Ecology Technology

How the clownfish uses its habitat to find food and shelter by Student

 

Visitors

We had two special visitors last week in our classroom. First, Senorita Powell visited to teach us about Spain. Spain is a country in the southwestern part of Europe and it borders Portugal and France. We learned that there are many similarities, but also many differences, between Spain and the US. Please click here for more information about Spain.



Second, Ms. Wilson visited our classroom to share photos and stories about her scuba-diving adventures in the ocean outside Thailand, a country in Asia. We learned many exciting things about underwater creatures and how to stay safe when you swim so deep. (Please click here for more information on Thailand).




Thank you for visiting our classroom!!!

Meet Mr. Moose

Meet Mr. Moose, our new classroom pet. He came all the way from Sweden and now resides on our classroom whiteboard. Please visit us for updates on his adventures around the school.

Weekly Update

Dear Families,

We have had a very busy week in school preparing for many exciting holiday activities which we will finish next week. The students have written focused paragraphs on specific holidays they celebrate in their own families as well as a piece on Lucia, a Swedish holiday traditionally celebrated on December 13th each year. Ask your child to explain this special holiday and the significance and symbolism of lights. Lucia also has a special connection to Sicily, an island outside Italy. Ask your child to explain. Next week, your child will have the opportunity to create a craft for different holidays around the world as he/she will rotate between the 3rd and 4th grade classrooms for our special “Holidays around the World Celebration.” We will learn about Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, and Chinese New Year among many other holidays. Look for these special products next week!

The students also had the opportunity to attend the 1st and 2nd grade Holiday Concert this week. The first and second grade students sang songs from many different countries around the world and even performed some amazing dances. Please look for audio files from this concert in the days to come. They will be posted on the blog as was the song “Locomotion”, performed by the HCS Jazz Band on 12/11/09.

The students also received a special package from our Swedish pen pals this week. They each received individual holiday cards, letter and special gifts. As a class, we also received a Photo-album, filled with pictures from their school and surrounding areas. This book was very special to me as I attended this school myself as a 4th, 5th, and 6th grader. We also got an adorable little magnet moose with a Swedish scarf, which now “lives” on our whiteboard. Lastly, we received a book about Swedish holiday traditions and customs.

We started working on our presents to our pen pals this week and hope to send the package by the end of this week. We will send our Swedish friends a 2010 calendar with pictures from Vermont, a small VT license plate magnet, and VT candy (maple sugar and Lake Champlain chocolates). Each student also wrote a postcard to his/her pen pal. Each student received a postcard, depicting a different scene from Vermont. The writing of the postcard had to reflect the picture and tell something about it. For example, one student wrote about Mount Mansfield, another about Lake Champlain. We also had students write about Church Street and Burlington, covered bridges, cows, and Morgan horses. Some postcards depicted the map of Vermont so we were able to gather data and specific information, and some postcards illustrated the seasons. We wrote about apple blossoms in the Spring, green mountains in the summer time, vibrant colors in the fall and snow-covered fields in the winter. We hope that these postcards will become a visual representation and introduction to this great state! We hope they will like our project and gifts.

Lastly, thank you for responding to the survey regarding reading this newsletter on the blog. Your child will still write the letter to you inside the Weekly Update Notebook. This notebook must still be signed by a parent before it’s returned. Simply sign your name below your child’s letter (most of you did that already anyway!) Please be advised that the weekly newsletter will always be posted on Fridays, provided that no technology-related challenges occurred. Thank you!

Have a great weekend!
Regards,

Maria McCormack

HCS Photostory with school Jazz Band playing from 12/10/09 concert

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Weekly Update

Dear Families,

It looks as if winter has finally arrived and hopefully it is here to stay for a little while. The students were so excited to go out and play in the first snow this week. As the weather gets colder, please remember to send your child to school with warm clothing as we have recess every day. Warm jackets, gloves and boots are preferred. If your child wishes to bring in snow-pants as well for extra winter fun activities outside at recess, he/she can certainly do so. Please talk to your child about the importance of not sharing clothing as we have had a reappearance of head lice in the ¾ wing. Thank you!

In the month of December, the students will read the ten nominated books for the Red Clover Awards. The Red Clover Award was created in 1995 by Vermont's Windham County Reads, a non-profit literacy organization dedicated to bringing families and books together. Ten books are nominated every year, and school-age children vote on their favorite. The ten books will be read aloud to the whole class, and students will receive a writing response to each book. After the ten nominated books are read, they will vote on their favorite and these results will be entered into this Vermont-based book competition.
For more information, please click here for more information on this great program and this year's nominations.

Our scientific inquiries continue in Ecology. This week, we learned about ocean habitats. Ask your child to explain the differences between the shorelines and the coral reefs and how animals survive there. Also ask your child to explain how the “Light Zones” and the “Dark Zones” of the ocean differ. Our five new vocabulary words for next week are posted on the Wiki and should be in your child’s homework folder this week. They are: food web, herbivore, carnivore, omnivore and energy.

In an effort to stream-line and make the classroom as efficient as it can be, I would like to have your feedback on how important it is that this newsletter is sent home to you in paper form versus simply reading it every week on the blog. Please fill out the survey below and return to me sometime next week and let me know if you are willing to only access the electronic copy posted on the blog. The situation would be similar to the posting of the Viking and my newsletter would be posted on Fridays.

Have a great weekend!
Regards,

Maria McCormack

Chores for change!

Dear Parents,
As the holidays approach, we would like to do a community service project with our 3/4 classrooms. You may know that a member of our custodial staff has been out with a medical problem this fall. We would like to collect money for a gift card to a grocery store to help him out during the holidays.
We are NOT asking you for straight donations. What we would like is for students to earn money by doing extra chores for you. If each child earned $1.00 by doing chores, we could collect $100.00! Some children may earn more than $1.00.
We will be brainstorming with our students about what sorts of chores they could do. They also need to talk to you about what you think is reasonable and would be worth $1.00 (or more) to you.
At their recent meeting, the Grades 5-6 Student Council voted to support the Grades 7-8 Food Shelf service project by collecting cash donations in support of both the food shelf and Max Broderick, our Pre-K student who was recently injured in an accident.
The collections will be held from Friday, December 11th through Wednesday, December 23rd.


Thank you for your ongoing support.
Maria McCormack

Idiom of the Week

Our new idiom of the week is

"every cloud has a silver lining"

This expression means that you should not feel hopeless and sad in difficult time because even in hardship, better days will come.

