Highlights 1-26-18

Hello families,
This week I was out on Monday and Tuesday meeting my new niece (born Monday morning) and taking care of my 20 month old twin niece and nephew while their mama was in the hospital. Thanks for your understanding with my absence! The Fox Kits were in good hands with Ms. Claudine while I was out.

We also had a new teacher, Ms. Tessa, join us on Wednesday. She is a junior at UVM in the Elementary Education Program. She will be student teaching in our room from now until April break on Mondays and Wednesdays (mostly half days, some full days). We are so happy to have her join us!

We began a PBL (Project Based Learning) Unit on Sound this week. We have worked this week on gaining background and working knowledge of sound and how it is produced. We observed a bee buzzing in a flower, we noticed sounds in our classroom and sounds in the hallway, we explored with different materials to see how we could make them vibrate or move to create sounds, and we tested out different materials to make the best kazoo. We have done a lot of reading, writing, sharing, talking, listening, and hands-on exploring with sound this week!

We read a few books to go along with our sound learning: Sounds All Around, Max Found Two Sticks, and Charlie Parker Played Be Bop. We listened to a clip of Charlie Parker playing the saxophone.

We worked a lot this week on perfecting our measuring techniques--making sure to go end to end in a straight line and look carefully to see if something is exactly 5 inches or in between 4 and 5 inches (for example). We also used a third object to help us compare lengths of objects--noticing what is shorter and what is longer. We put many things in order, comparing them and lining them up from longest to shortest or from shortest to longest (depending on the day).

Most of us finished writing our first teaching books this week! We learned a lot about writing facts to teach about something part by part. We are ready to teach and write about a new topic. In this next teaching book we will also learn more about writing good beginnings (an introduction with a hook) and good endings (conclusions).

Coming up in a few weeks is Valentine's Day. We will do a valentines exchange with our class. Your child can make them at home or make them in school that week. If your child wants to participate please make sure there is a card for each student, not just a few. I've sent home a class list of names to help you if your child is making valentines at home. We will exchange valentines on Wednesday morning February 14th. Please don't send in any candy or food!

Dates to Remember:
February 5 - afternoon Library times start weekly!
February 6 - Flynn Theater workshop for "Pilobolus Shadowland" 9:45-10:30
February 8 - Scholastic Book Orders Due (online or send in flyer with check by 2/8 at 8:00 a.m.)
Friday February 9 - field trip to the Flynn Theater to see "Pilobolus Shadowland"
Wednesday February 14 - Valentines card exchange
Wednesday February 14 - Early Dismissal 12:15 -- Teacher In-Service -- No After school Programs, all students dismissed at 12:15
Monday February 26 - Tuesday March 6 - Winter Break (3/5 and 3/6 are Teacher In-Service days)
Wednesday March 7 - school resumes

Have a great weekend!
❤ Mrs. Fox

Highlights 1-19-18

Hello families,

This week we began reading books together about famous musicians: Tito Puente: Mambo King by Monica Brown and Duke Ellington by Andrea Davis Pinkney. We learned about Tito Puente and the many percussion, brass, string, and keys instruments in his latin band. We watched a couple of short videos to hear him play the timbales too! Then we learned about Duke Ellington and his career as a jazz piano player. We learned about some other musicians who played brass, string and percussion instruments in his orchestra. We watched a clip of Duke Ellington's Orchestra too.

Check out this fun clip of Tito Puente on Sesame Street!

The Duke Ellington Orchestra plays "Take the A Train"

We also read one last book on light, Me and my Shadow: A Book About Light, to go along with a math/science lesson on measuring cube tower shadows. Pairs of students made 1 tower and used flashlights and experiments with this source of light to see how they could change the shadows to make them long or short, wide or thin. They used inch tiles to measure the shadows.

Many writers are finishing their first teaching books. They used a checklist to see if they had all the parts they need to teach the readers about a topic in their book. This week we focused on writing precise words--using the vocabulary your topic needs. We practice spelling out long words by syllable to help us break down challenging words. We also looked in non-fiction books for good beginnings to get us interested in the topic and good endings to help wrap up our learning.

In math we continue our measurement unit. This week we're measuring sets of paper fish using inch tiles. Students are working on being more accurate. Noticing if a fish is exactly 5 inches or maybe in between 4 and 5 inches long. We practiced building and writing numbers between 100 and 120. We also practiced being math detectives and noticing what the pattern is counting by in order to fill in the appropriate numbers. 
For example:
5, 10, 15, __, __, __. OR 2, 4, 6, __, __, __. OR 82, 81, 80, __, __, __. OR 4, 14, 24, __, __, __. OR  5, 7, 9, __, __, __. OR 70, 80, 90, __, __, __.

