First Grade Student Newsletter

Kristen Russell

I am a first grade teacher, and as a first grade teacher I am responsible for teaching children how to read and write. This is an enormous responsibility, so as I was thinking about what to do for my project it hit me, I am going to do a project that combines both reading and writing. Beyond this I was going to come up with a project that I could use every single day to further the reading and writing of these first graders. It was at this point it hit me; I am going to create a daily newsletter for the first grade.

The daily newsletter for first grade contains a lot of information, which the students will learn throughout the year. At the beginning of the year I will lead the whole class in filling in the blanks of the newsletter; helping them spell, give them ideas, etc. After about a month the student will start leading this, they will “teach” the class using the newsletter and fill in the blanks, and eventually the students will be able to do the whole newsletter themselves. The newsletter will be completed daily during calendar.  

Now you are probably wondering two things: 1) what does the newsletter look like and 2) how will this keep the students attention. I will first answer the second question, this newsletter will keep the kids attention because they will each have their own journals at their desks which they will fill in each day. At the end of the year each student will have his/her own book that chronicles the year from day one all the way to day one hundred and eighty. On the next page you will see a copy of the journal.

This project is going to be on a trial run this year. If it is successful I will continue to do a daily newsletter but if the students do not like it then I will have to go back and see if I can change it to make it more student friendly. I will also see if this has helped them in reading and writing.