Mid-November Highlights

Hello parents!

It was great to meet with all of you for conferences in the past two weeks or so. Your children have been busy learning and growing this year! I'm thrilled to experience this with all of them! Here's our news from the past two weeks. Also please note there will be no blog post next week since it's such a short week!

This past Monday I sent home new Scholastic Book Order flyers. Please submit orders online or send in your order with a check by this upcoming Monday 11/21. If you order anything that you'd like to stay secret for a gift please let me know! Books make great holiday gifts and there is also a big selection of various holiday themed books that could be fun to read together as a family. Check them out!

We've done more science explorations about sound. We've been noticing and describing sounds, guessing about what is making the sounds, and experimenting with how sound is produced. On Friday we made kazoos with 3 different covering materials (tin foil, waxed paper, saran wrap). We compared how the sounds were the same and different and which material produced the best sound. Thanks for sending in all those cardboard tubes over the past few weeks--we couldn't have done this activity without them!

We shared our first small moment stories with one another and also read them to our 3/4 buddies on Friday. We began writing our next small moment stories during Writer's Workshop. First graders are focusing on adding more details and juicy words to describe what is happening. Second graders are encouraged to add many descriptive details about what people of feeling and thinking as well as dialogue to make their writing come to life.

This week we finished reading the compilation of short stories entitled, Rhinos and Raspberries: Tolerance Tales for the Early Grades. I read the class 3 versions of the same small moment story I wrote entitled, "Logan's Loose Tooth." We also read Scholastic News articles about Thanksgiving both from the perspective of the Native Americans as well as from the Pilgrims. Before Thanksgiving break we will also have read Oh, What a Thanksgiving! by Steven Kroll, Thanksgiving Is... by Gail Gibbons, and 'Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving by Dav Pilkey.

We finished creating our puppets this week, with our artist in residence Barbara Paulson and also in our classroom on our own. We practiced singing our song with Dan Paulson. We had an All School Meeting on Friday.

Here's a link to an interesting article I came across this week about engaging your child in meaningful conversation about school. Check it out if you want to!

After Thanksgiving Break our "Lunch Bunch" will be changing. This new group will meet in a quiet space outside of the lunchroom to eat while practicing social skills. Your child may or may not be involved in this.

Fox Kits Corner
Here's what's important to us this week:

• It was Myles' and Adam's birthdays.
• We got a new champ named Om Petalhead in GoNoodle.
• We didn't have buddies but had an All School Meeting instead.
• We made kazoos because in science we were studying the vibrations.
• We made puppets with Mimi and Barb and sometimes Dan and also Ms. Campbell. We had 3 sessions to start and finish making our puppets! We were very, very excited.
• In Spanish we played a game like London Bridge is falling down, but in Spanish.
• We liked our new jobs this week.
• In first grade math we played a new game called Shut the Box--we can teach you at home!
• Some of us got Rumney CARES awards.
• We got a lot of sight words done. Next week we'll look at our tallies and think of how much bonus recess time we've earned so far!
• Lots of us got new sight word books to practice at home and at school!
• We used great cooperation in our class!
• Some of us finished writing our thankful hearts for Thanksgiving. We wrote in the hearts what we're thankful for. Look in the hallway by the classroom!
• A lot of us finished or got close to finishing our next small moment stories.
• Writing the Fox Kits Corner News today together was fun.

Dates to Remember
Wed-Fri Nov. 23-25 - Thanksgiving Break - No School
Thursday December 1 - Puppet Show 1:45 p.m.

Highlights from November 4th, 2016

Hello friends and families,

We've had another busy and fun-filled week. It started off with a fantastic Halloween party. Thanks to Michelle Alberghini and Laura Lafaille for organizing this for us! We also got to celebrate El Día de los Muertos with Sra. Donovan!

We read a couple more amazing small moment stories, Brave Irene by William Steig and Thundercake by Patricia Polacco. We noticed how adding many details and juicy words helps elaborate small moments in time. These details help us make a movie in our brains about what is happening in the story. Many students finishing writing, editing, and conferencing their first small moment stories. They are ready to be typed for publication!

We also did some fun rhyming together to get ready to make puppets to go along with the song "A-Hunting We Will Go." We brainstormed many animal rhymes and each child chose what rhyme they want to use for their puppets. We made sketches of our ideas and wrote out our song verses. We'll use these as we begin making our puppets next Monday (we're having our puppet workshops during our normal Art time).

We were also excited to begin our science unit on sound. We kicked off our unit by watching this video of a bee pollinating a poppy flower. We made our initial observations, drew diagrams of what we saw and noticed, and wrote our ideas about what the sound was and what we noticed about it, and what might be causing the sound.

This week in second grade math our amazing mathematicians worked independently or in small groups while I was doing in-class assessments with kids one-on-one or in small groups. Students worked on their "1,000  books" -- writing all the numbers to 1,000 (or at least up to 500 so far). They also practiced skip counting forwards by 10s and backwards by 100s within 1,000. We continue to work on number line strategies and think about numbers in terms of place value, quantity, and length. On Friday we had math game stations: trash can place value, compare place value (3 digit or 4 digit numbers), math man place value, and fruit splat addition (you choose the level!).

Fox Kits Corner
Here's what's important to us this week:

• Erin and Franki lost teeth this week!
• We LOVED our jobs.
• We got to upgrade Flo Yo yesterday (Thursday).
• We had fun writing our small moment stories. We were vigorously writing!
• We had buddies today (on Friday). It was fun and hard doing the hidden pictures and working together. Some of us finished one picture and went to another one.
• We got to sketch what our puppets will look like! We will do animal puppets in art to go with rhymes we made up for the song "A-Hunting We Will Go."
• In Guidance we talked about Kelso's Choices and BIG and small problems.
• We had a school garden snack today. It was butternut squash. We all had different opinions about if we liked it.
• We liked doing Fox Kits Corner.
• We loved the activities in music: fast and slow land, arioso land, string singing, and singing "There Was an Old Lady All Skin and Bones.
• We loved this week. This week will not be like any other week!

Dates to Remember
Monday November 7 - Puppet Show for No Strings Marionette Residency 9:30-10:10
Wednesday November 9 - Parent/Teacher Conferences (After School)
Thursday November 10 - 4 Winds 1:30-2:40
Friday November 11 - Parent/Teacher Conferences (No School for Kids)
Wed-Fri Nov. 23-25 - Thanksgiving Break - No School
Thursday December 1 - Puppet Show (near the end of the day, time not yet decided)