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

Goodbye For Now!

Hello families,
This will be my last blog post for a while. I'm sending this out to you on Thursday this week because I have my last monthly UVM class tomorrow. I will be beginning my maternity leave on Monday the 10th and will send you an update once baby Fox is here--I know the kids will all want to see her!

Until April these amazing Fox Kits are in good hands with Ms. Kate. While I'm out please look for classroom updates on Kate's blog, https://katesfoxkits.blogspot.com/ .

During our last week together we also said goodbye to Ms. Madeline, our part-time student intern from UVM. The Fox Kits made thoughtful thank you cards for Ms. Madeline. We had a goodbye circle for Ms. Madeline on Monday and a goodbye circle for Mrs. Fox on Thursday.

We read two books this week by Ezra Jack Keats, A Snowy Day and Whistle for Willie. We also read Snowballs by Lois Ehlert. We did a fun project making our own snowpeople and then looked at all of our creations to graph how many snowpeople had hats, scarves, both, or neither!

We continued working on our small moment stories, adding details and looking carefully at our editing to make our stories even better. We also had a "show what you know" assessment in word study on the trick words we've been studying and writing CVC (consonant-short vowel-consonant) words.

We also participated in the Hour of Code by learning how to use a coding app, Kodable, on iPads. It was fun for everyone--whether they'd ever done coding before or not, everyone could participate! It was wonderful to see the kids learning more about giving directions to get the fuzz ball through the maze and helping each other out too!

Dates to Remember:

• Thursday 12/13 Winter Concert 6:30 pm start; students arrive in classroom 6:00 pm
• Wednesday 12/19 Half Day - 12:15 dismissal
• Winter Break - No School Monday 12/24 - Wednesday 1/2
• Thursday 1/3, School resumes
• Wednesday 1/9 Half Day - 12:15 dismissal

Have a great weekend (and beyond)!
❤ Mrs. Fox

End of November Highlights!

Hello families,

We showed a lot of heart this week and were excited to fill out heart jar on Wednesday. We celebrated Friday afternoon by making slime!

We continued practicing good habits and strategies readers do to solve hard or puzzling words. This week we practiced doing a slow check (hearing all the sounds), looking for parts we know and crashing them together, and trying a vowel sound 2 ways (short and long sound).

In writers workshop we are really getting the hang on writing small moment stories. Now we are working on adding more details to each page (in words and pictures) and bringing our stories to life by adding speech, feelings, and thinking to understand the characters more.

We also wrote a few thank you notes this week. From the CLIF grant we received a bunch of new books for our classroom library! We wrote a letter together to thank them and say why we appreciate the books. We also wrote thank you notes individually for Ms. Madeline, our part-time student intern from UVM. This upcoming Monday will be her last morning with us.

In math we have been using number patterns to help us solve combination story problems. We also starting practicing counting by 2s, 5s, and 10s -- we will continue this number pattern work all year! We also learned a new math routine called Today's Number. In this activity we think about numbers flexibly and find as many ways as we can to make that number by adding, subtracting or both! Some students even used a number pattern like in combinations to help them find tons of ways to make today's number! It was exciting to see students generalize this idea to another context.

Today's Number

Today's Number using a number pattern!

We were excited about getting more snow this week! It's that time of year to make sure your child comes to school with appropriate outer wear. Please send you child to school each day with: a warm jacket, snow pants, mittens or gloves, a hat, winter boots for outside, sneakers or shoes for inside. Having all of these things makes it easier to have fun in the snow at recess! We do go outside for recess any day we can! If the "feels like" temperature is less than 10 degrees Fahrenheit we do stay indoors that day.

We also had another parent come in to do an activity with our class! We had another fun session of yoga and mindfulness. Just what we need to help us practice identifying our feelings and learning how to settle our monkey brains!

On Fridays we visit Mr. Gile in the library. Don't forget to send your books back each week so your child can choose new books. This week Mr. Gile read us a really fun read aloud that we took turns acting out and singing along to. Check it out!

Dates to Remember:

• Thursday 12/13 Winter Concert 6:30 pm start; students arrive in classroom 6:00 pm
• Wednesday 12/19 Half Day - 12:15 dismissal
• Winter Break - No School Monday 12/24 - Wednesday 1/2
• Thursday 1/3, School resumes

Have a great weekend!
❤ Mrs. Fox

Highlights Before Thanksgiving Break

Hello families,

We've had another fun week together. Can you believe we've had more than 50 school days already?

In readers workshop we continue practicing strategies that good readers use to figure out hard or puzzling words. This week we practiced: check the picture, look at all parts of the word, go back to the beginning and get a running start, go past the puzzling word, and double check--does it look right? does it make sense?

