Weekly Update

Dear Families,


This will be our last weekly update as next week is only a half week with a field-day scheduled for Tuesday, June 15th.

It is hard to believe that the school year is almost over. It has been a pleasure to spend this last year with all of you and I will miss the students very much. The journey we took together this past year was filled with new learning experiences. It was also filled with new learning tools; learning tools that hopefully allowed for a broader and more inclusive definition of learning. Collaboration, communication and critical thinking skills are vital components of today’s society and your child practiced those skills every day in our classroom. Thank you for your support.

This week, we finished our quick study of geology. The students learned about the Rock Cycle and the various rock types. They learned about how igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rocks are formed. The students also explored minerals and crystals.

The students have brought home many materials from various classes this week. Spelling and Writing notebooks have been sent home. Math books and journals have also come home. Please take the time and looks through your child’s learning materials. In 3rd grade math, in particular, there are many unfinished pages in two separate books: EDM and Investigations. I hope you and your child will find the time to use these books as resources over the summer and finish these unfinished pages. I will not send home any additional summer work as the students already have many resources at their disposal. Please remember that my wiki will always be available, although it will be de-linked from the HCS web-site shortly. Simply use the url to get to it. A list of web-sites is provided below.

Our traditional grade-level field-trip is scheduled for next Tuesday, June 15th. Please make sure you send a packed lunch and snack for your child and weather appropriate clothing as the students will spend a considerable amount of time outside. Also note that this day is an extended day, with buses leaving the school at 7:30am and returning around 4pm. Please make transportation plans accordingly.

Our grade-level barbeque is also scheduled next week on Monday June 14th between 11:30 am and 1:30 pm. Thank you for helping out with the food and beverages. Your support is greatly appreciated.

Web-sites:
Wiki:
www.inspirefirstgrade.pbworks.com

Blog:
www.summit34blog.blogspot.com

Digital Portfolio:
www.summitprojects.pbworks.com

Colonial Times Newspaper:
www.colonialtimesinthe21stcentury.weebly.com

Once again, thank you for a wonderful school year. I hope to see you soon.
Have a great weekend.
Regards,

Maria McCormack

Weekly Update

Dear Families,

It is hard to imagine, but the school year is almost over. This week it really felt like it as all the students participated in a variety of end-of-the-year assessments. The students completed their assessments in math, spelling and reading and I have already discussed the results of many of these with them. Report cards will be mailed out at the end of the school year as conferences are not routinely scheduled this time of the year. Please know that you can certainly contact me if you wish to get together before the end of the year. I am happy to meet with you.

This week also allowed us to celebrate all the learning that has taken place this past year. Our “Colonial Breakfast in the 21st Century” was a huge success! Thank you all for coming and bringing traditional and modern foods. Also, thank you all for taking such an interest in our Colonial unit and online newspaper. If you wish to receive a fully printed copy of this newspaper and did not receive one, please let me know and I will gladly print another one. I hope our online newspaper will not only serve as a representation of the students’ learning throughout this social studies unit, but I also hope it will serve as a visual representation of how students can present and document their own academic learning digitally. Imagine that the newspaper website is the website for your child’s academic year in school. Instead of a title, the students name is entered and instead of a sidebar that opens up into various pages of a newspaper, each tab links into different academic subjects, such as math, reading, writing, science and social studies. The possibilities are endless….The students would, of course, have to learn how to update and manage this site. They are ready and they can do it. I say that with confidence because they have spent the past year learning various digital tools to show their understanding. They have not only mastered many of them; they have also learned to evaluate between their respective usefulness in various project settings. They have learned that some tools might be effective in one type of task, but might not be as effective in another. They have also learned the significance of originality and creativity as words, and images, are honored and properly cited. As 21st century technology offers more and more, in and out of school, it is important not to lose sight of the importance of developing a digital culture, a culture that reflects the norms and expectations established outside its immediate realm. Be involved in your child’s computer ventures, chat about emails and online sites. Talk to your child about computer games and why they are so popular. Encourage your child to speak up when something does not seem right or does not make sense. Having access to all of these tools is a privilege; it is not a right. Let’s do our part to maintain its usefulness.

Our grade level has our traditional field trip to Billings Farm and Museum next week, on June 15th. Unfortunately, I will not be able to join the class as my back can not handle sitting in the bus for so many hours. The students will have a substitute teacher and I know they will have a wonderful day. I am very sad that I will miss the trip, but I hope the students will “flip” during the trip and share their adventures with me when they return.

Have a wonderful weekend!
Regards,

Maria McCormack

Beginning Band recorded by 3rd and4th graders

Weekly Update

Dear Families,

What a wonderful Science Fair we had this week! Thank you all for coming and thank you all for taking such a great interest in our budding scientists! Once again, we had the opportunity to focus our discussions on scientific inquiry skills and the importance of observational and testable data collections. I hope you and your child find many and varied situations and experiences over the summer when you can explore science together. Observe the birds when you go on a hike, collect various rocks and closely observe their make-up, or test how fast your bathing suit dries in the sun. Science is all around us. Make it a part of your life and make it fun!

Since the school year is quickly coming to an end, there are many end-of-the-year things we must address. First of all, many students have expressed a desire to continue their relationships with their Swedish pen-pals. Since I will not be your child’s teacher next year, this letter writing will occur outside of school. If your child can provide his/her home address to his/her pen-pal, please indicate this on the attached sheet. If you already signed this in school, you do not have to do so again. Thank you.
Secondly, many students had hoped that we could start a personalized font for Word on the computers this year. We were never able to create these fonts as it was rather costly for a whole class to do. If you wish to do this on your own, the web site I used in the past was www.yourfonts.com (Click here for link) Keep me posted if you use it. Keep in mind that your own font will not appear in an email unless the recipient has the same font (unlikely unless you install it on the receiving computer). In order for your hand-writing to appear, save the file as a jpeg, print screen or pdf. More information is available at the web-site. Good Luck!

