Highlights at the End of March

Hello families,

This week we continued our Opinion theme in reading and writing. We wrote about our favorite and least favorite colors! We read books on this topic as well -- Red is Best, The Day the Crayons Quit, The Day the Crayons Came Back. We also read In My Opinion, a picture book illustrating how opinions can differ. We noticed the main character forgets to be polite when disagreeing...oops!

In math we began to learn about number bonds. These are different ways a whole number can be made up of parts. Next week we will connect this knowledge with story problems with a missing addend! We also practiced adding 10 and subtracting 10 from any number between 10 and 100!

This week a notice went home about lunch options for the two early releases next month (April 12 and 13). Dismissal will be at 11:00, before lunch. Your child has the option of having a turkey sandwich or a sunbutter and jelly sandwich to take home for lunch. Please send this sheet back so I know what to order for your child! If you'd prefer your child not to take a lunch home that is fine but please let me know that too!

Tomorrow, Friday, I will be out. We've had a bunch of kids out this week. We are all excited to have our whole class back on Monday!

Dates to Remember:
Thursday April 12 -- Early Dismissal 11:00 for Family Conferences
Friday April 13 -- Early Dismissal 11:00 for Family Conferences
Mon-Fri April 23 - 27 -- Spring Break
Wednesday May 9 - Early Dismissal 12:15 - Teacher Inservice
Friday May 25 - Early Dismissal 12:15 - Senior Expo
Monday May 28 - NO SCHOOL - Memorial Day

Have a great weekend!
❤ Mrs. Fox

Highlights of the Week

Hello families,

This week the Fox Kits have earned a ton of hearts! One thing we're focusing on is being timely when transitioning and lining up to go places. This means when getting to line being ready to go (facing the front, not touching or talking to others). This helps us have timely transitions, be able to spend more time on our learning, and get to places on time! We filled our heart jar again on Thursday so on Friday we had a long celebration -- games and art projects!

This week we read a few books to go along with our Opinion writing genre. We read Click, Clack, Moo Cows That Type, Everybody Needs a Rock, and Duck Rabbit. We also read I Want My Hat Back just for fun! On Thursday we also had a guest reader, an athlete from St. Mike's come to read Wacky Wednesday to us. That is a wacky, fun book!

This week we added on to our opinion writing skills. Now when we are writing about our opinions we make sure to: tell our opinion, give at least 2 reasons why, back up a reason with an example, make our writing stronger by saying what other people might think, adding sparkly words to make it more interesting, and wrap it up at the end by restating our opinion. It's amazing to see how quickly these first grade writers are developing these writing skills!

We wrapped up our Place Value and Time unit this week. Mathematicians have been working hard on developing their understanding of place value and using it to represent, add, and compare numbers to 100. They can also tell time to whole and half hours!

We have continued working in word study on spelling words with word chunks (or welded sounds) am, an, all. Spelling this type of word is becoming easy for most students! We are also practicing writing trick words--and this is so tricky! Most trick words don't follow conventional spelling rules so you just have to remember them! We are currently still working on: you, your, they, was, one, said, her, when, where, which, that, then, them, this, with, why.

Dates to Remember:
Thursday April 12 -- Early Dismissal 11:00 for Family Conferences
Friday April 13 -- Early Dismissal 11:00 for Family Conferences
Mon-Fri April 23 - 27 -- Spring Break
Wednesday May 9 - Early Dismissal 12:15 - Teacher Inservice
Friday May 25 - Early Dismissal 12:15 - Senior Expo
Monday May 28 - NO SCHOOL - Memorial Day

Have a great weekend!
❤ Mrs. Fox

Highlights of the Week 3-16-18

Hello families,

This week went by so quickly! It really is hard to fathom where the time went.

This week we read a few more books about mindfulness: Grumpy Bird, Pete the Cat and his Magic Sunglasses, and Mindful Monkey, Happy Panda. We are trying to be like Happy Panda, just being in the present moment and focusing on what we are doing, when we are doing it instead of thinking or worrying about other things. We also read a fun, imaginative book Not a Box.

This week we began writing in the Opinion genre. Sharing our opinions (which are often not the same) and backing up our opinions with multiple reasons can help us convince our readers to agree with us (but it doesn't always work). We also practice how to disagree politely--this is ongoing learning! This week we wrote opinions about a "best fox" contest. We looked at 5 foxes I have in our classroom and students were the judges for the contest. They wrote about which they thought was the best fox and why. They gave out blue ribbons (1st place), red ribbons (2nd place), and yellow ribbons (3rd place) and shared their reasoning in writing and in conversation with others.

