~Welcome to First Grade~

Welcome to first grade!  I hope you all had a fabulous summer!  I spent my summer hanging out with my three beautiful daughters, reading, we spent tons of time at the pool, went on a trip to Seagrove Beach in Florida, and had lots of fun outside and inside just enjoying each others' company.  The school year is upon us and while I'm sad that the long days of summer have come to an end, I'm also super excited about the coming school year. 

I am in my thirteenth year of teaching first grade (wow!) at CES.  I was raised in California my whole life and graduated from CHS in 2001.  I then graduated Summa Cum Laude from The University of Central Missouri with my Bachelors in Elementary Education.   I became a first grade teacher at CES and then went back to school and got my Masters from Southeast Missouri State University in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages).  I am married to my college sweetheart, Kelly.  We have three amazingly beautiful and bright little girls, Lily, Elly, and Karly.  In my free time I enjoy spending time with my family.  I also enjoy photography, reading, and walking.

It is my goal to create a warming and welcoming environment for my students. I hope my classroom is an extension of home and that my firsties love stepping into our room everyday.   It is also my mission to instill a love of reading and learning in all of my students.  I strive to make learning fun and enjoyable.  I also aim to differentiate all of my lessons based on each child's individual academic needs.  I promise to give 120% of myself all of the time.  I love my job and my students truly are an extension of my "family."  It is with great pleasure that I will be serving you this school year.

Welcome to first grade...it's going to be AWESOME!

*If your child will be in my classroom for the 2018-2019 school year, please go to the link below and fill out our open house Google form.  This form includes the information that you would typically fill out during open house and return to school.  Therefore, filling out this form will help open house move more quickly and efficiently.  It will also help reduce the amount of paperwork for you to fill out and return to school.  Thank you!

Open House Google Forms

Welcome to First Grade ~ 2016-2017

Welcome to first grade!  I hope you all had a fabulous summer!  I spent my summer hanging out with my three beautiful daughters, reading lots of books (both children's literature and books for me!), we spent tons of time at the pool, went on a trip to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and had lots of fun outside and inside just enjoying each others' company.  The school year is upon us and while I'm sad that the long days of summer have come to an end, I'm also super excited about the coming school year.

I hope you all received your welcome letters from me in the mail.  If not, I'll tell you a little about me here.  I am in my eleventh year of teaching first grade (wow!) at CES.  I was raised in California my whole life and graduated from CHS in 2001.  I then graduated Summa Cum Laude from The University of Central Missouri with my Bachelors in Elementary Education.   I became a first grade teacher at CES and then went back to school and got my Masters from Southeast Missouri State University in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages).  I am married to my college sweetheart, Kelly.  We have three amazingly beautiful and bright little girls, Lily, Elly, and Karly.  In my free time I enjoy spending time with my family.  I also enjoy photography, reading, and walking.

It is my goal to create a warming and welcoming environment for my students. I hope my classroom is an extension of home and that my firsties love stepping into our room everyday.   It is also my mission to instill a love of reading and learning in all of my students.  I strive to make learning fun and enjoyable.  I strive to differentiate all of my lessons based on each child's individual academic needs.  I promise to give 120% of myself all of the time.  I love my job and my students truly are an extension of my "family."  It is with great pleasure that I will be serving you this school year.

Welcome to first grade...it's going to be AWESOME

Below there are some pictures of our classroom.  We are trying out flexible seating this school year.  There will be another post about this type of seating in the coming weeks.

A Great Beginning to a Great Year

First of all I'd like to say "welcome to our class blog!" We had an amazing first two days of school.  I can already tell this is going to be the sweetest little class.  The first two days we spent the majority of our class time learning the rules and many different procedures that will help our classroom run smoothly.  Thank you to everyone who brought in extra supplies or donated items from our wishlist.  Everything you do for your child is greatly appreciated!  Most of the time this blog post will be filled with pictures of our class and the activities the students have been working on.  I only post pictures of student work and the students in my class that I have permission to post.  During open house I sent home a release form for this purpose.  If you would like to see pictures of your child on this blog or our class Facebook page, you must return the release form.  I am currently going through all of the documents that were returned this week.  Once I have these release forms... get ready for picture overload!  :)  As I mentioned in my getting to know the teacher letter I love photography.  It is another passion of mine.  I love being able to show (not only tell) you what we are working on in class!  The students love being photographed too.  At the end of the year, I use these photos to create a DVD slideshow with music of our year together.  Those go home to you as well!  So if I do not have permission to photograph your child, he/she may not be on our end of the year slideshow.

I will send home a small newsletter on Fridays.  The blog will go into much more detail of the events and activities in our classroom.  I include QR codes in my newsletter that will take you directly to our class blog.  In addition, I post links to our new blog posts on our classroom Facebook page.  Our page can also be found on our district webpage.  In doing this, I hope this makes our blog easily accessible to you.

As mentioned in the classroom newsletter that went home yesterday, I do allow children to bring water bottles to school.  I ask that these easily close.  In addition, I ask that you fill them up prior to your child coming to school.  It is also nice to have the water bottles that do not sweat.  This will ensure that our desks and student work do not get wet.

I'll leave you with my first day of school picture with my very own first grader.  Next week, after I receive all of our release forms I hope to add some pictures of our class work and the students.   I hope you all have a blessed weekend.  I look forward to another amazing week next week!

Mrs. Hogan and her first grader daughter, Lily, on the first day of the 2015-2016 school year.

Welcome Back!

Phew!!!  What a busy two day week this has been.  I had planned on having this post up on the night of our Open House, but time flew away from me this week...or so it seemed anyway.  The start of the school year is always busy busy!  However, I have to say it has been one of the best first weeks of school in my 8 year career.  My little group of firsties just melt my heart.  I adore this time of the year and I love getting to know my students.  The week was busy, but we managed to get some learning accomplished in the classroom.  Let me give you a breakdown of some of the things we did.

First things first, we established our class rules together.  I love doing this with the students.  I believe creating our classroom rules is a decision that everyone in my classroom needs to be a part of.  We read books, discuss appropriate and inappropriate behaviors, and then vote on the rules WE believe will help US to be PRODUCTIVE members of our class.  The book we read to help us in creating our school rules was David Goes to School  by David Shannon.

 

Boy how the kids just love David!  I do too!  I didn't get a chance to take a picture of our class anchor chart we made for this book.  I'll do my best to add it to this post by the end of the weekend.  :)

We then had a detailed conversation about the rules in our classroom.  This is what WE decided:

1.  DO YOUR BEST!

2.  Listen to the teacher the first time.

3.   It is never okay to be hurtful.

4.  It is always okay to be helpful.

I think the students did a great job of taking ownership in these rules and I know that they will help us to be productive members for our first grade classroom.

I'm going to end on this note.  We did so many other things this week, but I feel like this was the MOST important of them all.  Having a boundaries and knowing the expectations in first grade is the best way to get the year started on the right foot.  I'm going to leave you with a few pictures of our first grade classroom.  I promise to take better pictures of it in the weeks to come.  I only had my cellphone when I took these pictures and I may have forgotten to turn on some of the lights.  :-/  Enjoy!!!