All School Hike!

Here are pictures we took in my hiking group. If any other parents took pictures send them to me and I'll add them to the blog for all to see!

Highlights on a Thursday

Hello families,

Tomorrow is our All School Hike. It's bound to be a busy day so here's our classroom news a day early. Please check the weather and send the appropriate clothing for the hike. It can be chillier on the mountain than at school. Good hiking boots or sneakers with socks are also a must! Be sure to send your child with a full lunch and snack--we may need more energy to get all the way up the mountain! If you can, try not to send peanut butter or tree nuts tomorrow since we won't have any dedicated peanut/tree nut eating space and hiking groups are mixed. If you have to send them in maybe put a wet nap in your child's lunch box too?

This week we read The Enormous Potato retold by Aubrey Davis before harvesting our own potatoes from the Rumney garden. We got pretty dirty, used tons of cooperation, and practiced perseverance in order to harvest 257 potatoes (of many shapes and sizes) from the bed we planted last spring!

We also read Nouns and Verbs Have a Field Day by Robin Pulver and The ABCs of Yoga for Kids by Teresa Anne Power. We loved practicing the poses as we read this book!

We did lots of handwriting practice this week and did a fun sentence fill-in on Thursday comparing nouns.

Next week our new sharing theme will begin--cool things from nature. Please help your child be prepared for his/her share day. If you lose the October sharing calendar that I sent home on Tuesday you can click the link at the top of our blog page to see it again.

Have a great weekend!

Dates to Remember
Friday September 30 - All School Hike 
Friday October 7 - Teacher Inservice - No School for Kids
Monday October 10 - Columbus Day - NO SCHOOL
Thursday October 13 - 4 Winds 1:30-2:40 pm

Highlights of the Week 9-23-16

Hello families,

It was wonderful to see so many of you at Open House this week. I didn't get a chance to talk to most of you because our 1st and 2nd graders were such good classroom tour guides! I hope you got a chance to see some of the amazing reading, writing, math, and science your child has done so far this year! 

This week we all got Sight Word practice books (one at school and one at home). We use these books in 2 ways. The first way is reading the words. These are commonly used words that don't always follow traditional spelling/sound patterns so we just have to learn them on sight. At school teachers quiz kids on reading these words. If they read them as quickly as they can read their own name (or as quick as a snap) then they get a tally mark in the box. You can do this at home with your child too as part of their nightly reading routine! The second way we use these books is to help us learn to spell these commonly used words. Children can copy the words into the word work journals, or make silly sentences with them--focusing on spelling these sight words correctly.

Second grade mathematicians have been developing their ideas about place value in numbers in the hundreds this week. We are looking at the digits in numbers and the corresponding value of these digits. We've also been working on learning the relationship between addition and subtraction. The first sets of fact families we are practicing are "Number +1" and "Make 10." In first grade most students mastered these families for addition. In second grade we use that knowledge to help us understand and master the converse relationship--subtraction. First grade mathematicians have been working on the number +1 concept within 10. They have been focusing on hands-on tools (cuisenaire rods) to demonstrate what is happening, show their work, and explain their thinking. 

Thursday was our first day of fall! We look forward to seeing the changing colors of fall on our All School Hike next Friday. A pink permission slip was sent home on Tuesday. If you haven't sent that back yet, please do so on Monday!!! Also, we welcome plentiful parent volunteers for this hiking field trip. Please sign up and join us for the day if you can!

This week we read some books from the "Words Are CATegorical" series about nouns, verbs, and adjectives. We also made Sentence Buddies in writer's workshop to help us remember all the parts of a sentence. Sentences always need to start with capital letters and end with punctuation. They also always need a subject, noun, and verb. We explored how adding adjectives helps us paint a better picture in our brains and makes our writing more interesting.

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

• We had turns being in Lunch Bunch this week. It was fun!
• We had our first guest teacher and we made him feel very welcome!
• We liked having buddies and getting to know them a little bit.
• We got to try beets, potatoes and edamame from our school garden!
• We worked hard and got to finish things in math.
• We got to the top level with Bartleby Trunks and got to choose a new champ in GoNoodle. We chose McPufferson!
• We learned about how the Earth orbits around the sun.
• We made Sentence Buddies to introduce to you all this weekend!

Dates to Remember
Friday September 30 - All School Hike (permission slips due this Monday!)
Friday October 7 - Teacher Inservice - No School for Kids
Monday October 10 - Columbus Day - NO SCHOOL
Thursday October 13 - 4 Winds 1:30-2:40 pm

HOW 9-16-16

Hello families,

This week we've done amazing things. We practiced 4 different Literacy Block choices: Read to Self, Partner Reading, Work on Writing, and Word Work. On Friday we practiced signing up for the choices we wanted to do that day during our Literacy Block!

We've continued reviewing our lowercase letter writing. We also published our Hopes and Dreams books. Come to Open House next week to read them! We've been talking about growth mindset and have begun brainstorming what that looks, sounds, and feels like as a learner. We read more books this week on this concept from the series "Ordinary People Change the World." We also read a funny book, Stuck. Here's a link to a fun video of the author reading this animated book!

This year we're trying out something new on the blog called Fox Kits Corner. This is where the students in this class tell you what's important to them from this week in school! Brainstorming and writing this will become part of our Writer's Workshop each Friday afternoon. This will (hopefully) help them take even more ownership of their learning and evaluate their efforts from the week. Take a look at this new news segment near the bottom of this post!