The students and I are hosting a “Colonial Times in the 21st Century Breakfast” gathering next Wednesday, June 2nd between 7:30am-8:30am. An electronic sign-up has already been mailed out (and a paper-based sign-up is attached to this letter) as we hope to have some traditional Colonial breakfast foods along with more modern-day breakfast foods. We will show our online newspaper. The students will show their contributions on 4 computers. I will not link this until after the breakfast. The students worked very hard on it and they should be very proud of their hard work. Other teachers and staff have also been invited. We hope you can join us. Thank you.
Our end-of-the-year barbeque sign-up is on-line this year. Please let me know if you did not receive the email invitation. For those without an email account, paper-based letters and invitations were sent out. Please let me know if you did not receive these. Thank you.

I am still missing some permission slips for our field trip to Billings Farm and Museum on June 15th. Your child brought home extra slips this wee3k. Please return these by early next week.

As many of you already know, I accepted a job at the Allen Brook School in Williston. I will teach a multi-age 1st and 2nd grade class. I am very excited about this new venture and look forward to the new school year already!! I hope we will all stay in touch next year….and something tells me we will through the wonders of technology (I have many ideas already!). I wish you and your family the best of luck next year and I will miss you all very much. Your support throughout this year has been greatly appreciated and your willingness to embrace technology across the curriculum has been amazing. Thank you for all that you have done, and still do, to help your child learn.

Have a wonderful long weekend!
Regards,

Maria McCormack

Weekly Update

Dear Families,

This has been a very busy and productive week in our classroom. To begin with, 4th graders finished three days of science NECAP assessments. They all did a great job. The results from these assessments will not be available for many weeks, and the school will notify parents and guardians when they will be sent out. 3rd graders were assessed in both probability and in math fact fluency. They also did a great job! I will share the assessment results with the students next week. Our new math unit in geometry is now underway and parents of 3rd graders should have received letters as well as Smartboard lesson print-out explaining our scope and sequence throughout this unit. If you did not receive these, please let me know and I will send extra ones home. Smartboard lessons are posted on the classroom digital portfolio page as well.

Our colonial newspaper is almost ready for publication. Students are making their final revisions and help each other edit writing pieces. We will not start a new unit next week (and we will not have any new vocabulary either) as we will wrap up our unit on Colonial Times. Next week, the students will also orally present their Science Fair Projects. These projects are due on Monday, May 24th! Our grade-level Science Fair is next Wednesday, May 26th between 5-6pm. Please note that students are encouraged to “stay” at their own tri-fold and be prepared to talk about their experiments for part of the Science Fair as we all celebrate in their scientific learning!

The students also had the opportunity to see Mrs. McGuire and Mrs. O’Brien’s first and second grade classes perform the play “How does your garden grow?” It was particularly special for some of the students in our class because they performed the same play when they were in 1st and 2nd grade! They remembered their part well and how nervous they were when they had to read (or sing) their lines! Some of our students recorded part of the show and we hope to share it with you shortly.

Lastly, David Rast, our school Guidance Counselor, will join our class weekly to teach lessons on harassment and bullying. These classes are part of the school-wide social curriculum initiatives. For the last few weeks, the students in grades 3-4 have focused on developing sportsmanship and positive communication and problem-solving skills. They reached the goal of 250 golden stars this week and enjoyed 20 minutes of extra recess! I am very proud of their choices!

Have a great weekend!

Regards,

Maria McCormack

Weekly Update

Dear Families,

This has been a very strange week for us in Summit’s 3rd and 4th grade classroom as I, unfortunately, have been out most of the week due to a bad back. I hurt my back earlier this week and was unable to recover as fast as I would have liked to, so I was forced to remain at home as it is very hard for me to walk and stand. Although I have not physically been in the classroom, I have been there with the help of technology as the students and I have e-mailed each other several times a day. The students have shared documents with me and they also shared their newly constructed google doc for our evolving Colonial Newspaper. I even received minute by minute updates from some students and I very much appreciate their dedication to academic endeavors (as well as keeping me in the loop!). Ms. Pivorotti joined the class in my stead and she and I have stayed in close contact throughout to ensure that our classroom routines and expectations remain intact. Thank you, Ms. Piv.; I don’t know what we would have done without you!

The students completed their Science NECAP practice test earlier this week and they will take the actual Science NECAP Assessment next week on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday morning. This assessment next week is only for our 4th graders; 3rd graders will take it next year. Please make sure your child gets plenty of sleep and nutritious food before coming to school next week. Thank you.

3rd grade mathematicians joined the 7th and 8th grade probability fair this week as well. They learned many new concepts about this fascinating area of math as they had the opportunity to play games in various stations. 3rd graders will finish their study of probability in the next few classes. Our next, and last, unit will be on geometry. We are very excited to learn about perimeter, area and shapes.

News & Reminders:
• Science NECAP for 4th graders on 5/18, 5/19, and 5/20.
• HCS International Celebration, 5/25
• 3rd and 4th grade Science Fair, 5/26 between 5pm-6pm. Please note that projects and trifolds are due on Monday, 5/14/10.
• Library closed, 6/1. No more books can be taken out from the HCS school library as the construction of the primary wing starts.
• 3rd and 4th Grade End of the Year Celebration Picnic, 11:30-1:30pm. Please return the slip sent out earlier this week so we know how many people will be attending. Thank you!
• 3rd and 4th Grade End-of-the-Year Extended-Day Field Trip to Billings Farm and Museum, Woodstock, VT. Buses leave at 7:30 am and return to HCS at 4:00pm. Please return permission slips by Monday May 17th. Thank you!

Have a great weekend!
Regards,
Maria McCormack

Farewell Party for Charlie Fortin

Please listen to the entire school singing for Charlie Fortin as he celebrated his birthday and retirement a little while ago. Enjoy!

Traveling around the world

Last week, we "traveled" to Australia again when we received another postcard from my sister. We learned more interesting details about kangaroos. We also received a postcard from Ms. Gillette, who traveled to North Carolina. She had much to share as she used to live there.

 

Happy mother's Day from all of us!

 

Have a wonderful Mother's Day!

