First Grade!

This school year was amazing. We switched schools before first grade so we were unsure what it would be like. Em is also doing the Chinese Dual Immersion program where she spends half of her day hearing and speaking nothing but Chinese and the other half of her day in English. We were unsure how THAT would be! Turns out it was all AWESOME. She had such a great year and completely rocked it. We LOVE the school, teachers, the program, everything. It's just a better fit for us and we are soooooo happy we switched!!

At each parent teacher conference her teachers would rave about her. Her Chinese teacher in particular said she uses her often as an example for pronunciation because she just "gets" it. She got 100% on every single Chinese test throughout the whole year!

Her English teacher loved her too. She was such a great teacher and really tailored the learning to each kid. She developed advanced spelling lists for some of the more advanced spellers. Some of those words Emily would bring home were crazy! But Emily ended the year with 100% on every single spelling test the whole year! Even though she was doing advanced lists. She also ended the year on a 5th grade reading level with DIBELS scores waaayyyyy off the charts. So proud of her!

Perfect report card for the entire year. (which earned her her very own iPod!)

Her teachers use this behavior tracking app called "Class Dojo" that they update several times per day and parents can view it online. The teachers issue positive points for things done well like trying your best, participating, being respectful, etc and then negative points for negative things. Not sure what negative things because Emily didn't get a single negative point all year! I was proud of her for that. Behavior is more important to me than test scores!

Emily also received every award possible throughout the year! She was the first and only one from her class to get selected for the limo lunch which is chosen by the principal. She was the first Student of the Month from her class. She was the first to win the PTA Golden Apple Leader award. I felt like every week she was bringing home a new award! At the year end awards assembly she received and award for Excellence in Language Arts and Excellence in Math. One other kid in her class got the Excellence in Language Arts and she was the only one from her class to get Excellence in Math. And she hates math. :)

She is very naturally smart and school comes quite easily for her. At least up until now. :) I'm so proud of how hard she worked and the dedication she gives to school. She also made tons of new friends. I always had to laugh when we would walk to the car after school and everyone would be shouting "Bye Emily!" and running to give her hugs. I hope my kids are good friends and kind to everyone.

I also had a good experience with first grade. I was her Chinese teachers class mom so I planned their Halloween party, Valentines party, teacher appreciation week, field day, teachers birthday party and just helped with anything her teacher needed. It ended up being way more work and stress than I thought it would but it's totally worth it to see how excited Emily was whenever I was in her class. It was also fun to get to know the kids in her class and see them all interact. I also did a lot with the PTA which was way fun. I did teacher meals during parent teacher conference, book fair, box tops for education, art show, minute to win it, parent picnic, and I can't even remember what else! I met so many awesome parents and had a great time getting involved in my kids school. I figure we have about ten years at this school so we might as well get involved!

We all had an all-around good experience in 1st grade! Hope it continues in 2nd!

First day

 Last day