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At Bethany Elementary, we have high expectations for your children both academically and behaviorally. Bethany Bullfrogs are expected to apply and practice the student expectations of being respectul, responsible, and ready to learn.

Each student has a Communication Card. Your child's teacher will use this card to communicate with you daily. The Communication Card reflects what has occured as a teacher works with a child to take ownership over his/her citizenship and work habits. The purpose is to keep you well informed and showcase student strengths.

The Communication Card will be located in the front pocket of your child's planner and will come home for your review each evening. It does need to be returned to school with the planner every day. Please sign it at the end of each week.

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We believe that parent-school communication is a vital key to your child’s academic success. To support this belief, in first grade, we will use the student planner/agenda daily, in a variety of ways. It is very important that your child bring that planner each day.
• Your student will have a daily message to you on that date in the planner. This will be in the form of a handwritten note or sticker with detailed information or updates about first grade and our activities.
• On the first day of the week, students record their spelling words for that week in the planner.
• The student will store their homework log and Communication Card in the front pocket of the planner. These are turned in each week for recognition of nightly homework completion and student successes.

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Homework is an integral part of the learning process. Homework will be relevant and meaningful and many times will be more than just pencil and paper activities.

Each student has three nightly assignments.

1. Read a minimum of 10 minutes each night. Since growth in reading is directly dependant on the amount of student practice, it is important that you spend time each evening listening to your child read.
2. Practice the weekly spelling pattern and words each night. Weekly spelling words will come home on Monday to be tested at the end of the week.
3. Ask a family member to initial the homework card AND daily entry in their planner. Click here to download and print a blank Homework Card.

Special projects will have attached notes from the teachers about the purpose, expectations, and due date for the project.

Students should receive guided assistance and praise from the parent, but all thoughts, ideas, and answers should come from the student.

Homework will be given across the grade level, as a class, or individualized on an as-needed basis.

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First Six Weeks
Solid Foundations
Students learn how their school and home gives them a solid foundation to grow and learn. They discover that there are rules and responsibilities at school and at home. Map skills are a focus, as students explore the concept that we all have homes, a hometown, a home state, a home country, and a home planet or world. They will learn that regardless of where they live people must follow the same health and safety rules in order to live a balanced and stable life. Students will learn the rules to build a solid health and safety foundation.

Second Six Weeks
Cycles
Students learn about the concept of continuity and change by exploring patterns, routes, and cycles. Students will learn about cycles of all kinds; cycles of time, cycles in nature, and cycles of the past and present. During this Organizing Idea, students will discover that a cycle is a series of events that repeats over and over again. The students will understand that the continuity of cycles in their envirionment will allow them to predict and to plan events. During the culminating unit, students will apply their knowledge of cycles past and present to cycles in the future.

Third Six Weeks
Systems Through Time
Students learn that a system is a set of components that work together to do a job. Systems for inventions, scientific investigation and problem solving will be explored. Buying, selling, and bartering is explored as students investigate our money system. Students learn about the historical figures who have solved problems for our country. Students learn the components and examples of a system for good citizenship.

Fourth Six Weeks
Cause and Effect
Students define actions, interactions, cause and effect. They apply these concepts as they relate to energy; light and color, physical and magnetic force. Students learn where to find information as they research the lives of historical figures honored on Presidents' Day, Veterans' Day, Memorial Day and Martin Luther King Day. Students explore choices made by these historical figures and the effect they had on our country. Students learn about choices they must make in order to become successful adults. Students learn their choices can have amazing effects. They consider their future as they write how they can change the world.

Fifth Six Weeks
Why Classify?
The student wil learn that commonalities are used to group or classify and will define attributes and characteristics. They will reflect on commonalities and differences among classmates and complete a questionnaire about personal interests and likes. Information on the similarities and differences of plant and animal life is also a major focus of this Organizing Idea. Through hands-on observations and experiments students will discover the many everyday uses of plants and explore the diversity of the natural world and places on Earth.

Sixth Six Weeks
Making Connections
Students investigate the "how" and "why" of communication. Whether reading or writing, speaking or listening, using sign language, pictures, graphics, or body language, people communicate every day. Students learn about sound and communication and the ways technology has changed communication over time. They investigate the messages commercials and the media communicate. Commmunication and freedom are explored as students discover that voting is a way of communicating. They find out what the lives of leaders past and present communicate to us. Students learn the meaning of state and national symbols as they express beliefs and values. Reviewing all of the topics studied about during the past year prepares students to write a report to communicate their learning. Students celebrate by reading their written commmunications to each other and then creating a class book in order to communicate with the next class of first graders.