Mrs. McCormack

Weekly Update

Dear Families,

The students are making incredible progress in their research and information gathering phase of our Colonial America unit. The week before Spring vacation, we studied colonial education and this week we emphasized colonial houses and jobs. Please ask your child to describe what these houses looked like. Ask your child to describe what the keeping room was. Also ask your child to explain what a Dutch oven was used for and why blacksmiths were in such high demand. If you and your child wish to do additional research, please visit our classroom wiki for pre-linked educational sites on these topics (Click here). You can also conduct your own independent searches on the Search Engines site, also linked on our classroom wiki (Click here).

The students’ hard work in this unit was celebrated in a very special way this week. I had the privilege to present our classroom’s use of 21st century technology tools to all the School Boards of CSSU. In particular, I had the opportunity to highlight the students’ ability to utilize various technology tools to conduct research effectively as well as communicate and collaborate. As the students get more comfortable and self-reliant using technology tools in the academic setting, their ability and willingness to share information and knowledge amongst themselves have increased. Most casual observers of technology would perhaps argue that technology isolates individuals and discourages inter-personal interaction and collaboration. The outcome has been quite the opposite in our classroom, however. The more technology the students are exposed to, the more they share amongst themselves. They are invested in their own learning and know how to quickly and efficiently share resources with each other as they communicate by sharing urls and web-sites with each other. Please talk to your child about this development at home and discuss the benefits from sharing information. Next week, the students will continue this collaborative effort as they learn to use google docs and e-mails to send links to each other.

In math, 3rd graders continue their work on probability. Next week, we are invited to visit the 7th and 8th grade Probability Fair as we join Maria Duryea’s class. We are very excited about this opportunity. We will share more on this next week. 4th graders continued their work in geometry this week as they explored perimeter and area.


Have a great weekend!
Regards,

Maria McCormack

Weekly Update

Dear Families,

This week was filled with wonderful learning opportunities as the students continued to explore their critical thinking skills in literacy, social science and mathematics.

Our 3rd grade mathematicians finished their work in fractions with an end-of-the-unit assessment on Thursday. In this unit on fractions, the students have been exposed to complex thinking about fractions as equal part of various wholes. They learned to divide individual pieces, such as brownies and squares, into equal parts, but they also learned that wholes can also consist of parts of many smaller parts, such as in a whole class and a bag of apples. Fraction parts always indicate the equal parts of whatever whole you start with, regardless of size and shape. This concept can be challenging. The students also learned to write the fractions as mathematical representations in equations. Please visit our classroom digital portfolio for examples of actual lessons as we post smartboard lessons on-line (Click here). After the break the students will begin a brief study of probability and then move on to geometry. The students will perform two more Vermont state portfolio assessments in these areas before the end of the school year.

In social science, the students continued their research on Colonial America. This week, the students conducted their own independent research online for the first time. With the help of Mrs. Hoeppner, who is pursuing her teaching license in Technology Integration, the students accessed our classroom’s pre-linked search engines and learned how to cite and save images on-line (Click here for pre-linked search engines). The students not only learned how to cite their sources appropriately, but they also learned why it is important to cite them. We performed several skits in class and conducted several discussions on this topic. Please ask your child to explain why it is important to cite authors, illustrators and photographers on-line. The students did an amazing job and it is incredibly encouraging to see young students working so independently and confidently on-line. Nice job!

In literacy, the students fine-tuned their procedural writing skills. Please read the procedural writing examples sent home this week. Please note the introduction. The students learned about the importance of a poignant question and hook to start off the procedural writing piece. Hopefully, this procedure will serve as resources for your child as he/she prepares for out Science Fair on May 26th . All students should return their Experiment Question Forms to their parents this week. I met individually with all students to fine-tune the testable questions. Some students have some changes on their charts, some do not. If your child did not return the slip to you this week, please let me know as soon as possible and I will return it to you. I encourage students to start testing and experimenting next week, before actual writing begins. Only trough repeated testing, will your child discover some valid data. Thank you.

We have no school next week as we have our Spring break. The students return on Monday 3rd. I hope you all enjoy this time together and get a chance to relax. I will check my e-mail and voice-mail periodically in case you need to reach me.
I will miss the kids!
Have a great vacation!
Regards,

Maria McCormack

Be a STAR using Technology

As the students learn to integrate more technology tools in their learning environments, it is important to discuss issues of technology safety, responsibility and respect. These types of discussions are part of our daily classroom conversation so when we had the opportunity to create a poster, show-casing this knowledge along with our Kindergarten buddies, the students were very excited. The students worked in small groups, utilizing various forms of technology tools to illustrate our changing learning landscape. Our final product now hangs in the school Computer Lab. Please visit.

 

Our new partnership with Ms. Stanley in PE

We are very excited to announce our new collaborative partnership with Ms. Stanley, our PE teacher. We will work together on various projects during our current theme, Colonial America. Ms. Stanley's classroom blog, filled with PE updates and news, has been linked to the sidebar on our own classroom blog. Please visit often for exciting news in PE. Thank you!

Weekly Update

Dear Families,

It has been great to speak with all of you during our conferences this week and share all the learning that goes on inside our classroom! Your support and interest in your child’s education is appreciated and valued. Thank you!

This week, the students continued their work in fluency and practiced many Reader’s Theater scripts. We even recorded some with our Flip camera! The students also revisited various comprehension strategies that can be used during independent reading. Please ask your child to explain our “I wonder wheel” and bookmarks that encourages us to ask questions as we read.

We also started our new writing unit on Procedural Writing this week. This writing unit prepares the students for the Science Fair, which will be held in May. The students wrote procedures on various topics, such as how to ride a bike, how to make apple pie and how to make a paper airplane. They worked in small partnerships and as they “tested” the directions and instructions on each other, they discovered the importance of specific language and details. We will share more details about this type of writing next week as our writing pieces are completed. Their procedural writing pieces will be sent home and also posted on the wiki as a reference and guide for the Science Fair. Please be advised that the testable questions are due on Monday, April 19th. Parents’ signatures are required as we want to make sure the experiment is do-able.