Weekly Update

Dear Families,

I am finally back in Vermont and I am very excited about being back in the classroom with the students again. I had a fantastic conference and learned many new technology applications which we will implement in the near future. Please look for our upcoming newsletters and blog/wiki posts for exciting new learning opportunities. I already added a link to Scholastic’s Graphix program in our Technology section on the wiki (It is also linked here). I linked a sequential art story (comic strip illustrations) I created using another program which we will use in the classroom, but the Scholastic link is neat because students can utilize an already made template with characters, setting and speech bubbles. The finished product cannot be saved to a site, but it can be printed. Imagine the possibilities here….your child can print his/her own sequential art story. Please share them in class!

I hope the students had a great and productive week and I look forward to hearing all about it. Our unit on Ecology continues and today, your child will bring home five more vocabulary words. The words are: ecology, biome,habitat, climate, species. The attached texts are very helpful so please encourage your child to read them to help with comprehension within the context of our theme. Thank you!

Have a great weekend!
Regards,

Maria McCormack

I'm back!

Hello all! I am back from the technology conference and I cannot wait to share all the new and exciting things I learned. Please click here to view my sequential art story.

See you tomorrow in class,
Mrs. McCormack

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to all! I hope you have a safe and happy holiday with friends and family. I am thankful for so many things this year... my three children, my husband, the opportunities I have to write and paint, and the times I spend with my friends and family. I hope you have an opportunity to reflect and think about the things you are thankful for too this holiday season. Please comment on this post (click comment below and you will be able to post as well) and tell me what you are thankful for. We will share in class when we return.
I wish to share with you one of my favorite quotes. Eleanot Roosevelt said, "Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That's why we call it "the present."
I hope you will all enjoy and cherish "the present" too!!

Regards,
Mrs. McCormack

Weekly Update

Dear Families,

This week was very busy in our classroom as we started assessing and finishing up projects in many academic areas.
3rd graders started preparing for our place value assessment in math which will be completed before the Thanksgiving break next week. The students are working hard representing digits and numbers in many different ways to show their understanding of addition and subtraction while focusing upon place values. This additive reasoning skill is crucial to have before the students move on to multiplication later on this academic year. After Thanksgiving break, 3rd graders will start working on decimals and geometry. 4th graders follow the same scope and sequence in math and will explore the same topics.
We are finishing up our unit on force and motion. Vocabulary words will continue to come home every Friday (and they are due back the following Friday) but the topic will change after the break as we begin our new physical science study of states of matter and ecology. The students will take home their last list of “Force and Motion” words this week.
The students started a poster project with a partner this week. Together, they will show their understanding of how various forms of force and friction affect motion. When they have completed their poster, they will present it to the class. They will also work in small groups to conduct an experiment while applying scientific concepts, such as observation skills, prediction and collection of data. After the Thanksgiving break, we will start our new unit on ecology. The students will learn about the various habitats and biomes around the world and how a particular region/environment help the animals survive there. We will start the unit with an overview of all of the various regions. After that, we will focus upon a specific area and each 3rd and 4th grade class will study a different region. Our class will study the ocean. While the students are expected to learn identifying features of all regions, they are also expected to learn how animals in the ocean use that particular environment to survive. They will write a report at the end of the unit to show their understanding. I have already linked many interactive sites and games on the wiki for your child to explore at home. Please let me know if you have any problems accessing this information. Please ask your child to tell you what we are doing in school as this unit develops.
In Writer’s Workshop, the students began writing new small moment stories. These stories are about events and episodes from their own lives. They are amazing and we cannot wait to share them with you!

Ask your child about:
• Poetry interpretations using Wordle. (They are linked on our wiki. Please click here to see them.
• Our new letters to our Swedish pen pals focusing on American Thanksgiving
• Class picture from Sweden
• Number Stories
• Our new classroom book “Do you remember when….?” (It will be published soon so please look for it).

Lastly, the students and I discussed sending a holiday package to our Swedish pen pals and since we like our Warm Fuzzies so much, we thought it would be a nice idea to make one for our very own pen pal. If you are interested, and willing, to donate some yarn for this project, we would gladly accept it. Thank you!

Have a great weekend!
Regards,

Maria McCormack

Idiom of the week

Our new idiom of the week is:

"cool as a cucumber"

"Cool as a cucumber" means that you are very collected and do not worry about anything. In a sentence it might be "When I take a math test, I am always cool as a cucumber."

Interpreting poetry through technology

We read the poem "The greatest magic" by Kalli Dakos and liked it very much because of its incredible message and inspiration. Please read the poem below and view a possible technology representation of its meaning. Students will start creating these next week. Enjoy!

The Greatest Magic
by Kalli Dakos

To travel time, to futures past,
The greatest magic in the land
Are books you hold in your hand.

A . . . B . . . C . . . D . . . E . . . F . . . G,
Letters wider than the sea,

H . . . I . . . J . . . K . . . L . . . and M,
More precious than the rarest gem,

N . . . O . . . P . . . Q . . . R . . . S . . . T,
Letters that can set you free,

U . . . V . . . W . . . X . . . Y . . . Z,
All of this I guarantee.


People die, but letters last.

Only twenty-six in all,
Squiggles on a paper scrawled,

That made a word, a thought, a hope,
A poem, a sigh, a tear, a joke,

Come to life so we may see,
All that we were meant to be.

Look at the gold in A, B, C,
And all the letters right to Z,

Read and see their sun shine bright,
Guides in the dark, star in the night.

Please click here to view our technology interpretation of above poem but also many others as our classroom poetry collection grows!!
© 2009 Jonathan Feinberg Terms of Use

Weekly Update

Dear Families,

We have had another great week in our classroom, filled with new learning opportunities.

In Writer’s Workshop, we revisited personal narratives and the elements of such stories. This time around, we will emphasize small moment personal narratives. These stories are told in a first person narrative and have an over-arching focus or topic. In other words, they are not a list of things that the narrator did over a long period of time. Rather, they are tiny moments in time, told with descriptive language. There is also a reason we are telling them. Perhaps, there was a suspenseful moment, or a problem. Perhaps something unexpected happened which changed the sequence of events. As the students explore these characteristics, they are encouraged to see the connections between reading and writing as they “Read as Writers” and “Write as Readers”.