Many of our writers have finished up their first small moment narratives (or are still in the revising/editing process). We learned about revising our work by adding in words with writers carrots or revision strips to make our writing even better. We learned how to check if we have all the parts a small moment story needs. In particular we checked for a beginning to get the reader ready, the story told in order using transitional words, and a good, satisfying ending. We also learned how to edit our writing. We looked for: spaces between words, punctuation, capital letters at the beginnings of sentences and names, and current word wall words spelled correctly.

We were excited about the snow this week! It's that time of year to make sure your child comes to school with appropriate outer wear. Please send you child to school each day with: a warm jacket, snow pants, mittens or gloves, a hat, winter boots for outside, sneakers or shoes for inside. Having all of these things makes it easier to have fun in the snow at recess! We do go outside for recess any day we can! If the "feels like" temperature is less than 10 degrees Fahrenheit we do stay indoors that day.

We only had a few days of math this week because of the half day and some other special events later in the week. We worked a lot on combinations, or different ways, to make 10. We are working hard now to use a pattern to help us figure out all the combinations. It's fun to see turn-around facts too!

On Thursday we were lucky enough to go see the middle/high school play, Alice in Wonderland. It was such a great show! Friday was a snow day!

Please be timely to your conference time next Monday. Many conferences are back-to-back so need to begin and end on time. I look forward to meeting with you all to check in about your child's progress this year! Please also note that there is no school for kids for all of next week.

Dates to Remember:

• Family Conferences, 8am-8pm Monday 11/19 (No School for students due to conferences all day.)
• Thanksgiving Break - No School Tuesday 11/20 - Friday 11/23
• Monday 11/26, School resumes
• Thursday 12/13 Winter Concert 6:30 pm start; students arrive in classroom 6:00 pm
• Wednesday 12/19 Half Day - 12:15 dismissal
• Winter Break - No School Monday 12/24 - Wednesday 1/2
• Thursday 1/3, School resumes

Have a great weekend!
❤ Mrs. Fox

Highlights of Our Week!

Hello families,

We have had a fun-filled week of learning together. We filled our heart jar again and celebrated with a stuffie day. Many children enjoyed having a snuggly friend with them throughout the day. It was fun to play with them at recess too since it was rainy and we were indoors!

In readers workshop we've been reviewing good habits that readers do when they practice reading. This week we practiced: setting goals about how many books we want to read each day, rereading to make our sentences sound smooth like talking, scooping up phrases instead of reading word by word, and rereading a book to see and understand more of what is happening in the story.

This week we read and began writing small moment stories. These are stories of things that happened to us or moments we've lived in which we had a big feeling. When writing this type of story first we zoom into the big feeling. Then we sketch out the story parts in order. Next we write each part on a separate page. After that we add details in our pictures. So far that's what we've been doing. As we continue to progress in this writing style we'll learn more about revising and editing too! To help us understand the concept of small moment stories we read a couple together this week: Night of the Veggie Monster and Dark Night.

We also had a CLiF event on Monday where we met a local author, Tracey Campbell Pearson. We got to see a lot of her work, hear about how she makes books, and ask some questions. It was cool to hear about how long and how many revisions she makes before a book is complete!

We began the next word study unit on CVC (consonant-short vowel-consonant) words. We are practicing tapping out the sounds and then building the words with letter magnet tiles or writing the words on white boards or in notebooks. We are also adding a few more trick words/sight words to our spelling practice. These are words that are commonly used but don't always follow the traditional letter/sound patterns. We are currently working on: the, a, and, is, his, of.

We finished up our first math unit and had a "show what you know" about those math skills: comparing numbers, adding 2 addends under 10, representing numbers in an organized way, adding on the number line, solving addition/subtraction/combination story problems, orally counting to 50, and writing numbers to 50.

We also began our WIN time -- this is a time to do some learning for What I Need. Sometimes this will be everyone doing learning together about new concepts. Sometimes this will be "good fit" learning in small groups to target skills students need to work on. This week we learned about Fact Power. This is a routine that helps students practice addition and subtraction math facts. Students learn and progress at their own pace, working to master each number pattern before moving on. There are a few ways we practice: using flashcards, working in packets, and playing games. 

Thanks to all who returned the Family Conference sheets. I sent back your conference time slot according to the times of day you said you were available. Please keep the top portion of the green note so you know when your time is to meet with me. If the time given doesn't work for you after all please let me know so we can reschedule. Either way please return the bottom portion of the green note so I know if you can make it!

Last chance to order some books through our Scholastic Book Order! There are lots of great deals and books make great gifts! There likely won't be another order until I return from maternity leave in April. Orders are due this upcoming Monday!

Dates to Remember:

• No School, Friday 11/9
• Monday 11/12, Scholastic Book Orders Due
• 12:15 dismissal, Wednesday 11/14
• Family Conferences, 8am-8pm Monday 11/19 (No School for students due to conferences all day.)
• Thanksgiving Break - No School Tuesday 11/20 - Friday 11/23
• Monday 11/26, School resumes

Have a great weekend!
❤ Mrs. Fox