Next week will be very busy here in our classroom. On Tuesday and Thursday, we are joined by researchers from the University of Vermont as our participation in their Peer Relationship study starts. We are very excited about this wonderful opportunity and are eager to share further information next week.

HCS celebrates “Spirit Week” next week. Every day provides various school-wide celebrations and fun themes. The schedule is listed below:

Monday: Tropical Day. Wear something tropical. Swim suits are not allowed.

Tuesday: Mismatch Day. Wear something that does not go together, such as a striped shirt and checkered pants.

Wednesday: Twin Day. Talk to a friend and wear the same colors, patterns, etc.

Thursday: PJ Day. Wear your PJs to school (must be school appropriate)

Friday: Charlie Fortin Day. Wear denim and suspenders (if you can) to school to honor Charlie Fortin as he retires after 22 years of service to the school. This is his last day.
Have a great weekend!

Regards,
Maria McCormack

Explorer Letters as Photo-stories

Please listen to the students' historical fictional letters and diary entries as they imagined being passengers on-board one of the many ships that reached the Americas during the Age of Exploration.

"Oliver"

The students had the opportunity to see the HCS poroduction of "Oliver"earlier this week. The show was filled with incredible acting and singing. Here is a picture of the cast on stage.

 

"Oliver" will be perfomed again on Friday April 9th, directly after the traditional HCS Spagetti Dinner which begins at 5:30pm.

Weekly Update

Dear Families,

Time flies! Parent-teacher conferences are scheduled for next week and we are already in our 4th quarter of the school year. Report cards will be distributed at conference times but the students will have a chance to sit down and chat with me beforehand as we go over the grades together. We already started talking this week about writing and we will continue next week with science and math, primarily. Student involvement in this process is important as academic engagement and accountability go hand in hand. I am very proud of their hard work in class and at home. I am also very proud of their genuine interest in their own learning. This interest shows real maturity!!

This week, two separate letters went home regarding our Science Fair in May. The letters have already been posted in the Link Library on the wiki and in the sidebar of the HCS Parent Community page, but please let me know if your child did not bring these two letters home so I can send home additional copies (Click here for direct link). In an effort to support the students as they explore physical sciences through constructivist learning, I have updated my Search Engines links on the wiki (Click here for direct link). The students will have the opportunity to use these on Monday in our Computer Lab but I also encourage that they utilize these resources at home as they formulate their own hypothesis and testable question. Please let me know if you need any additional help and resources for the home. I will gladly assist you.

Speaking of technology-HCS has transferred to gmail. All faculty, staff and students are now on gmail accounts. These accounts are not regular gmail accounts as CSSU has a domain within gmail. My new email address is mmccormack@cssu.org
Please note that although all emails have changed, my old email address at hcsvt.org still works until early June. It is preferred that all correspondence through email now goes to mmccormack@cssu.org
Thank you!

In the students’ homework folders this week, I have enclosed a "free and reduced lunch" form in case your family’s status has changed since the beginning of the year. Feel free to contact Deb Bissonette at 482-6241 if you have any questions or need any help with the form. Thank you.

We received a very special package from Sweden this week, filled with postcards written by our pen-pals. The students also received a large Spring card with a newspaper article and photograph of our Swedish friends. As you might recall, they had a very cold and snowy winter in Sweden and our pen-pals made it into the local newspaper as they were playing on a VERY large snow-bank! We have already started writing our responses; some students integrate technology, some write cards by hand and some draw lovely pictures. In addition, each student will make a Warm Fuzzy for his/her pen-pal. We hope to do a Warm Fuzzy greeting with them through Skype!! We will keep you posted.

Our unit on Explorers and Colonial America is in full swing. The students finished their imaginative diary entries or letters as explorers earlier this week. They had the opportunity to record these letters into photostories. Some letters are already posted on the HCS Parent Community site, under Student Celebrations (Click here). I will post them shortly on the Classroom Digital Portfolio. Please visit our classroom to see the hard copies which are hanging from our ceiling! The students did an amazing job assuming the role of these explorers so long ago. We are very eager to share these letters with you at conference time next week.

Have a great weekend!
Regards,

Maria McCormack

Traveling around the world

We continue to "travel" around the world in our classroom. This week we had the opportunity to learn more about Africa as we received two postcards from my sister who traveled there twice. She told us about the safaris and wild-life of Tanzania, a country on the African east coast. She also wrote us a post-card from South Africa, where she visited both Johannesburg and Cape Town. The postcard showed how farmers grow trees in rows in vineyards, and this reminded us of the Red Clover book, Wangari's Trees of Peace written by Wangari Maathari, who founded the Green Belt Movement (click here to view our textnical responses.
Why is it beneficial to grow trees in rows?

Another Smartboard Math lesson

Please view 3rd graders work in fractions. This week we continued our exploration in equivalent fractions and dividing many things into parts. Enjoy.

Flip Videos by students

Please view the Flip videos filmed by our 3rd and 4th graders.

Kindergarten Buddies

Look at some of the pictures our students took today in our weekly reading meetings with our Kindergarten Buddies.

Weekly Update

Dear Families,

The warm Spring weather has finally arrived! The students are so excited to go out for recess now and it is great to have our windows open during the day so we can feel the warm breezes inside our classroom. Please keep in mind that our fields are still wet so appropriate, out-side shoes are still desired.

The students have finished their paragraphs in response to literature and are very eager to share them with you at conference times next week. If you did not receive a confirmation of your time slot, please contact me. Our next writing unit will be on Procedural writing as the students prepare for our Science Fair on May 26th between 5pm and 6pm. The students will learn how to write effective procedural pieces in class as we explore this exciting part of Writer’s Workshop together. The students will learn how to be very precise with the language as their writing pieces illustrate the step-by-step procedures for a particular experiment. Designing an experiment and creating a testable question with one variable are also components of this writing unit. More information will follow as web-sites with students resources, examples of projects and possible topics will be added to the wiki and blog. I will also discuss this assignment during our scheduled conferences next week.