The students also began their “Word Collection Baskets” this week. These word baskets contain adjectives, interesting verbs, examples of settings and characters. As we read as writers we discover examples of all of these above mentioned words, we add them to our growing collection. While we learn to quickly identify the various grammatical components, we also build very interesting stories as we can use these words to help us get ideas for our own narratives. We cannot wait to share some of the stories developing in our classroom.

In addition to starting our small moment narratives we also finished our letters to our Swedish pen pals. They all went out this week. The students did an amazing job writing interesting and fun letters to their new friends. Your child should have brought his/her letter home to share along with a copy of the letter received from Sweden. Please let me know if you did not see your child’s letter. I would be happy to send you a copy.

Parent-teacher conferences are coming up soon. All parents received a time-slot. Reminder notes are going home next week. Please let me know if you cannot make it and wish to re-schedule. I will do my best to accommodate everyone’s schedule.

Ask your child about:
• The HCS new web-site
• Pop-it
• Egghead (3rd graders math)
• The school wide evacuation drill to St. Jude’s (the students did a great job!)
• Science on the Smartboard
Please do not forget that your child’s first Vocabulary Assignment is coming home this week. It is due next Friday. I have posted the words on the wiki (Link Library) for your convenience.

Have a great weekend!
Regards,

Maria McCormack

Update: Our Swedish pen pals!

We just wanted to let you all know that our letters to our Swedish pen pals will go out tomorrow. The students revised their letters many times to make sure that their letters contained interesting details and proper grammar. The students will take home these letters starting tomorrow so please look for them. We are currently exploring the differences and similarities between American and Swedish recreational activities and hobbies. For example, in Sweden some children play "bandy" and "handball". We hope to find out what those games are.
In connection with the research we are doing in the classroom, I have linked many new and efficient search engines to my wiki. These links are in the "Academic" section, entitled "Search Engines". The students have access to the school library catalogs, EBSCO, VOL and many others. These sites are also linked at the HCS Library page.

Happy research!

Weekly Update

Dear Families,
It is wonderful to be back in the classroom again! My own children are feeling much better and we all went back on Monday. Thank you so much for all of your support through this illness.
We finished our studies of the Native Americans last week, but you probably have seen your child come home with many folders, booklets and writing samples. We produced a lot of materials during this unit! I posted a new slideshow of our Northwest Native American projects on our blog with the students singing a song from the show. It is great, we think, and we hope you will see it together at home. We also hope you take the time to carefully go through the materials to see all the great learning taking place in our classroom. Your child should also have brought home the assessment rubric and the overall assessment score for this unit. If you did not see it, please contact me.
Our new unit of study will be Ecology. We will study the various climate regions around the world, such as the desert, the rainforest, the arctic, etc. We will focus upon how the animals and plants of these regions survive in their respective habitats. More information will follow. In the meantime, I have added many educational and interactive games to our wiki. The sites are linked under “Ecology.” We will also study physical science in depth in the weeks to come. Currently, we are studying “Force and Motion.” While gaining knowledge within this specific area of science, the students are also expected to apply scientific research principles, such as data collection, analysis, and experimentation. They are encouraged to inquire and predict while conducting hands-on experiments and they are encouraged to draw scientific conclusions based upon evidence gathered in our unit. Next Friday, the students will receive their first Theme Vocabulary List. The Vocabulary List will contain 5 words that your child is expected to write in a sentence that explains the meaning of that word within the context of our unit of study. Students will also be assessed on their usage of correct grammar, usage and mechanics. Fouth graders are already familiar with this as they did this last year. There are two important changes, however. First, the list will come home on Fridays (instead of Mondays). The sentences are due the following Friday (just like our Reading Logs!). This way, students can more easily manage their homework and schedules since they can use time over the weekend, if needed. Second, your child’s words will come home with a text or passage to help your child determine its meaning within the context. This text is an aid in your child’s understanding of the words. It is not a text to be used to copy from. Students must use their own words and show their own understanding. More information will follow next Friday.
Ask your child about our science classes this past week. Ask your child to explain how tin foil, sand paper, carpets and tiles influence motion through friction. I took many pictures this week and I have uploaded them to snapfish. If you were interested in joining our classroom photo sharing group, I have added you as a guest to my Classroom account. You should get an e-mail from snapfish with directions for how to access this group. There is a password for you to enter and this password should have been provided in the e-mail from snapfish. Please let me know if you have any problems accessing our classroom pictures.
Parent-teacher conferences are scheduled for November 23rd and 24th. Both days are half-days for students. I sent out conference confirmation letters a while back. If you did not sign up for a time-slot during the Open House and did not contact me, I provided you with a time-slot. Please return the bottom piece of this weekly letter indicating that you know your time and that you can attend during that time. I will do my best to accommodate everybody’s schedule. Thank you! Please know that if neither of these days work for you, we can meet at an earlier or later date. Thank you. There will be no school between November 25th-27th due to the Thanksgiving Day holiday break.
I will attend a technology conference between December 1-3 so the students will have a substitute teacher for those days when I am out. I hope to learn many new and exciting things that we can do in the classroom to make our instruction more effective while increasing student engagement and learning. We integrate technology in everything we do in our classroom. Currently, the students are learning how to create manageable file structures on their school account for all of their writing folders. We write on the computers daily. Ask your child to explain how we keep track of our narrative, paragraph and letter writing pieces on the computers. We even read on the computer. Ask your child to explain who did our read aloud on Monday in class. (Hint: we pulled it up on the Smartboard for all to see). We also do math on the computer and more recently we started drawing on the computer. Your child started writing his/her letters to our Swedish pen pals this week. They did a great job! Ask your child what we wrote about and the three things we had to include in these letters. Your child will bring these home in the weeks to come so you can share this process with us. In a few weeks, the students will create a project on Vermont, and Hinesburg in particular, that we hope to share with our Swedish friends using some form of technology. More information will follow!
Speaking of technology…the school web-site has changed. If you encounter any problems navigating around it or finding information, please let me know. Our classroom blog and wiki remain the same and have been linked to my webpage. I have added many new gadgets and sites. I do this continually so please visit often.

Have a great weekend!
Regards,
Maria McCormack

Look at our Northwest Native American Projects!

Please view our newly created slide-show with our Northwest Native American projects. The music you will hear is one of the songs the students performed at the assembly last week. Enjoy!!!

