Mrs. Grill's First Grade!

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Welcome to Mrs. Grill's FIrst Grade Class: 2013-2014

A Note To First Grade Families:

My name is Elvira Grill, and I am your child’s new teacher. I wanted to write a short note to tell you a little about myself.

I have been employed in the Meridian School District for eight years. I completed my student teaching at Desert Sage Elementary School in the 1st and 5th grades. In addition to student teaching, I worked for several years as a teacher’s assistant and in the Positive Behavior Intervention program at Hunter and Discovery Elementary Schools, working with students who are emotionally disturbed. Through the years, I have spent a significant amount of time in a variety of classrooms working with students of all ages, although my course work was in Early Childhood Education. I have taught both 5^th and 1^st grade here at Chief Joseph and am thrilled to be in my fourth year here in first grade!

I am married and have three daughters. They are in 4th grade, 7th grade and 10th grade. We enjoy playing games, listening to music, swimming and just spending time together.

A few quick notes:

· I encourage students to bring a healthy snack each day to eat after morning recess, as well as a water bottle to keep at their desks.

· While I am very interested in classroom parent helpers (party planners, etc), I ask that parents give us the first few weeks to get into our routine before coming. I will send out sign up forms for people who are interested or feel free to send me an email sooner.

I look forward to working together with you to make this a successful year. If you have any questions, comments or concerns, please feel free to email or call me.

Thank you,

Elvira Grill

Monday, March 11, 2013

Spring is Blooming!

Friday, February 15, 2013

Meet The Masters Art- Paul Klee

Saturday, December 22, 2012

Holiday Party in Mrs. Grill's Class

We had such a fun time at our Holiday Party! Thank you to all the parent helpers who made this possible. The students had such a wonderful time! Just sharing a few photos from then. I get so excited during these things and find it a great time to visit with parents as well, that I forget to take too many photos, but here are a few. See if you can find your student....

Friday, December 14, 2012

Week of December 10, 2012

We have had an amazing week!

I can't begin to say how impressed I am by the amazing growth that your children are showing in both reading and math. Students are really starting to make the realization that they are reading! They are so proud of this. Have them read for you and show you all that they know. In math, today we were actually doing word problems with solving for a change unknown equation. For example. There were 37 children on the bus. Some more got on. Now there are 67 children on the bus. How many more got on? Students were able to make the connection about counting on from 37 to 67, and eventually students realized that this was just jumping on the hundreds chart by 10's. I'm SO proud!

In reading, I have done a lot of shifting of student reading groups because of the growth students are showing. I'm working hard to keep students with other students who are at or slightly above their levels to keep them growing. For the last month, students have been going to reading groups (focus groups) with other first grade teachers to work on certain skills to help promote growth. This has been very effective. These groups will also be changing in January because of the amount of improvement that students are showing. As a first grade team, we are also going to be doing these special reading groups 5 days per week, rather than the 2 days per week that we have been doing thus far. If any of you have questions about this, please email me.

Finally, I am attaching a few photos of our final butterflies that we made last week. It was a messy and fun project! As much as you might love them, all you get for now is photos, because I love having these up on my wall until May.