The students are learning how to use our classroom Flip camera and we are very excited to share our first videos with you. Please check the blog periodically for more postings as the students learn how to record, crop, post and email these videos. Please view our videos of special shares, poetry readings and projects with our Kindergarten buddies as we assemble our “Be a STAR with Technology” poster. The students are also encouraged to use this incredible technological resource as we explore fluency in our Reader’s Workshop. Through recordings, the students are able to focus upon their prosody as well as look at their facial expressions and body language. We love this camera; it is a mini-stage for us inside the classroom!

Have a great weekend!
Regards,

Maria McCormack

More Fraction work from class on our Smartboard

Please look at some fraction work the students have done on our Smartboard in class. They learned about equivalent fractions last week and how to visually represent these equal parts. Enjoy!

Idiom of the Week

Our new idiom of the week is "crocodile tears."
This expression means that you shed false tears or show insincere sadness or grief. It has an interesting history as we learned in class today. In the 14th century, some people believed that crocodiles shed tears when they ate their prey, but we know today that it is not true. Crocodiles do, however, have tear ducts and "shed" tears, but not out of sorrow and sadness, but because their eyes get dry when they spend too much time out of the water!

Weekly Update

Dear Families,

We have such strange weather these days! Just when Spring arrived and we hoped for warmer and brighter days, the snow came back with cold temperatures and precipitation again. Please remember to send your child to school with weather appropriate clothing as the students have outdoor recess every day (unless it is cold and raining). The fields are muddy too, so please make sure your child also has good outdoor shoes. Thank you!

The students were busy this week finishing up their Response to Literature pieces and we started fluency work in reading. Please look for additional MP3s to be posted on the wiki as they get recorded. Your child will periodically take home short plays, scripts, or shorter passages. Please listen to your child as he/she reads these aloud at home. Repeated practice of reading the same texts improve not only reading fluency and prosody, but also confidence!

3rd graders started their new math unit on fractions this week. They learned that fractions are equal parts of a whole. This concept can be challenging sometimes, but using a ruler and a number line helps us visualize our fractions. Please visit the classroom digital portfolio for postings of lessons as we learn these new and exciting concepts. Thank you.

We are almost out of pencils and erasers in our classroom again. It is challenging sometimes with students sharing many classrooms and transitioning between classrooms throughout the school. Sometimes pencils get left behind and cannot be found again. We are asking for students to bring in their own pencils and erasers. Ideally, your child should have a small pencil case for his/her own pencils and erasers, but a zip lock bag with a name on it would be great too. Your child will be responsible for his/her pencils only. Once again, thank you all for your generosity donating pencils to our classroom. Of course they are still gladly accepted as some students will need “emergency pencils”. Thank you for your understanding.

The students studied Christopher Columbus this week. Please ask your child to share some of the very interesting details of how he evolved from a weaver to a sailor. Please ask your child to explain his determined character, as he waited for years before King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella finally accepted his offer to explore for Spain. Also ask your child to sing you our special song about 1492 which helps us remember interesting facts about this very important explorer. The students will finish up their quick study of explorers next week. They will learn to identify many routes taken on maps and identify the main reasons explores left their own native countries in the 1400s, the 1500s, the 1600s, and the 1700s. We will study Jamestown next. Please do not forget to visit many educational games on the wiki relating to our current unit on Explorers and Colonial America.

News and Reminders:
• Please sign up for parent-teacher conferences the week of April 12th if you did not already.
• Please note that next Tuesday, March 30th is a half-day with dismissal at 11:30am. Teachers are scheduled for in-service.

Have a great weekend!
Regards,

Maria McCormack

Weekly Update

Dear Families,

We have had another wonderfully productive week in our classroom, finishing up some units and themes, while starting new ones.

Firstly, we ended our unit on Light Energy with a two-part assessment; a computer-based assessment using Voicethread, and a traditional paper-based test. The students should receive the results by next week when we will sit down and discuss the assessment data one-on-one. I am very proud of their ease of use of various computer platforms. They all navigated around the slides inside the thread independently, utilizing the many tools available to them. The paper-based assessment emphasizes two types of skills; first, the content knowledge of the unit, second, the application of inquiry-based thinking skills such as observational and critical thinking skills. 4th graders will participate in the NECAP Science assessment later in May, so these constructivist thinking skills will help prepare them for that assessment. More information regarding test dates, etc will follow as we approach the date.

Secondly, the students are immersed in response to literature now. They are all diligently working on their own 4 paragraph essays. We hope to finish in the next two weeks so please look for your child’s writing piece as it comes home. Our next writing unit will be on narrative writing, a unit that always allows students to creatively use their imagination as they create their own fictional characters and place them in settings, that may or may not be real, but where they face some challenges and problems which must be confronted and solved. We are very excited to start this new venture together!

The students did not have regular Book Clubs (guided reading groups) with me this week as we concentrated on writing. These book clubs will resume next week. Please note that all students will embark on fluency instruction. While fluency instruction has been embedded into our daily routines since the beginning of the school year, we started more direct instruction and practice a few weeks ago, concentrating primarily upon poetry. The students read poetry in small groups, in partnerships and alone. They practiced together and were recorded using Audacity, a computer program which allows you to create and re-create audio files. Some of these files are posted as MP3s on our Classroom Digital Portfolio wiki, under Red Clover, Silent Music. Please click on the links inside the folder and listen to them read. The book Silent Music, written by James Rumford, was a Red Clover nominated book. It tells the story of a boy who, while growing up in Baghdad, discovers that his native language looks like music when it is in written form. The students were encouraged to look at our language in written form and discover that it can sound like music! If carefully crafted, it can convey suspense or delight, impatience or hope and chaos or silence. We will continue these explorations next week. Please look for fluency packets for repeated reading at home. All students are encouraged to read out loud as they practice reading with expression and intonation. Thank you.

News & Reminders:
• April parent-teacher conference confirmation notes are enclosed in your child’s homework folder this week. Please make sure you check your date and time. If you did not return the slip or sign up yet, please let me know as soon as possible as the time-slots are filling up quickly.
• Please also return the permission slip from UVM regarding your child’s participation or non-participation in the UVM Peer Relationships Study. Thank you. If you need additional information, please do not hesitate to contact me.
• Students have vocabulary homework due next Friday. Our new unit is called Colonial Times. They are also posted on the wiki in the Link Library. Thank you.