On Wednesday our class filled our HEART jar! We celebrated with a hot wheels car/origami celebration on Thursday. Students shared cars brought in to play with. Others did an origami activity with me. It was a great time!

We will have Library on Monday. Please send in any library books you have at home! Mr. Gile's schedule has changed so starting in February we will have library every Monday afternoon! We love checking out new books and hearing Mr. Gile read to us. He uses so many fun voices and hears our many "noticings" about the stories and illustrations.

We've had a lot of sick kids this week--sore throats, tummy bugs, and head aches. Please keep an eye on how your child is feeling. Drink plenty of water and get some rest this weekend!

Dates to Remember:
Monday January 22 - Library 2:10-2:40
Friday February 9 - field trip to the Flynn Theater
Wednesday February 14 - Early Dismissal 12:15 -- Teacher In-Service -- No After school Programs, all students dismissed at 12:15
Monday February 26 - Tuesday March 6 - Winter Break (3/5 and 3/6 are Teacher In-Service days)
Wednesday March 7 - school resumes

Have a great weekend!
❤ Mrs. Fox

Highlights of the Week - January 12th

Hello families,

We've had another heart-filled week. Thursday we earned a whopping 134 hearts! On Friday we will have a guest teacher and I have no doubt these fox kits will show her what HEART is all about!

In math we continue working on Fact Power -- learning addition and subtraction facts within 10 fluently (as quickly as we could read/say our own name). These are grouped into sequential patterns to help children learn then more easily. We have also done more measurement with cubes, tiles, and paper clips. We compared these different units and noticed that they are all different. That's why it's so important to write the unit label when measuring! Something 5 cubes long is very different from something 5 paper clips long! We've also begun to talk about more standard measurement--inches. The tiles we use to measure are actually inch tiles. In first grade we use these tools (instead of a ruler with fractions of an inch) to measure. The key concept we are learning is: measure in a straight line from end to end.

Our informative writers have been hard at work! We continue to add details in words, pictures, and labels to our teaching books. This week we talked about what we would want people reading our books to learn about our topic. These questions help us make sure we are writing all the pertinent information that we want to teach the readers.

We read a few more informational books during read aloud: The Night Sky, Zoo in the Sky, and Martin's Big Words. This final book was also paired with a mini-book writing project about Martin Luther King Jr. We talked together about some of his important work on equality in this country.

As well as reading informational books together students are also reading non-fiction in their guided reading groups during readers workshop. They are noticing the headings, key words, captions, and labels and using them to help them learn more about the topic.

In word study we've begun a new unit on consonant digraphs (consonants that stick together to make one sound). These are the digraphs we are practicing within short vowel words: wh, sh, ch, th, ck.


Dates to Remember:
Monday January 15 - NO SCHOOL - Martin Luther King Jr. Day
Monday January 22 - Library 2:10-2:40
Friday February 9 - field trip to the Flynn Theater
Wednesday February 14 - Early Dismissal 12:15 -- Teacher In-Service -- No After school Programs, all students dismissed at 12:15
Monday February 26 - Tuesday March 6 - Winter Break (3/5 and 3/6 are Teacher In-Service days)
Wednesday March 7 - school resumes

Have a great weekend!
❤ Mrs. Fox

1st Post of the New Year

Hello and happy new year!

We've had a great short week back together again! Here are a few highlights from our week.

In writers workshop we've begun writing "teaching books" within the informative writing genre. Students chose a topic they know about to write facts and real things about the topic to teach others who read the book. This week we chose topics, planned our subtopics, and began writing!

In math workshop we were excited to do more fact power and began a unit on measuring length accurately. This week we worked on measuring strategies and reporting back how long an item was using either exactly or "in between" lengths. As we begin this unit we practice measuring with various "units:" connecting cubes, tiles, and paperclips.

In readers workshop we continue to read nonfiction books and notice the text features that help us learn more from these books. We also read more nonfiction books together during read aloud about the Earth, Sun and Moon.

Dates to Remember:
Wednesday January 10 - Early Dismissal 12:15 -- Teacher In-Service, after school programs available
Monday January 15 - NO SCHOOL - Martin Luther King Jr. Day
Monday January 22 - Library 11 - 11:30
Friday February 9 - field trip to the Flynn Theater
Wednesday February 14 - Early Dismissal 12:15 -- Teacher In-Service -- No After school Programs, all students dismissed at 12:15
Monday February 26 - Tuesday March 6 - Winter Break (3/5 and 3/6 are Teacher In-Service days)
Wednesday March 7 - school resumes

Have a great weekend!
❤ Mrs. Fox

December 22nd Highlights

Hello families,
We've had another heart-filled week. Even with the excitement leading up to vacation students remained engaged in their learning throughout the week. We did notice our energy ran high more than usual so we did some extra mind and body practices to try to help us feel just right. We worked hard this week to have quieter transitions and use kind words all day.

