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?