We also had 3rd grade writers visit us to share their "expert" non-fiction books they finished recently. It was fun to hear all they'd learned on their topics, especially since we had just finished our own teaching book unit--our 1st grade writers could relate and see how older students also write this kind of book!

In math we are continuing our unit on place value and time. Students are more consistently telling time to the whole and half hour. Students can represent 2 digit numbers with base ten blocks (10 rods and ones cubes) and on paper with sticks and dots. This week we used these tools to help us begin to add and subtract 2 digit numbers by place value (without regrouping). We also continue to compare numbers and practice reading expressions such as 27 < 72, 44 > 14, 56 = 5 tens and 6 ones.

Top row: Number built with base 10 blocks.
Middle row: Number represented with sticks and dots.
Bottom row: Expanded form equation for the number.

On Thursday afternoon we had an All School Celebration because we filled the HEART monitor again! The whole school played BINGO together in the cafeteria. It was hard because not everyone wins this game of chance but it was also fun to play all together!

Today report cards for the second trimester are coming home. Please read and keep the report card. Sign and return the envelope. If you have any questions fee free to contact me. Thanks!

Dates to Remember:
Friday March 16 - Report Cards go home
Tuesday March 20 - Jump Rope for Heart event (rescheduled due to snow day)
Friday March 23 - Fun Fair (PTO event) 4:30-6:30 pm
Thursday April 12 -- Early Dismissal 11:00 for Family Conferences
Friday April 13 -- Early Dismissal 11:00 for Family Conferences
Mon-Fri April 23 - 27 -- Spring Break

Have a great weekend!
❤ Mrs. Fox

Highlights of this Short Week

Hello families,

It's great to be back together again, even for just a quick 3 days. It didn't take long until we'd filled our HEART jar again! On Thursday we had a GoNoodle-athon celebration! 

We also had a visit from the new Tooth Tutor on Friday. She showed us all the important things dentists and patients wear at the dentist's office. We practiced brushing teeth and flossing with big teeth and tools. We got new toothbrushes, toothpaste, and a tooth timer to help us remember to brush our teeth for a full 2 minutes every morning and night!

Some students wrapped up their teaching books while others who had finished already did some free writing. We began to read a few books about mindfulness to build upon the skills we already have to notice and deal with our feelings as they happen. This week we read Breathe and The Blue Day Book for Kids: A Lesson on Cheering Yourself Up.

In math we did an intense three day focus on telling time to whole and half hours. We talked about why time is important and different spans of time (seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, seasons, years). We practiced setting and reading times on digital and analog clocks. Next week we'll continue this work as a warm-up during math each day. If you can, practice at home! There are some easy, free clock apps you can add to your devices to help them practice reading analog clocks which aren't as prevalent in our electronics driven world these days!

Dates to Remember:
Wednesday March 14 - Half Day - Dismissal at 12:15 for Teacher Inservice - after school activities available
Wednesday March 14 - Jump Rope for Heart event
Friday March 16 - Report Cards go home
Friday March 23 - Fun Fair (PTO event) 4:30-6:30 pm
Thursday April 12 -- Early Dismissal 11:00 for Family Conferences
Friday April 13 -- Early Dismissal 11:00 for Family Conferences
Mon-Fri April 23 - 27 -- Spring Break

Have a great weekend!
❤ Mrs. Fox

Highlights Before Break

Hello families,

We've had a joyful week together. I finished up reading check-ins and we got back into our reading groups. Many students also take their free time to read together in the morning or practice reading sight words. Each child has a sight word booklet to help them practice frequently used words--a lot of which don't follow standard rules so you just have to know them on site. For each page (of 10 words) a child masters (can read as quickly as their own name, 5 times to get a bundle of tallies) we earn 1 tally on our bonus recess chart. One of the fox kits counted up all the tallies we've earned so far this year and it's over 100 tallies! The fox kits collectively have mastered over 1,000 sight words so far this year!!! That is incredible!

We also finished up a few more teaching books this week. It's amazing to see them working in such an engaged way to teach others about topics of interest. Some of the teaching books they've written include: tornados, school mornings, volcanoes, lady bugs, legos, art, dragons, avengers, and how to ride a bike!

We finished reading our non-fiction anchor text on sharks this week. We also sang a funny shark song, Baby Shark. We will have one more week after the vacation to finish up our non-fiction reading and writing unit before moving on to writing opinion and persuasive pieces.