This week I began to check in more with kids individually to see what sight words they already know. We also did this with spelling to help make developmental spelling groups for Word Study which will begin during the Literacy next week. Next Tuesday and Wednesday I'll be doing our beginning of the year reading assessments with all the students in this class. With all of this information I'll be able to help each student learn at his/her level and meet individual needs more effectively. Not all children learn in the same ways or at the same pace. This is okay!

Thanks for your support at home and sharing your wonderful kids with me!
~Theresa Fox

Fox Kits Corner
Here's what's important to us from school this week!

• Having fun at recess
• Learning at Writer's Workshop
• Doing compost at school
• It's important to read the lunch menu and sign up for the lunch you want.
• Having class jobs is fun. We like having jobs!
• Doing penny-a-day and other math in morning meeting!

Dates to Remember:
Wednesday September 21 - Popcorn Wednesdays begins, $0.50 to purchase
Wednesday September 21 - Open House 6:30-7:30
Friday September 23 - Scholastic Book Orders Due
Friday September 30 - All School Hike
Friday October 7 - Teacher Inservice - No School for Kids
Monday October 10 - Columbus Day - NO SCHOOL

Highlights of the Week 9-9-16

Hello families,

We've had another fantastic week together! We explored the many, many book bins in our classroom library. We read to ourselves and with friends. We began to use the acronym I PICK to help us think about the books we read:

I choose a book

Purpose
Interest
Comprehend
Know most words

We brainstormed a HUGE list of rules for our classroom learning community. We then synthesized the rules with commonalities into a much shorter list. Here are the rules our class wants to use to help us be good learners and friends this year:

• Have fun and include people.
• Be kind.
• Be safe, have personal space.
• Do Rumney CARES.

We also began brainstorming and writing our Hopes and Dreams for ourselves this year. We all have things we want to learn or improve this year and chose at at least one personal goal and social goal. Next week we'll finish by writing an academic goal for ourselves. We read 3 books that also link nicely with this theme: Drawing Lessons from a Bear, Leo the Late Bloomer, and It's Okay to be Different. Just for fun, we also read Skippyjon Jones: Class Action, and the book (based on the song) What Does the Fox Say?

This week we had lots of activity and learned about many ways we can move our bodies to help ourselves learn and stay engaged. On Tuesday we made listening tools--ask your child how they did this or what they put inside of their own listening tool. Some students also brought in their gum contracts were able to use gum as an engagement tool. Our system is to get a piece of gum twice a day: after snack and after lunch. If you give your child permission to chew gum a convenient place to keep it may be in the lunch box! Make sure to send back the gum chewing permission form if you'd like your child to be able to do this!

We also began our yearlong study of daylight and the relationship between the sun and Earth through the seasons. Along with our science curriculum we also have an amazing parent volunteer science program, 4 Winds. So far I have 2 parent volunteers for this monthly commitment (thanks Karen & Abby)! Our 4 Winds classes will be one Thursday a month from 1:30-2:40. If anyone else wants to help out with 4 Winds during this time please let me know!

I also added a new tab at the top of the blog with the current month's sharing calendar. A few of the kids have told me they lost their calendar at home so I thought I'd also post it here in case you need to check it out! The formatting is a little off but I wanted to get it up quickly. Thanks for understanding!

Have a great weekend!


Dates to Remember:
Wednesday September 21 - Open House 6:30-7:30
Friday September 30 - All School Hike
Friday October 7 - Teacher Inservice - No School for Kids

Movement Breaks

In our daily schedule I've built in 2 movement breaks to help us keep our brains activated and bodies in control throughout the day. If we have time we also do some movement activities right before dismissal and getting on buses.

Some movement breaks help to activate and energize while others act to relax and refocus us. Some days we may add more breaks if our bodies and brains need it! In our schedule this is called "Yoga/Brain Gym" but we do lots of different things. A few years ago we had a Yoga4Classrooms residency so we have many quick yoga poses or activities we do that were made for small areas or to be done in chairs at desks/tables. We also use Brain Gym to help us practice motions or body patterns that cross over the mid-line of our bodies, reconnecting the two hemispheres of our brain. This week we also began using an online resource called GoNoodle. We can follow along to many different movement activity videos and it's super fun. You can also use GoNoodle at home by creating your own account!

Just a Few First Week Highlights

Hello families,

This first week has been wonderful. Coming home today is a letter with lots of information about our class and the year ahead. There are also two last forms for you to send back to me next week. I know there's a lot of paperwork this first week--I appreciate you all for getting it back to school quickly!

This week we read books about individuality, acceptance, and friendship as we embark on our journey as a new learning community. Our read alouds were: ABC I Like Me, A Bad Case of Stripes, and Friends to the End.

Here are a few of the things we did together this week:

• decorating name tags
• "me, myselfie, and I" art and writing project -- check them out on the bulletin boards outside our room to learn all about the people in our class
• free choice playing
• playing fishy, fishy cross my ocean to practice safe tagging and tagger's choice
• Primary Sing
• capital letter handwriting review
• reading books with partners
• exploring math materials
• team building games
• sharing photos

This first week I'm sending home a paper copy of our classroom news to all of you. I'm hoping to be able to send news electronically throughout the year. Please be sure to either send in the form with your email address(es) or email me directly at: tfox@u32.org .

Have a wonderful long weekend. See you Tuesday!