In readers workshop we continue to read non-fiction books. We also practiced the decoding strategy of tapping individual sounds out and then crashing them back together in words. We did this with short and long words. We also looked for word families or other parts we know and then crashed the other sounds in to make words. Finally we looked at endings on words (s, ing, ed) and broke them off to figure out the base word and then crashed them back together to read the whole word.

In math workshop we reviewed our concepts on Monday and then had our end of unit test, or as I call it our "Show me what you know," on Tuesday. This went great! Many of these "show me's..." showed that we needed a little more practice modeling on paper how we know if equations are true or false. We looked at student samples and then practiced this on our own on Wednesday. We did lots of fact power this week, which the students love! On Thursday we also went to the 5th grade math game arcade! This was super fun to see games and math videos that the 5th graders have worked hard to create.

In writers workshop we continued to practice writing trick words/word wall words correctly. We also did some response to literature writing with The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats and the Scholastic News article of "A Real Snowy Day." We compared and contrasted the real and fictional events and thought about what we like to do on snowy days. We also did response to literature work with a new song, "5 Little Snowmen." We searched for missing words to finishing writing the song and then illustrated it to match the song the best we could.

On Tuesday the school heart monitor was filled again! On Friday we had our whole school celebration, pajama/comfy clothes day! We also got to watch "Monster's Inc." in the afternoon with the other K-2 classes. On Thursday we filled our class heart jar! We had our class celebration on Friday also. We built forts in the classroom and played and read together in them!

Thursday the 21st was the official first day of winter--the Winter Solstice. It's the longest night and shortest day of the year. We had a small Solstice Celebration on Friday (a day late) where we sang solstice and sun songs. We made wishes for ourselves, our families, our communities, and our world. We "lit" LED candles to remind us that even on the darkest day the light, warmth and hope will return. We also had a small solstice snack (sunny oranges) and Ms. Judy and I each gave the children a small gift. It was a beautiful celebration.

Next week is vacation. I hope you all have a wonderful week. See you in the new year!

Dates to Remember:
December 25 - January 2 - Winter Break -- No School
Wednesday January 3 - School resumes
Wednesday January 10 - Early Dismissal 12:15 -- Teacher In-Service
Monday January 15 - NO SCHOOL - Martin Luther King Jr. Day
Monday January 22 - Library 11 - 11:30

Have a great weekend!
❤ Mrs. Fox

December 15th Highlights

Hello families,

On Friday we earned a record breaking 144 hearts! This filled our heart jar and we celebrated with more time to do Kodable on the iPads on Monday.

We've begun to focus on features of Non-Fiction books during our readers workshop. Learning about the text features associated with non-fiction helps us as readers to gain as much information as we can from this type of book. Next month we'll use what we've learned and apply it to non-fiction writing as well.

This week we continued to read on our topic of light and daylight patterns. We read: Sun Up, Sun Down, Sun: Our Nearest Star, Light Up the Night, and Earth Cycles. We began talking about the daylight cycle throughout the year as we lead up to the shortest day and longest night--Winter Solstice! Next Friday we will have a Winter Solstice Celebration as a fun way to wrap up this short science unit.

We also did another light exploration, experimenting with different materials to see which things reflect light. We tested many objects and looked to see if we could see the light waves bouncing off and reflecting onto the ceiling or ourselves!

In math we continue to use patterns to help us problem solve and do many kinds of math: story problems, combination problems, skip counting, fact power, and equality exploration. We had great conversation and modeling this week to prove if some equations were true or false. Here are some examples of how we showed our thinking when determining if an equation is true or false:

Now that winter weather is here to stay please make sure that your child comes to school each day with: boots, snow pants, coats, mittens/gloves, hats, and indoor shoes. We go outside each day unless it is below 10 degrees. If you need assistance in getting winter gear for your child please let me know ASAP.

Thanks to all who came out to the Winter Concert last night. I was so proud of our first grade fox kits--they were great performers and showed a lot of HEART as a respectful audience for others as well. I hope you enjoyed the show!

Dates to Remember:
Monday December 18 - Library 11-11:30 am
Friday December 22 - Winter Solstice Celebration 10:00-11:00
December 25 - January 2 - Winter Break -- No School
Wednesday January 3 - School resumes
Wednesday January 10 - Early Dismissal 12:15 -- Teacher In-Service
Monday January 15 - NO SCHOOL - Martin Luther King Jr. Day
Monday January 22 - Library 11 - 11:30

Have a great weekend!
❤ Mrs. Fox