About Me

My name is Christie Bethel and I graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I have been teaching at Banks Road Elementary since it opened up in 2009. My current teaching experience includes teaching first grade at Willow Springs Elementary and 2nd grade at Lillington Shawtown Elementary. I am a Fuquay native, but now call Apex home. I love animals, especially my cat Bootsie and my parent's yellow lab Lucy. I completed my first half-marathon in April 2011. So when I'm not at school, you will find me at the gym or on a trail running or playing soccer with my friends. I was honored to be selected as Banks Road Elementary's Teacher of the Year for 2013-2014.

Meet our class!

Meet our class!

Class Schedule

8:45 to 9:15- Morning work, breakfast, and bathroom
9:15 to 9:25- Read Aloud/Calendar
9:30 to 10:15- Specials
10:20 to to 11:00- Writer's Workshop
11:05 to 11:30- Lunch- table 1
11:35 to 12:35- Math
12:40 to 1:00- Team Time
1:00 to 1:30- Recess
1:30 to 1:40- Snack/Restroom/Read Aloud
1:40 to 2:10- Science and Social Studies
2:10 to 3:35- Daily 5
3:40- Dismissal

Important Dates

- Friday, November 22nd- Jason Knowles’ birthday
- Wednesday, November 27th- Book-It! due for the month of November
- Thursday, November 28th- Thanksgiving- No School!
- Friday, November 29th- No School!
- Monday, December 2nd- Ansley Ayers' Birthday
- Wednesday, December 4th- Track out day

-Monday, December 16th- Hank Gozy's birthday
- Friday, December 27th- Will Poplin's birthday

Monday, August 20, 2012

Newsletter Volume 7

In math, we started working on subtraction word problems.  We know we have to start off with the bigger number and listen for key words like “rolled away”, “flew away”, “were eaten”, “gave away” and have to take that many away. So if we have the problem, “there were 6 birds and 2 flew away.  How many birds are left?”  They would start off with 6 circles, and we use circles since they are quick to draw, and cross off 2 and that would leave us with 4 circles.  So we would write the equation 6-2=4.  Then to show understanding we would need to write, “There are 4 birds left.”
In Wilson’s Fundations, we have continued to work on tapping out the beginning, middle, and ending sounds to a word. We have also learned the trick word: and. We cannot tap out this word, so it has been added to the word wall for us to use. We have also continued to work on sentence dictation, where we count out the number of words in a sentence and tap out the sounds for each of the words, unless it is a trick word.
In Daily 5, we started our rotations like it will be for the remainder of the school year. Reading groups have been established and all of the groups meet with me last week. Our class has 5 different reading groups, so I can differentiate for each group’s strengths and focus on areas of improvement. Ask your child which color of reading group they are in and who is in their group with them.
In writing, we started working on “Small Moment” stories.  These are stories that have actually happened to us.  To help us understand what a “Small Moment” story is, we read the book “A Chair for my Mother” by Vera B. Williams and “The Kissing Hand” by Audrey Penn. We then brainstormed ideas to write about.  The writing collage you did for homework a few weeks ago will help the students when they are writing their “Small Moment” stories.
This week in Social Studies, we had our Mini-Me’s share information about ourselves.  We learned that we have lots of things in common, but we are all special and different in our own way.
Important information:
- Spirit Day- Make sure to wear your Banks Road t-shirt or school colors (green and blue) every Friday!
- Scholastic Book Orders- Our first order forms went home last week.  This is a great way to purchase books for your child at a discounted price.  I have now set it up so you can order everything on line if you would prefer.  You go to scholastic.com/bookclubs and our class activation code is G229M. Please let me know if you need help with any of this!
-  Open House- Thank you to everyone who came out last week to our Open House. I know that was a lot of information to take in at once, so I have posted the PowerPoint presentation to my Blackboard site. You can access it from our school website, then click on staff and find my name and then to the right you will be see a chalkboard with “Bb”.  Click on that and look for Ms. Bethel. I have also posted the link to access BlackBoard on the classroom blog.

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