Have a great weekend.
Regards,

Maria McCormack

Red Clover Winner in our Classroom!

The winner of the Red Clover Book Award in our classroom 2009-2010 is

Owney, the mail-pouch pooch, written by Mona Kerby!!

Owney visits our classroom!

Owney, the Mail-pouch pooch introduced in Mona Kerby's Red Clover nominated book, Owney, the Mail-pouch pooch, visited our clasroom earlier this week. This stuffed animal Owney represents Owney the REAL dog who traveled around the world, working for the United Postal Service in the late 1800s. Owney (the stuffed animal) now visits classrooms across Vermont and we had the opportunity to read some stories along with him.
We read a fantastic collection of paragraphs and essays on Australia compiled by the 5th and 6th graders in Ms. Kenney and Ms. Wright's class last year. Please visit our classroom digital portfolio to see our Voicethread research on this amazing Red Clover Book, Owney, the Mail-pouch pooch, written by Mona Kerby (Click here for link)

 

Also, please view our slide-show from our last meeting with our Kindergarten Buddies. We had a great time reading together!

3rd grade math lesson

Please view some of the math our 3rd grade mathematicians did this week. Thank you!

 

Weekly Update

Dear Families,

Spring is finally on its way! The days are getting longer, the snow is melting and the winds are warmer. Daylight Saving Time begins on Sunday this weekend. Please ask your child to explain why we change the time twice a year and what specific benefits we get from that.

Besides warmer weather, Spring is also a time for parent-teacher conferences at HCS. They are scheduled for Thursday, April 15th and Friday, April 16th. The students will attend school for half of the day, with dismissal at 11:30am. I have attached a sign-up sheet to this newsletter. Please indicate your 1st, 2nd and 3rd choice. Do not forget to enter your name and e-mail/phone number in case I need to contact you to re-schedule or find a new time-slot. I will do my best to accommodate everyone’s schedules. If you have specific requests and cannot make any of the time-slots available, please do not hesitate to contact me. As indicated in last week’s newsletter, our marking period ends on April 2nd. Students will bring home report cards the following week, April 9th.

Our science unit on Light Energy is coming to an end. I have published the Voicethread assessment on our classroom digital portfolio. The digital portfolio has been linked as a separate entry on the school web-site for quick access. It still remains within the blog, but you can also access it directly from the options on the school web-site (Please note that you can also access it directly from its own url www.summitprojects.pbworks.com). The students have viewed the assessment in class and will have opportunities to prepare their statements and responses. I encourage the students to work together and discuss the assessment at home with the parents. They will, however, respond independently. (Please click here to view the assessment). On Monday next week, the students will participate in three more experiments on this topic.

3rd graders will also finish their unit on multiplication soon. The unit will wrap up with an assessment before the students perform their second VT Standards Portfolio piece in algebra. Our next unit will be on fractions and probability. Please visit the Digital Portfolio for new lessons and projects, which are periodically posted.

The students started using e-mail this week. We had a great lesson with Ms. Wilson, our school’s Technology Integration Specialist. Please ask your child to describe the rules and expectations for the use of e-mail at our school. They all did a great job, visiting google maps, where they compared the vegetation of Hinesburg and that of Kenya.

News & Reminders:
• Our classroom has the opportunity to participate in a Peer Relationship Study through the University of Vermont. If your child has a letter from UVM this week, please return your response as soon as possible. We cannot start this exciting project until all students have replied. Please return this request even if you decline participation. Thank you!
• Our new idiom of the week is “Saved by the Bell”. Please ask your child to use it in a sentence.

Have a great weekend!

Regards,
Maria McCormack

Idiom of the Week

Our new idiom of the week is "sink or swim"

This expression means that you have to do something on your own, without any help and you will either succeed or fail.

Weekly Update

Dear Families,

It is great to be back in the classroom again. I hope you all had a nice and relaxing vacation and had a chance to spend some quality time together. We have been very busy in school this week and accomplished much.

Our literacy unit in response to literature continues. This week, the students had the opportunity to view several benchmark pieces and discuss the scoring of these pieces. We looked at pieces that lacked elements of paragraph writing and “added” our own ideas and suggestions. We also scrutinized paragraphs that met the standard and exceeded the standard. We will continue working on developing our own writing responses next week.

Our science unit is well under way and we had the opportunity to read many articles and books together as a class this week as we did not have Word Study. We also responded to the first wiki-posted science question during our Computer Lab time this week. Periodically, I will post questions regarding various science themes in our Classroom Digital Portfolio, currently linked in the sidebar in the Blog. The students will be assigned questions and respond in different ways to these questions. Please check them out. They will be posted well in advance as the objective here is to encourage scientific and critical thinking skills. The students responded to question 1 today, and will respond the question 2 at a later date. The final assessment for our unit on Light Energy will be a two-part assessment. The students will be assessed in a traditional paper-based test, but they will also be assessed in a Voicethread, which allows all students to show their understanding in many different ways as they can text, upload pictures/slides/videos, doodle and speak. This assessment will be posted on the Classroom Digital Portfolio shortly for all to see. We will, however, complete it inside the classroom and the students are expected to complete it on their own. Previewing the assessment is encouraged but not required. Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns. If you do not have access to a computer at home, please know that your child will have many opportunities during the school-week to view and discuss this assessment. Thank you.

Next week will be our last week on Light Energy vocabulary. The week following, we will begin words related to our new Social Studies theme, Colonial Times. We will start by learning about explorers, primarily focusing on those who went to the Americas. (These words will be posted on the wiki in the Link Library). We will learn about Jamestown, the Mayflower and then proceed to expand upon the various aspects of Colonial life itself; its food, clothing, occupations, and housing, etc. As a culminating experience, the students will create a newspaper together, entitled, yes you guessed it…”Colonial Times”!!!

