HOW 4-7-17

Hello families,

This week we revisited some past, and important, themes in our read aloud books. On Monday we read The Girl Who Never Made Mistakes and talked about how mistakes help us grow and learn. We began to hang up new posters around our room to help remind us that we are learners. Part of learning is not knowing everything. Another part of learning is making mistakes and using those mistakes to help us learn and grow (academically, socially, and personally). On Tuesday we read The Skin You Live In and discussed all the differences that we can see about people on the outside. We asked ourselves do these outward differences mean that we're different on the inside? Why are people different? We had a great discussion about the importance of diversity and acceptance. On Wednesday we read another book with an empathetic message, Those Shoes by Maribeth Boelts. We saw how thinking of others and how they are feeling can make everyone feel good. We also talked about the difference between wants and needs. On Thursday we read a new twist on the Cinderella story, Interstellar Cinderella, about a girl who dreams of fixing fancy rockets and decides to become the chief rocket mechanic for the prince instead of marrying him! On Friday we read Little Red Writing another fun version of a fairy tale. This time our hero was a littel red writing pencil who learned all about telling a story, editing and revising her work.

During writer's workshop we looked at the many notefacts we have collected so far. We reread them to check for punctuation. We also tried to add juicy or interesting words or phrases to make them more exciting to read or more descriptive to teach the reader more about that idea or fact. Next week will be our last week researching the final guiding questions we have but haven't answered yet. It's pretty exciting!

Second grade mathematicians have been becoming more fluent with their number line subtraction strategies. They are working on telling time to 5 minute increments and beginning to learn the diverse language that we use to talk about what time it is. We also played a few more money games this week. First grade mathematicians continued their work on various adding strategies and using the number line. They are also learning about fractions.

On Thursday we got to see the dress rehearsal of the school play, The Wizard of Oz! It was amazing. It got us ready to start thinking about our own plays. Next week our class will check out the scripts and choose which play they most want to be in.


**Next week we are forecasted to have a few amazingly warm days! However we still have snow, ice and LOTS of puddles on the playground. Students will still need to wear boots and snow or rain pants until the ground is dry. Please send your child in with appropriate outdoor gear!
Fox Kits Corner News

• We got a new champ for indoor recess, Blob Ross. We finished Just Gary.
• Some of us started to edit. We checked our words, looked for word wall words, and checked for punctuation in our PLPs.
• We did some fun stuff at indoor recess like block creations, gonoodle, played with the stretchy ball, and the fun game mancala.
• On Thursday we saw the practice play of the Wizard of Oz.
• We are making placemats in Spanish and next week Sra. Donovan is going to laminate them and we'll have a snack next week using them!!
• We celebrated a birthday this week! (It was Chase's but it was actually on the weekend.)
• This was a really fun week!

❤ Mrs. Fox

Dates to Remember
Wednesday April 12 - All School Meeting 9:45-10:30
Friday April 14 - Scholastic Book Orders due
Friday April 14 - Parent Input forms for Class Placement due
Whole week April 17 - 21 - Spring Break
Monday April 24 - School resumes
Monday April 24 - VSO Musical Petting Zoo (for K-4 classes)
Friday May 19 - Our Class Plays, 2:00 seating, 2:15 showtime!! (I know this is a ways out but mark your calendars to attend our shows that afternoon!)
Monday May 29 - Memorial Day - NO SCHOOL