Highlights from the End of May

Hello families,

On Tuesday we dumped our hearts into the heart monitor and had our class celebration, flashlight reading!

Then we had another CLiF event. We went to meet with Ted Scheu: The Poetry Guy. He read us lots of his funny poems and then we all wrote one together about spring.

We did a few different things in math this week. We wrapped up our math computation and reasoning unit and had a "show me what you know" assessment at the end of the week. We had a math facts computation assessment, AimsWeb. We also showed how well we can count, skip count, and write numbers.

Next Tuesday we will have our first grade end of year celebration: The Big Blue Trunk! This PTO sponsored end of the year field trip is actually right at JFK! We have the Big Blue Trunk coming on Tuesday,  June 4th. This is an outdoor event where the kids will be playing with a variety of cool things. It is from 9:00-11:00. We can have chaperones for this event. If you want to come, be ready and dressed to play outside. We can not have any additional family members join us as is school policy. We have a special lunch (pizza from Costco, drinks, apple slices and chips) for the the students at 11:00. Sorry, this does not include our chaperones. If your child will not eat Costco pizza please send them with a lunch from home.

Students should have:

• Sneakers
• Play clothes
• Sunscreen
• Hat
• Water bottle
• Please spray your child with bug spray before coming to school.

Dates to Remember:

• Tuesday 6/4 - 1st Grade Big Blue Trunk 9-11 am
• Wednesday 6/12 - 1st Grade Fun Day 9-11 am (rain date 6/14)
• Monday 6/17 - Classroom Clean-up Day
• Tuesday 6/18 - All School Celebration (rain or shine)
• Wednesday 6/19 - Step-Up Day 8:30 am 
• Wednesday 6/19 - Last Day of School - 11:00 dismissal

Have a great weekend!
❤ Mrs. Fox

Highlights before a Long Weekend

Hello families,

Finally a full week of spring-like weather! It was nice to be able to head right outside into the fresh air and sunshine at recess. Our playground is sunny so sending your child with a brimmed hat is always ok to help shade their face.

During readers workshop this week I did my end of year reading check-ins to assess what skills your children have gained as readers and test their current independent reading levels. They have worked hard this year learning lots of strategies to help decode and comprehend what they read. It's always so fun to see how much children learn and grow as readers in first grade. I'm so proud of their hard work and accomplishments!

This week in math we did a pre-test to see which unit skills need further development and then students were grouped to practice what was a good fit for them. Next week we will be wrapping up this math unit in time to fit one more in this school year!

We read another book from our series, Henry and Mudge: The Cold Shivers. Students continued working on writing their own realistic fiction series stories this week as well. We focused on adding details to make our stories come to life: dialogue, small details, character building, feelings, and lessons learned. We worked on adding the same elements to our own fiction writing. More student authors shared their stories with the class to demonstrate this skill.

Remember, tomorrow (Friday) is a half day with dismissal at 12:15. There are no activities available--all students must be picked up. Monday is Memorial Day so we don't have school. See you on Tuesday!

Dates to Remember:

• Friday 5/24 - early dismissal at 12:15 pm
• Monday 5/27 - No School - Memorial Day
• Tuesday 6/4 - 1st Grade Big Blue Trunk 9-11 am
• Tuesday 6/18 - All School Celebration
• Wednesday 6/19 - Last Day of School - 11:00 dismissal

Have a great long weekend!
❤ Mrs. Fox

Highlights of the Week!

Hello families,
What a week we've had! We celebrated filling our heart jar with a pajamas and creation day. It's amazing what these fox kits can make using mostly recycled materials and their imaginations!

In reading we are working on retelling stories by telling important information about the characters, setting, problem or trouble, solution, lesson learned, and reason the author may have written the book. Some students are also extending their thinking by comparing and contrasting the book they read to other books they have read. It's been fun to share about what we are reading with one another.

We continue writing fictional narratives and some students are writing a second story about the same characters--starting a series! Together we are reading another book in the Henry and Mudge series, this time it's The Bedtime Thumps. We analyze the story elements together to help us see how the author includes important details about character and setting development. We are trying to add these into our own writing to make a better beginning for our stories.

In math we are still working with story problems and fact families. We are reviewing the "Find 10" strategy and relating this to equations with 3 addends. Some students are applying this strategy to story problems too! We also played a few fun games, Horse Race and Egg Head.

On Monday we will have an All School Celebration since our heart monitor was full! Your child may wear their favorite hat and/or t-shirt to school and be ready to "Drop Everything and Move!" Throughout the day different movement activities will be announced over the loudspeaker and no matter what class you are in you will stop what you're doing and do a movement break!

