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