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

Highlights Before Spring Break

Hello families,
We've had a wonderful week together. A few rainy days full of excited play at indoor recess and a few sunny warm days to finally be free of coats outside!

During readers workshop we've been making mind movies of what's happening in our books and really noticing dialogue to help us understand what is going on. When you are reading at home, ask your child what they are picturing in their mind movie.

We wrapped up our opinion writing genre this week, writing on the topic of: If kids ruled the world! What rule would you make to make the world a better place? You probably saw this writing piece come home on Thursday. Ask your child to read it to you! We read a few books on this topic: If Kids Ran the World and Wangari's Trees of Peace. Many students were inspired by our first read aloud on the topic to make rules about cleaning up trash to keep our oceans and waterways safe for animals and those ecosystems. We also watched a youtube video to get more information about why this is important, to get more reasons that would help us convince our readers of our opinion. On Thursday we read a funny opinion book and did some writing about Not a Box!

We began a new math unit circling back around to the math learning about story problems. We already know about addition, subtraction and combination story problems. Over the next month we will be learning about missing addend, 2 step, and 3 addend story problems as well. This week we used lots of visuals, videos and storytelling to really think about what is happening in the story to understand which kind of story it was (addition, subtraction, or combination) so we knew how to solve it. We also looked for clue words to help us figure out which kind it was. Ask your child about what words help them know if it's addition, subtraction or a combination problem!

We've been working hard in our learning and showing so much heart. On Thursday we filled out HEART jar again! To celebrate we watched a movie and did some coloring on Friday afternoon.

Dates to Remember:

• Monday 4/22 - Friday 4/26 - Spring Break - No School
• 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
• Tuesday 6/18 - All School Celebration
• Wednesday 6/19 - Last Day of School

Have a great spring break!
❤ Mrs. Fox

Highlights of the Week - April 12

Hello families,

This week the Fox Kits reviewed and practiced how to show HEART in the classroom. Since I was gone for a while it was good to review our expectations so all can do their best work.

We read a few more opinion themed read alouds: I Want a Cat, Some Pets, Boss for a Day, and Boss for a Week. We also read a book, The Interrupting Chicken, just for fun!

We also wrote about my collection of fox toys. Students wrote about which was their favorite and why, using superlatives to compare (i.e. I like the floppy fox because it's cuter than the sitting fox). They had fun giving out "blue ribbons" to the best foxes, "red ribbons" to the second best foxes, and "yellow ribbons" to the third best foxes. It was fun to share our opinions with each other.

We worked hard practicing telling time on analog and digital clocks to whole and half hours. Many students were ready to go ahead and tell time in 5 minute increments! We had an assessment on Wednesday to wrap up this mini-unit.

On Thursday and Friday Ms. Kate and I got to meet with most of you to discuss your child's progress and what we're seeing in school. Thanks so much for making the time to come talk to us. This is a team effort and teachers do our best when we have good communication and support from families!

Dates to Remember:

• Monday 4/22 - Friday 4/26 - Spring Break - No School
• Tuesday 5/7 -Capital Project Bond Vote
• Wednesday 5/8 - early dismissal with activities at 12:15
• Wednesday 5/22 - CLiF Family Literacy Night 5-7pm
• Friday 5/24 - early dismissal at 12:15
• Monday 5/27 - No School - Memorial Day
• Tuesday, 6/4 - 1st Grade Big Blue Trunk

Have a great weekend!
❤ Mrs. Fox

Hello again familes!

Hello Fox Kit Community!

This week I rejoined the class at JFK. We said goodbye to Ms. Kate on Tuesday and will miss seeing her every day. I am thankful that Ms. Kate was here with them in my absence. They did a lot of great learning together! I was so touched by the beautiful welcome back banner the students made for me, as well as warm greetings from all of you. It's been great reconnecting with the Fox Kits this week. One thing that has changed now that I am back is that I need to be away from class during breakfast/morning meeting and snack/mindfulness in order to "make baby milk." The Fox Kits have been very flexible about this change. Luckily Ms. Rafeef (their usual lunch teacher) will be with the class each day during these times which is great for stability as she is a familiar teacher. 

Students wrapped up their math unit on place value and demonstrated their new understanding on an assessment. We'll look at these next week with you at family conferences. Next up is a short unit on telling time to the hour and half-hour on analog and digital clocks. This will be a short unit, wrapping up on Wednesday before conferences next week!

We continued reading and writing in the opinion genre. Books we read: Red Is Best, Duck! Rabbit!, and I Want a Dog. Many students continued writing their opinions about why first graders should get to use the "big playground." Once finished students thought of self-directed topics on which they had opinions.

This week I sent home a yellow paper with your time slot for family conferences next Thursday or Friday. If you haven't yet please return the bottom portion so I know if you can make it or need to reschedule.

There is also exciting news from our Superintendent. The School Board chose Design Concept #2 as recommended by the WSD Capital Project Committee and adopted a bond amount of up to $57.8 million. The vote will be Tuesday, May 7th.  Please check out our Capital Project website and promotional video:

• Website: https://cp.winooski.org/
• Video: https://youtu.be/nBOFWCUr81Y

Also, the following opportunities to learn more about the project are available: 


Community Breakfast: Saturday, 4/13, 9:00am


Tour: Thursday, 4/18, 5:30pm


Dinner: Wednesday, 5/1, 5:30pm


Informational Meeting: Monday, 5/6, 6:30pm

Please check out the capital project information and vote on this important project. Our school and community needs your vote!


Dates to Remember:

• Book Fair - Monday 4/8 - Friday 4/12 8:30 am - 2:30 pm (8:30 am - 7:30 pm Thursday)
• Thursday 4/11 - 11:00 Dismissal for Family Conferences (12:00 - 8:00 pm)
• Friday 4/12 - 11:00 Dismissal for Family Conferences (12:00 - 3:00 pm)
• Monday 4/22 - Friday 4/26 - Spring Break - No School
• Tuesday 5/7 -Capital Project Bond Vote

Have a great weekend!
❤ Mrs. Fox