies, make believe, etc.
• AR-Accelerated Reader-read a book independently then take a short quiz which is computer generated to build Independent Reading Level
SPECIALS
• Spanish-twice weekly
• Music-twice weekly, optional private group lessons for violin instruction (monthly fee)
• PE twice a week
• Art-once a week
• Library-once a week
• Computer Lab-once a week
• *Ballet is optional (once a week during the school day with a one time recital fee)
• *Violin is optional during the day (for an additional fee)
TECHNOLOGY
• Use of SMART Board enhances all lessons throughout the day
• Use of iPads and SmartTable
SCIENCE / SOCIAL STUDIES
Harcourt for Social Studies and Scholastic News and Agriculture in the class for Science
• Weekly lessons, incorporated into weekly reading lessons
• Students will go to the middle school science lab to do an experiment once a quarter
PROJECTS
• Arctic Animal Diorama Project
• Book in a Bag Book Report
• In-house Spelling Bee competition
• Community service learning projects
EVENTS
• Accelerated Reader Kick-off (dress up as your favorite book character and bring your favorite book to school day)
• Around the World Day (dress up in your heritage clothing or wear red, white and blue and “travel” from country to country and get their “passport” stamped (class to class), sample food, do research and decorate their classroom in their assigned country’s traditions
• STREAM day
• Grandparents Day
• Christmas Program
• St Patrick’s Day Program
FIELD TRIPS
Visits from High Tech/ High Touch twice a year, and others to be announced.
NUMEROUS CLUBS & EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES
Available after school for first graders such as: Creative Culinary I, Scouts, Drama, Irish Step, Soccer, Science, and Mandarin.