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