On Friday we celebrated Dr. Seuss' birthday (a week early). We read The Foot Book and had a special guest visitor, the Lorax herself, read us the story of The Lorax! We did some fun Dr. Seuss inspired writing and activities, read a news article about his writing and life, and in the afternoon watched a movie adaptation of another of his books, Horton Hears a Who!

We finished up our Big Change Roundup fundraiser for the Children's Hospital. The school collected over $1,600 to donate! This is amazing. Mr. Schlatter won the contest and toured the school in his T-Rex costume all day. It was fun to celebrate this good deed with some fun for everyone.

We had an assembly to learn about Jump Rope for Heart -- another fundraising event our school will take part in next month. Your child brought home an envelope and information about raising money for this cause if you choose to do so. For more information check out their website: http://american.heart.org/jump-hoops/about/

We are working hard to show HEART each and every day. This week we focused on having quiet transitions. There are so many times we switch activities each day and consistently doing this in a quiet way helps us be more appropriate with our bodies and ready to engage in learning. We also love to end our day counting up all of our high 5s and hearts that we earned by showing HEART all day long.

I hope you have a great vacation and I'll see the kids back here on Wednesday March 7th!

Dates to Remember:
Monday February 26 - Tuesday March 6 - Winter Break (3/5 and 3/6 are Teacher In-Service days)
Wednesday March 7 - school resumes
Wednesday March 14 - Half Day - Dismissal at 12:15 for Teacher Inservice - after school activities available
Wednesday March 14 - Jump Rope for Heart event
Friday March 16 - Report Cards go home
Friday March 23 - Fun Fair (PTO event) 4:30-6:30 pm

Have a great, long vacation!
❤ Mrs. Fox

Highlights a Night Early

Hello families,

I don't know where the time is going. This week has been sailing by! I'm sending out our class news a night early since I'll be out tomorrow. Here are a few highlights from our week:

We celebrated the 100th day on Monday. We read Zero the Hero, counted to 100 many times and explored 100 in different ways during math workshop. We also filled up out heart jar that day! On Tuesday we had a class celebration with iPad time. We learned about a new app, Color Therapy, and also used Kodable. It was so fun!

We read about sharks as our anchor text for writer's workshop. We learned about using comparisons to help the reader understand better and twin sentences to help elaborate on an idea. Many students are nearly finished writing their second teaching books. Some are even writing a third one already!

Wednesday was Valentine's Day. It was fun to share our notes with each other. We did some heart drawings and a word search. We also read Huggly's Valentines. It was a sweet day together.

In math we've continued practicing addition and subtraction patterns in Fact Power. We also used base ten blocks to help model groups of tens and leftovers (ones) in numbers. By modeling numbers using these hands-on tools it helped students explain why 63 is more than 36. We used this knowledge of comparing numbers and learned about the symbols that help us write comparison expressions: greater than >, lesser than <, and equal to =.

In reader's workshop I've been meeting with students individually to do our mid-year formal, summative, reading assessments. This data will be reported out on report cards next month. Throughout the year I do formative assessments to differentiate reading instruction in our day to day learning. This makes sure that each child is getting the practice he/she needs while also getting access to whole class mini-lessons on strategies all good readers use to solve unknown words, or mini-lessons to help learn about text features that help us to be better reader.

Dates to Remember:
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 Friday and weekend!
❤ Mrs. Fox

Highlights from a Whirlwind Week!

Hello families,

Wow, this week just flew by! It's hard to believe we fit so much into just 4 days together.

We began a new math unit about place value of 2-digit numbers. We also did our winter check-ins on counting skills and number sense: counting forward by 1s, 5s, and 10s to 100 and counting by 2s to 20. Students also demonstrated their number writing to 100 or beyond! Many students took this challenge and wrote well into one hundred!

We also began a new word study unit on the "bonus letter." In words with short vowels that have an f, l or s after the vowel there is a "bonus letter." Here are some examples: fill, muff, pass. We also began reading and writing our new set of trick words (many with digraphs from our previous unit): why, where, her, when, which, that, then, them, this, with, you, your, I, they, was, one, said.

Our writers are adding tons of details in words, pictures and labels to their second teaching books. They also wrote "good beginnings" or introductions this week to hook the readers' interest and give them a clue about what they will learn in the book.

On Tuesday we had a Flynn companion workshop to go along with our Flynn show on Friday. Rose from the Flynn came and did some movement and shadow work with us. We made our bodies become elephants, flowers and planes. We experimented with making different shadows with our bodies. It was so fun! On Friday we went to see the show Pilobolus Shadowland, which is a dance and shadow performance about dreams (some happy, some a little scary). It was a great time.

Dates to Remember:
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