Dates to Remember:

• Wednesday 5/22 - CLiF Family Literacy Night 5-7 pm
• Friday 5/24 - early dismissal at 12:15 pm
• Monday 5/27 - No School - Memorial Day
• Tuesday 6/4 - 1st Grade Big Blue Trunk 9-11 am
• Tuesday 6/18 - All School Celebration
• Wednesday 6/19 - Last Day of School - 11:00 dismissal

Have a great weekend!
❤ Mrs. Fox

Highlights from a Busy Week

Hello families,

We've had another great week together. We were happy to have a new student join our class and the Fox Kits have done a nice job helping this new student learn some of our routines. We were sad to find out that two students had moved away. We made some cards to send them since we didn't get to say goodbye. We also made some cards to celebrate Mother's Day!

Our focus in reading and writing this week has been fiction storytelling--identifying the: characters, setting, problem, solution, and ending. We are analyzing the books we read to find these story elements. We are making sure the stories we write have all of these parts. On Tuesday we also had a Flynn Theater teacher, Ms. Joan, come to do a Words Come Alive! workshop. We acted out stories with these same elements to help us visualize the actions involved in our stories and help add more detail to our writing! It was so much fun to create a story together and do some acting!

In math we continue to work on solving story problems. We are also practicing lots of number patterns: counting forwards/backwards, counting by 2s, 5s and 10s, learning about even/odd numbers. We also LOVE to do fact power. Next week we will make a change and have Fact Power as our warm-up each day in math and be quizzed each Friday to see if we pass whichever level the student is working on. Students work at their own pace and practice the addition and subtraction facts at their individual levels.

We had some bike safety learning with Coach B during PE and Officer Jason came to visit our class to talk about bike safety and helmets! This Saturday there is a safety fair at the school and they are giving away free helmets! Please come if you can so your child can receive a free helmet so they can bike or scooter safely around town!


Dates to Remember:

• Wednesday 5/22 - CLiF Family Literacy Night 5-7 pm
• Friday 5/24 - early dismissal at 12:15 pm
• Monday 5/27 - No School - Memorial Day
• Tuesday 6/4 - 1st Grade Big Blue Trunk 9-11 am
• Tuesday 6/18 - All School Celebration
• Wednesday 6/19 - Last Day of School 11:00 dismissal

Happy Mother's Day and have a great weekend!
❤ Mrs. Fox

Highlights of the Week

Hello families,
Wow, we really hit the ground running this week! The Fox Kits are really remembering how we work hard and show HEART throughout the day--even after a week of spring break! 

In reading we began a fiction reading unit, "We're off on Reading Adventures." This week we focused on taking a sneak peek to help us think about the setting, where and when the story takes place. We focused on getting to know our characters and thinking about all the details in the story to help us understand and get to know the characters. We also made predictions, using what we know about the beginning of a story to think about what might happen next. We started reading Henry and Mudge: The First Book to learn about these two great friends. We will be reading a lot of Henry and Mudge adventures during this unit--connected to our reading and writing work!

We also began a fiction writing unit! This was a big hit and an exciting unit for our class. First we brainstormed some things we like to play pretend. This helped us get ideas for characters and settings we wanted to write about. Then we planned the beginning, middle (with a problem), and end (with a solution) to our stories. After that we were off, writing up a storm! It has been so fun to read our stories and share our imaginative narrative writing with each other.

In math we continue to work on story problems--identifying if the story is asking us to add, subtract, or find multiple combinations. Sometimes we have to do add and subtract in 2 step story problems! We also started to learn about fact families using dominoes as examples to help us learn how the three numbers are connected in a family of equations (addition and subtraction).

Next week in P.E. students will have the opportunity to practice and learn about bike safety with Coach B (Kyle Blindow)! He received a grant to lend us a BikeSmart trailer with 20 bikes of various sizes and shapes so they can learn about this skill in their physical education class. How fun! If you have any questions feel free to ask Coach B.

Dates to Remember:

• Tuesday 5/7 -Capital Project Bond Vote (voting open early now!)
• Tuesday 5/7 - Words Come Alive! - Flynn Workshop in our Classroom 9:45-10:45 am
• Wednesday 5/8 - early dismissal with activities at 12:15 pm
• Wednesday 5/22 - CLiF Family Literacy Night 5-7 pm
• Friday 5/24 - early dismissal at 12:15 pm
• Monday 5/27 - No School - Memorial Day
• Tuesday 6/4 - 1st Grade Big Blue Trunk 9-11 am
• Tuesday 6/18 - All School Celebration
• Wednesday 6/19 - Last Day of School

Have a great weekend!
❤ Mrs. Fox