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Swedish Pen Pals

We are getting Swedish pen pals next week. I created a picture story about Sweden for you to view. Perhaps you can get some ideas from these pictures when you write your letters? (To view it full screen you can right-click on the pictures to zoom in, or you can go to the Wiki, under Sweden, to see a full screen slide-show). Enjoy!

Thank You

I wanted to say Thank You to my Room Parent for helping me organize our Halloween Party on very short notice! Thank you for always being flexible, accommodating and willing to assist our students! Thank you all parent volunteers who assisted as well!

Weekly Update

Dear Families,

It feels strange writing this letter today because I was out of the classroom the whole week. My son is sick with the flu and I had to care for him at home. He is doing much better now and hopes to return back to normal within the next few days. Thanks for all your support throughout this week. Even though I did not spend time inside the classroom this past week, I stayed in close contact with the other teachers and know that the students had a very productive week, filled with learning and discoveries.
In Reader’s Workshop, the students continued to read as writers and fine-tuned their reading responses and critical thinking skills. They had opportunities to write postcards to the authors recommend books to our friends using our classroom “Hooked on Reading” section as well as explore elements of non-fiction books.
In Writer’s Workshop the students finished their Native American paragraphs and I heard they did an amazing job. I cannot wait to read them all. They also had time to explore new writing topics by choosing topics, or “seeds”, from their previously constructed ideas inside their Writer’s Notebooks. I am anxious to read these stories too. I know they all had wonderful ideas and I look forward to seeing them develop as we explore the writing process together.
In math, 3rd graders started math problem solving this week (4th graders started earlier this year). In math problem solving, as many of you already know, students are encouraged to seek a deeper, conceptual understanding of mathematics. They work with word problems and show their understanding in many different ways, utilizing various math tools and representations. I also encourage students to view these problems as “everyday situations”, situations that arise all the time which require different thinking skills and solutions. Therefore, we work collaboratively, sometimes in small groups, sometimes in partnerships. We share ideas and discuss possible solutions to these problems. Students are encouraged to feel comfortable with numbers using oral language, writing, reading, and traditional math representations, such as equations, number sentences, and patterns.
I have many new and exciting technology news to share with this week. First of all, I have added many new interactive widgets onto my classroom blog. I have added the phases of the Moon to the sidebar. Please check it out, but nothing beats viewing the REAL MOON outside!! Perhaps your child can compare. I know 4th graders kept a Moon Journal last year! I have also added an interactive Dictionary and Thesaurus. Simply put in the word you wonder about and it will automatically bring you to Merriam-Webster’s definition. No more reaching for that dusty dictionary in the back of your bookcase! I also made a Native American Scrapbook movie for the blog. I would like to make another one, with pictures from the assembly. If anyone has any pictures (or sound files), please e-mail them to me. Thank you!
On the topics of pictures…I would like to create a Classroom Photo Sharing Group on snapfish.com. It is an internet-based photo-storage site, but I have created a private group for us in the classroom. This site, under our group name, would hold/store pictures from the school year that we all can share. In other words, I can upload pictures from my camera, and so can you. All of the members of the group have access to all the pictures within the group. Any the member can order pictures, create special booklets, slide-shows, etc for private use. If you simply wish to log on and view the pictures in the group, you can. This group is private and only for school-related pictures! If you are interested in having access (or even contribute) to this Classroom Photo Sharing Group, please fill out the form below and return to me on Monday. Thank you!
I have also updated our classroom Wiki. Please browse around as I have updated almost every folder. I have attached some wonderful Native American music videos to our Native American folder, and I have created a brand new Ecology folder. I am very excited to share some interactive art sites with you as well. Click on “Art” on the front page of the Wiki. It will bring you to two links. The first link brings you to an interactive on-line whiteboard. Your child can draw with many different colors, create effects and designs. The second link brings you to an interactive on-line art canvas. Your child can paint with “brushes,” “splash” colors, and finish off by selecting a frame that fits his/her art-work!
Lastly, I understand the students did an amazing job at the Native American Assembly. I am very sorry I missed it. You have to tell me all about it next week.
Have a happy and healthy weekend!

Regards,

Maria McCormack

Good Luck tonight!!

Dear Students and Families,

I am so sorry that I will miss our Native American Assembly tonight. My son is still very ill and I must stay home with him. I know you will do a fantastic job; you have practiced a lot and know our parts well. Please ask your parents to take many, many pictures so I can create a Photostory for us. Perhaps we can even post it here, on the blog?
I created a new Native American Scrapbook a few days ago. It is posted below. I hope you check it out. I have also added many new and educational games to our Wiki. There are some incredible ecology and math sites!!! Please browse on your own. We will also look at them together when I return.

Once again, good luck tonight!

Regards,

Mrs. McCormack

Native American Scrapbook

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

Weekly Update

Dear Families,

Time flies! It is hard to understand that we are in late October already. The days are getting colder and shorter, the leaves are falling off the trees and some of us have seen snow already!

We have our grade level Native American Assembly next week. It is scheduled for 10/28/09 at 6pm in the gym. If your child will have a speaking role in the show, please practice his/her lines at home over the break. I will send home an extra copy of the lines just in case. We practice these lines in the classroom as well, but it is also very helpful if your child has the opportunity to read them at home too. Don’t forget that our student projects are due on the 26^th!! You should have received a note indicating your child’s preference and idea for projects. Please discuss these ideas with your child to make sure this is something you can accomplish at home. Through the project, your child should show his/her understanding of how the culture of the Northwestern Indian tribes was influenced by the environment where they lived. Your child should be ready to talk about this as well, as we will share our projects in school next week.

I have some exciting Wiki news to share with you. I have added a section called printables to the bottom of my Wiki page, below the academic subjects and geography section. Through this link, you can access parent signature pages in math and word study in case yours were misplaced, various reading logs, and math games and tools. I hope you will check it out and see what is there so far. It is a work in progress and I will add to it periodically so please visit often. I have added many different reading logs and we have only used a few of them so far. We will systematically go through them all, but if your child wishes to use one already posted on the Wiki (rather than the one I am sending home) that is fine, as long as your child completes one for the week!! You might notice that your child is very interested in making predictions one week but more interested in “fix-up” strategies another and many times that depends on what type of books and magazines your child reads at home. All of our math games are also available in print form. Each game contains a full “packet” with directions, number cards and/or game board. Remember math is a social activity so have fun choosing, playing and discussing. I will still send home weekly hard-copies of all signature pages, reading logs and math games. Let me know if you have any questions. (To reach my Wiki and Blog, please go to www.hcsvt.org, click on “Teams”, “Maria McCormack” and my Wiki will come up).