The students will learn how to use our school email next week. We will start by having a class with Jessica Wilson, our Technology Integration Specialist on Tuesday. She will discuss the expectations and the school rules regarding email. Please know that the students can ONLY access their email at the school and the purpose for this is purely academic as teachers can now send assignments and links electronically. Students will not be allowed to access email to “write each other” or “chat”. Access and use of email will be within the regular curricular schedule and I can, as all other teachers at the school, access everything that is written. The students will learn appropriate email customs, how to link, attach, send and manage folders. Please visit our first email response later next week, listed in our Red Clover section (Classroom Digital Portfolio). The students will respond to our last Red Clover book by emailing me their response. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or concerns. Thank you.


News and Reminders:
• Parent-teacher conferences are scheduled for April 15th and 16th, with half days for the students. I will send out sign-up sheets next week.
• Our next marking period end on April 2nd. Report cards will go home the following week, Friday April 9th.
• 3rd graders are taking home their math fluency sheets every week now. Please make sure you practice these facts at home daily. Students are expected to master 50 addition, subtraction and multiplication facts in 3 minutes by the end of 3rd grade. Please contact me if you have any questions.

Have a great weekend.
Regards,

Maria McCormack

HCS "Be a STAR"

We celebrated our committment to "Be a STAR" with our Kindergarten buddies earlier this week. Please visit our Voicethread as well. It will be posted in our digital portfolio site soon and I will add the link here directly.
 

Weekly Update

Dear Families,

We have had another productive week in 3rd and 4th grade. We had the opportunity to continue our character studies unit and we are almost done with our classroom read-aloud Frindle written by Andrew Clements. After completion, we will, as a class, write a 4 paragraph essay together concentrating on the main character Nick. The students had the opportunity to view the scoring rubric for our Response to Literature unit this week. They learned that while many elements are the same as in a regular paragraph piece, some elements are different. For example, in Response to Literature, the students are expected to include the author’s name and book title in the introduction along with a hook and connection. The students also learned that they are expected to cite and make direct references to the texts throughout their writing pieces. These expectations are similar to thesis papers written in college!! The students are doing a great job integrating these new elements into their writing.

We had our first weekly constructed writing prompt this week. The students wrote on an assigned topic for 15 minutes. The topic this week was “I look forward to vacation next week.” The students and I will look at these writing pieces together and hope to share them with you at our next conference times. In an effort to encourage learning all the time, I have posted many different paragraph writing prompt on my classroom wiki, under the heading “Writing Prompts” in the Link Library. (Click here to view these prompts). These prompts provide the students with opportunities to practice constructed responses on single topics. We might use some of them in class. I have also posted semantic maps for help the students organize their thoughts before starting the actual writing. We use those maps in the classroom.

3rd grade mathematicians completed a multiplication array project a little while back and have shared their creations in class. The photographs of these projects are listed on the classroom digital portfolio under math (Click here to view these pictures). Please visit to see their incredible work and creations. 3rd graders have also participated in an interactive Smartboard assessment this week and have begun to learn to create their own! They worked in small groups and created 10 questions within pre-determined strands of mathematics. They take turns creating graphic designs, click and reveal, and patterns on the Smartboard. These assessments will be given to the rest of the students in class when everybody has had a chance to complete theirs.

The students will come home with a Vacation Journal over the break. This project is completely voluntary but if your child wishes to write about the fun and exciting things he/she will do over vacation, I would greatly appreciate it. It is always nice to share when we come back and get to know each other a little better. If you choose to complete this project, please know that you can be creative…add pictures, postcards (if you travel), stamps, admission slips, itineraries, etc. I also encourage the use of computers for this project. If your child has access to Word, Publisher, or any other writing/drawing program, perhaps you want to explore some technology as well. You can always send the file electronically to me.

Lastly, NECAP results have arrived and parent letters will be sent home in the next few days. Please be advised that this is only one, out of many, assessments that teachers use. If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact me.

News & Reminders:
• Monday, 3/1/10 is a teacher in-service day. No school for the students.
• Flynn Theater trip is scheduled for Wednesday 3/3/10. Thank you all for the prompt return of our permission slips and payments.
• If you have not yet returned the UVM Peer-Relationship study permission slips, please do so. If you need another copy, please let me know.
• We finished our first Voicethread with our Kindergarten buddies this week. It was a response to a Red Clover book entitled How to heal a broken wing, written by Bob Graham. It will be posted shortly on the classroom digital portfolio under Red Clover.
• Please ask you child about our grade level movie day! They did an amazing job and we hope to fill up another HCS poster with stars soon again!
• There is no classroom reading log this week. Please use the one provided by the HCS Reading Celebration, if you participate. If you really want one, please print on off the wiki!!!!
• There will be no vocabulary over the break either.
• Don’t forget to have fun, relax and spend TIME with your families and friends next week.
• Remember, technology can always be used. The new “www” is Whatever, Whenever, Wherever.”

Have a great weekend and winter break!
Regards,

Maria McCormack

3rd graders create arrays

3rd graders creates arrays to show their understanding of multiplication using creative array designs. Please visit our digital portfolio for full size pictures. Thank you!

 

Adventures of Mr. Moose

Mr. Moose continues to participate in our classroom. Recently, we learned he likes science experiments!

 

Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day! I hope you have a great weekend with lots of special treats.
Love,

Mrs. McCormack

Idiom of the week

The idiom of the week was

barking up the wrong tree

This expression means that you have completely misunderstood something or you are wrong about something. This expression evolved from hunting dogs. They were often found "barking up the wrong tree" when they mistakenly thought their prey was hiding there.

Weekly Update

Dear Families,

This was a busy week for us in 3rd and 4th grade. We started off with our 100th day celebration on Monday. All the 3rd and 4th grade students created stars to show our commitment to our school’s “Be a STAR” program. The stars hang in our hallways and we are very proud of them. Please come by to see them.