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Program Description: The elementary mathematics program in Plano ISD promotes the learning of important and meaningful mathematics through a coherent and comprehensive curriculum. The program provides opportunities for students to value mathematics, to become confident in their ability to do mathematics, and stresses the importance of experiences that relate mathematics to the real world. The curriculum is based on the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) and is designed to build basic understandings in number, operations, and quantitative reasoning; patterns, relationships, and algebraic thinking; geometry and spatial reasoning; measurement; and probability and statistics. Problem solving, language and communication, connections within and outside mathematics and formal and informal reasoning underlie all content areas. Students use these processes together with technology and other mathematical tools to develop conceptual understanding and to solve problems. District developed curriculum guides provide a scope and sequence of instruction for each grade level.

Resources: The primary resource for mathematics students in grades K-5 is the District-adopted mathematics textbook, SFAW Mathematics. In addition to the textbook, teachers and students have a wide variety of print and manipulative resources available. Some of these resources include manipulative materials to help build conceptual understanding, professional teaching resources, calculators, fiction and nonfiction trade books, and computer programs.

Technology: Technology is an integral part of the elementary mathematics program. Students are taught appropriate use of calculators to support conceptual development problem solving experiences. Computer programs are used to support the development of conceptual understanding, problem solving and critical thinking skills. These programs are used to support instruction in the classroom and to extend and enrich learning experiences.

Classroom Environment: The mathematics classroom is an environment in which students are actively engaged in the learning process. Students discuss mathematics, create products, use manipulatives, make real world connections, solve meaningful problems, use technology, write about mathematics, ask questions and make conjectures. The classroom is arranged to facilitate flexible grouping and multi-tasking. This allows teachers to meet the needs of students with a wide range of abilities. Opportunities are provided for students to work individually and in cooperative groups. Mathematical tools are available and accessible for students to use. Some homogenous grouping of more advanced students occurs at upper grade levels as students prepare for placement in the honors program at the middle school.

Assessment: Teachers use a variety of assessment strategies to measure students’ development of mathematics skills, conceptual understanding, and problem solving abilities. These strategies include observations, interviews, performance tasks, performance assessments, projects, checklists, rubrics, and written formal quizzes and tests.

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Program Description – The Plano I. S. D. Elementary Language Arts Program provides a balanced approach to literacy instruction requiring a curriculum framework that gives reading and writing equal status and combines the best theory and learning strategies to match the learning styles of individual children. This framework recognizes the importance of the cognitive and affective dimensions of literacy and acknowledges the meaning-making involved in the reading and writing processes. The Elementary Language Arts program is designed to:

1. Orchestrate a safe classroom environment which facilitates student experiences that provide opportunities for listening and speaking.

2. Provide authentic settings for practicing strategies and skills taught in large and small groups.

3. Assure a climate that promotes a love of reading and writing that will nurture lifelong learning.

4. Provide a literacy-rich environment where texts are read aloud daily as a model for fluent reading expression, for developing structural awareness of fiction and non-fiction while facilitating growth in vocabulary.

5. Include authentic literature of various genre, e.g. fiction, informational text, poetry, fantasy, biography, science fiction, etc.

6. Instill teacher-student discourse to facilitate higher-order thinking skills.

7. Teach phonemic awareness and letter knowledge in a sequential way to facilitate reading and writing development.

8. Provide a continuous progress program facilitating students as they advance to more difficult reading levels across the grades.

9. Provide a basic skills focus with early introduction and continuous maintenance of oral and written language, word attack, vocabulary, and comprehension skills.

10. Promote reading growth through a balanced program that ties phonics, spelling, and language skills to connected texts in reading and writing.

11. To produce readers who approach the reading task expecting meaning and who use phonological, syntactical, and semantical clues in decoding.

12. Deliver guided reading instruction daily at the child’s instructional reading level (90-94% accuracy) allowing students to move from level to level in such a way that they are successful but challenged to grow.

13. Guide students to use the strategies of monitoring, searching, cross-checking, and self-correcting during the reading and rereading process.

14. Provide all students reading materials and time for independent (oral and silent) reading (95-100% accuracy) daily. This is essential for developing fluency and appropriate rate.

15. Insure that students develop reading comprehension strategies as outlined by the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS).

16. Deliver writing instruction based on the five step writing process, six traits of effective writing, and the support needed by students as they grow in written composition. Written communication will integrate proficient penmanship and the mechanical skills of writing.

17. Use reflective teaching practices to continually assess student progress through observing, evaluating, and planning instruction.

18. Provide instruction that meets the developmental needs of all students but is designed to promote acceleration in the language arts processes with the goal of all students reading and writing at their potential.

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Please send comments or suggestions to Mona Lisee
Updated September, 2007