Ask you child about:

• Shelfari
• Totem poles on the blog
• Our new idiom of the week “Needle in a haystack”
• Making rattles for the show

Have wonderful rest of the week and weekend!
Regards,

Maria McCormack

Our new Idiom of the Week

Our new Idiom of the week:

"Needle in a haystack"

This expression is used to refer to something that is difficult to locate in a much larger space. For example, if something is very difficult or challenging to find, you can say it is "like looking for a needle in a haystack."

Some more totem poles!

Native American Unit

Look at some of our projects from our study of the various Native American tribes. Represented in these pictures are houses from the Eastern Woodland region and some individual pictures from our classroom totem pole, which was a common cultural feature of the Northwestern tribes.

Weekly Update

Dear Families,

The NECAP assessments were completed earlier this week and the students did an amazing job throughout this entire testing process! Although they were tested in reading and mathematics for three days, they really seemed to enjoy it. Some students even said it was “fun” and that they were excited about “applying their new skills and knowledge”!! In between assessments, the students enjoyed some extra outdoor play-time and plenty of special treats and snacks. Thank you all for sending in such delicious (and nutritious) snacks! We continued working on our Native American theme and our focus has now shifted to the Northwest region and the tribes that lived there. We built individual totem poles, which will accompany us at the Native American Assembly later this month. We also continued to study various aspects of their culture with emphasis upon houses, food, transportation and clothing. Ask your child to tell you about the Northwest Indians’ canoes and how they hunted whales in the open seas. Also ask your child what their favorite food was and why they did not farm.

Next week, the students will apply their knowledge of the Native American Indians and start their preparation for the paragraph writing piece of the unit. We will explore the various elements of a paragraph together as a class. The students will learn what a topic sentence is and how to create an effective one. They will learn what supporting details are and how they can be found in texts as evidence. They will also learn what a conclusion is and how an effective conclusion “wraps everything up” like a bow. We will write together using the knowledge we already gathered on the Eastern Woodlands before the students write their own on the Northwest Indians independently.

Our Native American Assembly is scheduled for October 28th at 6pm. The students will perform a brief play and the roles will be assigned next week. Your child might come home with some lines to practice at home. Please help your child read these lines repeatedly so he/she will feel comfortable on stage.

Our Native American assignment is due on the 26th as well. If you need any help or assistance in completing this assignment, please do not hesitate to contact me. Your child’s choice of artifact will represent his/her understanding of how the environment of the northwest region influenced their culture and way of life. Your child can do this in many ways and we started listing possible projects to do to show this understanding. If you need additional assistance, please let me know.

To encourage the students to see the connections between reading and writing, we will shift our focus from fictional stories to non-fictional texts and magazines starting next week. The students will be encouraged to choose various non-fiction texts as we investigate this different form of writing and how that affects our reading comprehension and strategies.

News and Reminders:
• The weather is getting colder outside so do not forget to send your child to school with warm clothing.
• Please do not forget to send your child to school with a healthy snack.
• We do not have school next week on Thursday and Friday, October 22nd and October 23rd, respectively.

Ask your child about:
• Fast Math
• Type to learn
• Saying the Pledge of Allegiance to the school
• The Exquisite Corpse, an on-line book collaboration between many well-known children’s book authors. This on-going book has been linked on the blog for those interested in participating in this new form of reading.

Have a wonderful weekend!
Regards,

Maria McCormack

Native American Project Outline

It’s Project Time!
Dear Parents and Friends,

Independent, theme-related projects are part of the 3/4 grade expectations. As part of our study of Native Americans, all classes are thinking about the over-arching question of “How did the regional environment impact the Native American culture?” While all students are learning about the tribes of the Eastern Woodlands, individual classes are focusing on an identified region:

Mrs. D’Andrea—Southeast Region Mrs. Behun—Far North Region
Mrs. Feussner—Southwest Region Mrs. Whitman—Plains Region
Mrs. McCormack—Northwest Region

Attached is a “Native American Project Descriptions” sheet to further explain how students will plan and prepare their individual projects. All completed projects are due at school no later than Monday, October 26. As you will notice, the written component of this project will be completed in the classroom and will also be completed by the due date.

Should you have any further questions, feel free to contact you child’s classroom teacher.
Thank you for supporting your child’s learning!

3/4 Grade Classroom Teachers

Menu

Appetizer-Everyone must do this.
Map
Main Dish–Everyone must do this.
Written Paragraph meeting grade-level
standards
Side Dishes-Everyone chooses at least one activity.
Hand-made model
Artifact
Diorama
Technology Presentation (power-point, brochure)
or
An idea of your choice (Please get prior approval from your teacher.)
Desserts– Choose one or more (Optional) Artwork Poem
Pictograph Chant
Dance Toys
Song Costume

Native American Project Description

Native American Project Descriptions

Appetizer: Map (to be completed at home)
 Locate and label the six regions we have been studying on the map.
 Color the Eastern Woodlands one color on the map.
 Color the region your class is studying another color.
 Make a key.
 Optional: Add more details such as topographical features, other regions, tribe names, and points of interest.

Main Dish: Written Piece (to be completed in class)
 Neatly written paragraph (topic sentence, three supporting details, and a closing sentence) explaining how the regional environment impacted the culture of the Native Americans from that region.
 Optional: A four paragraph essay (introduction, two supporting paragraphs, and a concluding paragraph).

Side Dish: Students must choose one of the following: (to be completed at home)
o handmade model
o handmade artifact
o diorama
o technology presentation (power-point, brochure, etc.)
o approved idea of your choice

Dessert: Optional for extra credit (to be completed at home)
artwork poem
pictograph chant
dance toys
song game
food costume
approved idea of your choice

Oral Presentation: (to be practiced at home)
 Prepare a brief oral presentation sharing your project and knowledge of Native Americans of your region. Be able to answer the question: How did the local environment of the region impact the culture of the Native Americans from the region your class studied?




Project Due: Monday, October 26
Open House: Wednesday, October 28 6:00 – 7:00 p.m.

Weekly Update

Dear Families,

Thank you all for coming to our HCS Open House tonight! What a wonderful time to celebrate our students’ learning together. I hope you had a chance to explore the classroom, your child’s Theme folder and see some of the incredible works of art they have created to show their understanding how the environment influenced the culture of the Eastern Woodland Indians. Also, if you did not get a chance to sign up for parent-teacher conferences for November, please let me know. I will send out reminder notices as we get closer, but if you prefer to schedule early, you can. Thank you.

We will finish our study of the Woodland Indians this week and start our study of the Northwestern Indians next week. Each 3rd and 4th grade classroom will study a different geographical region in the next couple of weeks. The culminating assessment will be sent home tomorrow and should be in your child’s blue homework folder. The assignment is due on October 26th, two days before our HCS Native American Assembly in the cafeteria on October 28th at 6pm. This is our first “big” assignment of the year, so please plan accordingly and encourage your child to do a little at a time. Please let me know if you have any questions.

The HCS Native American Assembly is on October 28th in the school gym at 6pm. All the 3rd and 4th grade students have learned different songs and will perform a small play to illustrate the differences between the various geographic regions and their respective tribes. Each classroom will study a different geographic region. We will study the Northwestern tribes, Mrs. Behun will study the Inuits in the North and Mrs. D’Andrea will study the Southwestern tribes. After the Native American Assembly, families are invited to visit the classrooms and to see the work the students completed as part of the assignment. Families and students are encouraged to “travel” between the classrooms and visit different regions. We hope you can join us for this special evening.

As part of our “traveling around the world” in our classroom we will get pen pals from Sweden. I hope to match students up in the next couple of weeks and get our first letters out. The teacher in Sweden is a friend of mine. In fact, she was my Music and Social Studies teacher when I was in 4th, 5th and 6th grade! Her name is Ingela and her students will write their letters in English. The letters will be created in Word Documents and the students will not e-mail by themselves: the teachers will. I will also check on the letters before they go out since this project is an extension of our regular Writer’s Workshop which follows the curricular objectives for 3rd and 4th grade in Vermont. The students will receive a writing task or prompt every time we write a letter. In the beginning they will write about themselves and things they like, etc, but as the project progresses, my hope is that we will explore the similarities and differences between the two countries and cultures.

Lastly, the NECAPS start next week. The students will test on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. They will be assessed in both reading and writing. Thank you all who volunteered to bring in healthy snacks to our classroom. If you are still interested, please let me know, or simply bring in a healthy snack next week. Unfortunately, I will be out the afternoon of Wednesday October 14th as I have a math conference to attend. I know our students will be in good hands and perform beautifully every day of next week! They are well-prepared and ready.

Ask your child about:
• Our new science unit on Force and Motion
• Sir Isaac Newton
• “Buzz Aldrin” and his Swedish connection
• Native American cradleboards
• Math Coin Top-It (3rd graders)
• Our new science words: force, motion, friction, gradient and gravity.



Enjoy your weekend, relax and have fun, but get plenty of sleep!

Regards,

Maria McCormack

Greetings!

Dear Families,
I just added an on-line book from read.gov that many different children's book authors are writing together. The site and the first chapter are linked in the sidebar of this Blog. If you click on the link, you and your child can read along this story as it unfolds. Every 2 weeks a different author will add a new chapter to the book. In other words, the book will be written as we read! Registration is required as the site will send you the new chapters.
Please let me know if you encounter problems receiving your chapters.
Happy reading!!
Maria McCormack

Idiom of the Week

Our new Idiom of the Week:

"be a sport"

The expression "be a sport" means to be sportsmanlike or easygoing. It does not only refer to sports and activities linked to sports. In a sentence it might be "Be a good sport and let your little sister go first."

NECAP Snack Request

We’d love your help!
Next Monday-Wednesday (Oct. 12th-14th) your child will be taking the NECAP tests. It is a 3rd/4th grade tradition to provide the students with some nutritious breakfast snacks on those mornings. By providing them some extra food, they should be able to last through the testing session and perform to their best ability!
Would you be willing to provide a drink or food on one of those days? These foods would be for our class and some ideas would be: bagels, cereal bars, juice, cheese and crackers, fruit, or muffins.
If you would like to contribute, please contact me directly through email or by phone.
Thanks for helping us out.
Maria McCormack

Weekly Update

We have had another exciting week of learning in our third and fourth grade classroom.

Our Native American study continued this week. We’re still studying the Eastern Woodland region and this week we learned about the housing, food and clothing there. The students worked in small cooperative groups and built models of houses representing this region. The students were assigned a specific house-type and given the materials needed to build it, but they were challenged to use all of their newly acquired knowledge to figure out how to build their model and what characteristics were essential to identify their specific house type. They did an amazing job!!!! They talked and shared ideas, they searched through our Theme Library in the classroom and they consulted their own Theme folders, filled with information, pictures, and stories that we have collected so far. Not only do these model houses contain all the necessary elements of Native American houses, the students also learned to investigate and do research as they worked together! We hope you will stop by next week during our Open House to see these houses.

The HCS Open House is scheduled for Thursday, October 8th. It will begin with the traditional spaghetti dinner from 5pm-6pm, and then continue with visits to the classrooms from 6pm-7pm. We hope you can visit our great school and classroom!

In reading and math, all students are getting ready for the NECAP tests, which will be administered the week of October 12th. All third and fourth grade students will take tests in reading and math. We have worked diligently on establishing critical thinking strategies so we know hoe to tackle challenging tasks in all subject areas, not just reading and math. Ask your child to tell you about some of these strategies. For example, ask your child to explain how re-reading can help us and how “marking up” the text with our Reading Pencil help us zoom in on the important aspects of a particular passage or math problem. We have learned that there is a difference between re-telling and comprehending a text simply based upon the information given and re-telling a text when we use all of our prior knowledge. Sometimes, as critical readers we have to understand texts and find evidence in that text, regardless of our own knowledge of that particular topic. The distinction is sometimes challenging to understand and we have worked very hard in the classroom finding evidence in various types of texts!

The weather is getting colder outside this time of the year. Please do not forget that we have outdoor recess every day (weather permitting) and your child should bring a thick jacket or sweater to school every day. Please also discuss the importance of not sharing hats, scarves and hair accessories with your child in the prevention of spreading lice and germs. Thank you.



Ask your child about:
• Mrs. Behun’s class visit for our Native American unit and our movie on the Smartboard
• Swedish Name Day
• The three extra letters in the Swedish alphabet
• Our new read aloud, Sacagawea
• Visualization as a reading strategy to help us comprehend better

Have a great weekend!
Regards,

Maria McCormack

Classroom Poet

In our classroom, our Classroom Poet chooses a poem to share every morning in our Morning Meeting. We would like to share today's poem with you:

Time to Play

There are 86,400 seconds in a day,
use a few of them to play.

Challenge Questions:

How many minutes are there in a day?
How many minutes in a week, a year, a decade?
How many games can you play in a second, a minute, an hour?

Idiom of the Week

Our new Idiom of the Week is

"All ears"

This expression means that you are eager to listen and you are very attentive. In a sentence it could be: "Thanks for listening in class. You are all ears today!"

Weekly Update

Dear Families,

We have so many new and exciting things to share with you from this week.

First of all, our first field-trip together to Waterbury for the “Science on the Green” workshops was a huge success. The students had the opportunity to work together in smaller groups while investigating and exploring various aspects of water. They learned about the importance of the Water Cycle in an interactive game as they “traveled” as water molecules between various stations. They also learned about invasive species and how scientists use the dichotomous key to not only assign attributes to animals and plants but also to quickly identify them from each other. They explored plants using this key and by checking their answers with a microscope! Lastly, the students saw a show with the marine educators “Mr. and Mrs. Fish” and learned about different sea creatures. Thank you all parent volunteers for joining us on this very special trip!

In Writer’s Workshop, we continue our work on how we can make our writing more interesting as part of our revision. We learned that we can add interesting details and even suspense and tension to our stories by adding details about our senses. We practiced how we can add details about what we see, what the characters of our stories hear, or what the narrator feels. Ask your child to share our exploration on this topic and how my own story about weeding suddenly became interesting when I added these details. We also learned how we can add details by using adjectives and interesting verbs. Ask your child to describe our group activity when we worked together to describe a pumpkin, a leaf, an apple and a sun!

In Reader’s Workshop, our work on reading strategies continues. We are almost ready to publish our first resource and reference guide, which will guide our reading comprehension as we move ahead. Students practice choosing “just right” books, while exploring many different genres. We continue using our Reading Pencils and practice many different ways to remember our reading using our own words. Ask your child about our growing Mailbox, filled with postcards, and “Hooked on Reading” center.

In math, our work on number sense and data collection continues as we prepare ourselves for the NECAPS next month. Please look for further details in the first week of October. As part of our math curriculum, I send home many interactive games as a way for students to practice math facts in a fun and engaging way. I also hope the students begin to view math as a social activity; something that is around us all the time and is fun to talk about!!

Ask your child about:
• Warm Fuzzies
• “Around the World”
• Postmaster
• Wigwassawigamig
• Wigwams and Longhouses
• Our new read aloud “The beginning, the Muddle, and the End” by Avi.
• Link

Once again, thanks for all of you support. Have a wonderful weekend!
Regards,

Maria McCormack

Idioom of the Week

Our new idiom of the week is:

"between a rock and a hard place"

It means that you are faced with a choice and both options are unsatisfactory, ie not so good. You are faced with two unpleasant alternatives.

Weekly Update

Team Summit Weekly Update

9/18/09

Dear Families,

What a fantastic week of learning we have had in 3rd and 4th grade! We started our Native American unit this week. We explored many books about the various tribes and geographic regions and started our project. We are making canoes and traditional Native American anklets. Throughout this unit, all 3rd and 4th grade students will study the Eastern Woodland tribes but in addition, each class will also study another tribe more in depth. We will study the Northwestern tribes. We are very excited about this. Ask your child why. The Northwestern tribes used totem poles, and we will make our own. For this project, we need empty paper towel rolls, so if you have any extras, please send them in with your child next week. Thank you for supporting our projects in school. As a grade level, we will host a Native American Open House, an evening event to which parents and other family members are invited. More information about this special event will follow.

Word Study started this week as well. Many students went home with their first spelling lists on Monday. The students are encouraged to practice their words every day and choose spelling activities from the green sheets inside their homework folders. Please remember these are only ideas and suggestions, if your child wants to show his/her understanding and spelling another way, please let me know. The parent signature sheet with the three spelling activities is due on Fridays, along with the Reading Log. Please keep the spelling lists at home for future practice. Thank you.

We visited the Computer Lab for the first time together this week too! Starting next week, we will go once a week to learn various computer skills.

We finished our first read aloud together and I have a feeling we will miss the wonderful stories the character Gooney Bird Greene shared with us!! We learned that we all have “invisible stories” to tell; we just have to recognize their value. The students worked very diligently this week collecting ideas for possible future stories and recognizing their own invisible stories. Ask your child to share with you some of the story ideas we came up with.

We started “Traveling around the World” this week as well. Throughout the year, we will learn about different countries and places as we track my sister as she travels around the world. First, we will visit Sweden, my native country. We have already learned that Sweden has a monarchy, which is different from the US republic. I shared the story how the Bernadottes became the royal family of Sweden in the 1800s. Ask your child if he/she can tell you this story (hint: it has something to do with France’s Emperor Napoleon).

Lastly, please remember that Picture Day is next Tuesday, 9/22/09. If you wish for your child to have his/her picture taken, please return the forms to the school.
Our first Field-trip is scheduled for next Wednesday, 9/23/09. If you have volunteered to join us, please arrive at the school at 8:00am as we will leave at 8:15am. Please do not forget to pack lunch and warm, weather-appropriate clothing as most activities will be outside.

Have a wonderful weekend!
Regards,

Maria McCormack

Idiom of the week.

Our new idiom of the week is:

"pony up"

"Pony up" means to pay money, often reluctantly. In a sentence, it could be "The price of gas increased so my family had to "pony up" more money than before.

"Pony up" does not mean to saddle up!

Weekly Update!

Team Summit Weekly Update

9/11/09

We have had a productive week in school. We are all settling in to our new routines and enjoy learning and spending time together. Our Classroom Contract is finished and it now adorns our wall. The students and I decided to establish classroom guidelines around the school’s “Be a Star” philosophy. Not only did we come up with many ideas, we also signed our names in stars which we hung around the contract. We are very proud of this document. Please visit our classroom.
We also started Reader’s Workshop this week. We learned that reading is synonymous with thinking. We learned that as engaged readers we must actively think about the words we read. While we quickly realized that we can do our best thinking in a quiet and relaxed spot, we also discovered that we also need time to read and fully comprehend the text. We will continue to explore reading comprehension strategies in the weeks to come. One strategy we already discussed is the use of a “Reading Pencil” which I use all the time. Ask your child to explain.
To help your child with his/her reading at home, I send home a weekly Reading Log. Our first Reading Log went home last week, and your child will bring one home every Friday. The Reading Log is due back on Fridays with a parent’s signature.
We also started Writer’s Workshop this week. Our first unit will be on writing small moment stories and personal narratives. We are currently reading “Gooney Bird Greene” by Lois Lowry as a read aloud. Ask your child to explain how this is an example of many small personal narratives and how we are in the process of showing our understanding with index cards and yarn!!!
Our first grade level field-trip is scheduled for September 23rd. We will visit “Science on the Green” in Waterbury. A note went home earlier this week with an attached permission form. If you did not receive this form, or if you would like to join us for this special day, please contact me (mmccormack@hcsvt.org or 482-2106). Thank you!
Please be advised that the HCS school pictures are taking place the same day as our field-trip. We will have our class pictures taken in the morning, before we leave for Waterbury. Please make sure your child arrives on time that day!! Thanks

Regards,
Maria McCormack.

Our First Idiom of the Week!

Our first Idiom of the Week is:

"bury the hatchet"

It means making peace with someone you have quarreled with. You become friends, forgive each other, and move on...You bury the hatchet.

It comes from the Native American culture. The warriors had to actually bury the hatchet before they went to the peace conference after a war!

Weekly Update

Team Summit Weekly Update
9/4/09

We have had a wonderful first week of school together! I hope your child have told you about all the exciting learning already taking place. We had our first library class and started exploring the books in the classroom as well. We have a wide variety of genres and educational magazines and I hope your child will read many different kinds of books this year as we read and discuss literature together. Your child’s first Reading Log is coming home today, and this Reading Log will come home on Fridays. As you might have noticed, each day has a different writing prompt to encourage critical thinking skills in literacy. I will change these writing prompts periodically as the school year progresses. The Reading Log is due on Fridays. Please sign the log and encourage your child to also talk about his or her reading at home.

We have had the opportunity to share about ourselves this week and our poster projects are well under way. Many times, we have even shared the creative process using the Smartboard, projecting art-work and pictures for all to see. We have also played many community-building with other classes. Ask your child to tell you about the “Silly Voice Greeting”, the “Favorite Dessert Greeting”.

There are many new routines to get used to in the beginning of the year and we are getting used to them together. Ask your child to tell you about our many new and exciting classroom jobs. For example, we have a Classroom Poet and a Postmaster. The Classroom Poet reads a poem of his/her choice every day and the discussion focuses on two parts: why this particular poem was chosen and what it means. We are already building our own poetry collections in our Personal Readers!

Your child will bring home a blue Homework Folder every day with homework assignments, letters and special notices from the school, etc. Your child will also bring home a personal Student Planner every day. Students are encouraged to record homework assignments inside this planner so families can plan their schedules accordingly. Soon, assignments will be larger and require several days worth of work, so knowing well in advance benefits everybody. We use the Student Planner as a due date book, ie we record our assignments on the day it is due, not when it is assigned!

Your child might also have brought home a Book Bag already. The book bags are used to carry and keep books as they travel back and forth. Please make sure your child return books to the school and the classroom when they are read. Thanks for your help!

Information regarding math homework and spelling will follow in next week’s letter.

If you have access to the internet at home, please visit my classroom Wiki and Blog sites. The Wiki is used as a web-site with many interactive games for your child to explore. The Blog hosts weekly updates and newsletters. Our weekly UA schedule is also posted there alongside special events and school functions. I have also added a new feature entitled “Reference Question”. I will pose a challenging question for students to solve outside the classroom. Sometimes, the question requires research, sometimes it requires mathematical problem solving and sometimes it is related to general wonderings we have in the classroom! I hope you get a chance to check it out!

This has been a great week and I am very excited about this school year! Have a great long weekend.

Regards,
Maria McCormack

First day of school news!!

We had a wonderful first day of school in our classroom. I hope you had a chance to chat with your child about the many exciting things we did. Ask your child about Coo-see-kee, outside games with Mrs. D'Andrea's class and our first day in the library!
Below is a copy of a poem we read together on the Smartboard today. As many of you know, we will read poetry across the curriculum this year. Ask your child to tell you about our wonderful discussions about poetry format and connections to our own concerns before the first day of school.
I am very excited about this school year and look forward to tomorrow!
Regards,
Mrs. McCormack

The First Day of School

By Judith Viorst

Will they let me go when I need to go to the bathroom?
And what if I get lost on my way back to class?
And what if the other kids are a hundred, a thousand, times smarter than I am?
And what if we have a spelling test, or a reading test, or an...anything test, and I'm the only person who doesn't pass?
And what if my teacher decides she doesn't like me?
And what if, all of a sudden a tooth gets loose?
And what if I can't find lunch, or I sit on my lunch, or I (oops!) drop my lunch someplace like the toilet?
Will they let me starve or will somebody lend me a sandwich?
A cookie? A cracker? An apple? Some juice?
And what if they say, "Do this," and I don't understand them?
And what if there's teams and nobody picks me to play?
And what if I took off my sneakers, and also my socks, and my jeans, and my sweatshirt and T-shirt,
And started the first day of school on the second day?

Our First Homework Assignment

A star is born!

(That would be you!)

Assignment: Gather materials for a colorful and interesting poster all about you to share with the class after school has started.

Due Date: We will work on these posters together during the first week of school as part of our “getting to know each other” activities.

Dear Student,

Our Poster Project will be created in school. This will be a good chance to learn about how a good poster project is planned and put together. It will still be all about you and it will be used to introduce yourself to our class! Your job before school starts is to gather materials that you can use to make your poster interesting and personal.

Ask someone at home to help you gather photographs and other mementos of interest and/or achievements. Some of the things you might want to include are: baby pictures, school pictures, photos of family (grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins), photos of friends, special certificates, and special vacation photos. Even magazine pictures or drawings of the kinds of things you like to do are good ideas.

I will provide poster board, glue, markers and other decorative supplies to make it fun and interesting!

Have fun gathering your materials!

Regards,

Mrs. McCormack