On Tuesday, the school participated in the Vermont Writes Day, a day when all schools write for 7 minutes at the same time. Even the teachers wrote! It was a wonderful experience. We had three writing topics to choose from. Please ask your child to tell you our options. We shared the stories afterwards and some of them will be displayed around the school. This event served as the “kick-off” to our classroom’s new weekly writing prompts, a 15 minute writing time when the students will all write a paragraph on the same topic. 3rd graders are expected to write a single paragraph, with a well-developed topic sentence, two supporting details and a conclusion. 4th graders are expected to write a 4 paragraph essay, a writing piece that contains an introduction with a hook, two supporting paragraphs and a conclusion. The students will have a chance to create the writing prompts in school and I will post many of them in our wiki Link Library. Please visit this new section for examples and let me know if your child creates an interesting prompt. Thank you!

On Wednesday, HCS started its traditional Hinesburg Reading Celebration. The whole school met in the gym and read together for 20 minutes. Your child should have already brought home an entry form to this reading celebration so he/she can track how many minutes he/she read. The white forms are due back on 2/19 and the yellow forms are due on 3/2. The winners and the prizes will be announced on the 3rd of March.

On Thursday, the students completed the CSSU science assessment, a constructivist and inquiry-based assessment that encouraged the students to “act like scientists.” The students were observing the flow of water through various earth materials. They were encouraged to make predictions, collect data and make scientific observations and they had to conclude their experiments scientifically. They did an incredible job!

Friday will be our Valentine’s Day party celebration. Thank you all for sending in treats and sweets to our children. It is greatly appreciated.

Have a great weekend.
Regards,

Maria McCormack

Math Fun on our 100th day of school

 

Weekly Update

Dear Families,

Another exciting week is coming to an end in our 3rd and 4th grade classroom. This week, we started many new and interesting projects and we are very eager to share them with you.

To begin with, we had a wonderful Skype session with the author Sheri Amsel on Wednesday morning. The students did a great job taking turns asking questions and I think we had a chance to ask all of them! She generously gave us 40 minutes to chat!! The students created their own questions for her in advance and devised their own system for how to ask them fairly so everybody who wanted to ask a question got an opportunity to. Please ask your child to explain how they solved this as our time with Sheri Amsel was limited. The chat was very inspiring for all of us. The message from Sheri Amsel was clear; if you like something-do it. Just do it. If you like to write…write. If you like to draw…draw. If you like to read….read. She shared the story about how she wrote one of her best-selling books, A Wetland Walk. Many years ago she was attending a graduate seminar when she felt compelled to write this story about a boy who walked around in a wetland area, a story that seamlessly weaves poetry and scientific facts together. She felt inspired, so she wrote this book in only ten (10) minutes!! We had many wonderful discussions about this in class and my advice to the students is; “Be ready to be inspired…anytime.” Are you?

We are started our new unit in literature this week. If you recall from last week, the students will learn to find character traits in fictional stories and find evidence in the texts to support their statements. As a class, we will read the book Frindle by Andrew Clements together and the students will gather character traits as we read along. The students will write their own four paragraph essays on character traits from another book, after we have had the opportunity to explore many others together.

3rd graders are bringing home a math assignment this week. This multiplication array assignment is due next Friday, 2/12/10. Please let me know if you have any questions or need materials to complete it. Thank you.

Our class has the opportunity to participate in a University of Vermont study on peer relationships in the next few weeks. Please see the attached information sheet with permission slips for full details and information. We are very excited to be part of this study. Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns. Thank you.

Lastly, please do not forget to return the emptied Report Card envelopes and permission slips for our trip to the Flynn Theater to see Frindle (March 3rd, 2010).

Thank you.

Have a great weekend!
Regards,
Maria McCormack

Be a STAR

Please look at our newest creation. Can you make any Self-to-Texnology Connections?

Weekly Update

Dear Families,

We have some very exciting news to share with you all this week. As you might recall, last week the students wrote a collaborative letter to an author called Sheri Amsel, whose books we have explored in class in connection with our unit on ecology and habitats around the world. The students asked for a skype session with her and she has accepted!!
If everything goes as planned, we will skype with her next Wednesday morning at 8:30 am (2/3/10). We would like to invite family members to join our classroom for this wonderful celebration of literature and ecology!! If you can, please come promptly as we will start chatting at 8:30 sharp and return the attached slip (For those families reading this letter on the blog, please be advised your child will bring home a separate sheet for you to sign. Thank you). The skyping will last for approximately 30 minutes and the students will have already prepared questions to ask her. Sheri Amsel is both a writer and an illustrator and she uses many different forms of art in her books. I have linked many sites on her work, biography and books on our classroom digital portfolio, which is linked on the blog sidebar. The url for this site is www.summitprojects.pbworks.com

I have linked Sheri Amsel’s sites on summitprojects.pbworks.com under “Red Clover”, Abraham Lincoln, because just like young Grace Bedell, we wrote letters to a well-known person too!

In response to this great opportunity for our students, vocabulary homework this week will be a little different. Every child brought home a regular list of 5 words. Your child can follow our regular guidelines and write definitions and sentences for those words. If your child wants, he or she can choose their own 5 new words from any of the linked Sheri Amsel sites related to ecology (and not already studied). The guidelines are still the same, but your child chooses his/her own words. Since we will work in small groups and partnerships to explore possible questions for Sheri Amsel in the next few days, your child might have a specific area of interest for her. Good luck and have fun creating questions, sentences and ideas about ecology and nature!

Report cards are coming home this week. Please sign the envelope and send it back to school empty so I know you received the information. I have met with all the students who were interested in chatting about their report cards so there should be no surprises. If you have any questions or wish to meet with me, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Our next unit in Writer’s Workshop will be “Response to Literature.” The students will learn effective strategies to analyze characters in books. We will primarily focus upon character attributes and change as we learn to use a rich and interesting vocabulary to back up our statements with evidence from the texts.

We will not start another science unit for another couple of weeks as we are wrapping up our unit on States of Matter. The students are also exploring scientific inquiry skills, observational techniques and data gathering as we prepare for the district-wide science assessment in about two weeks.

Have a great weekend. We hope to see you next Wednesday at 8:30 am!
Regards,

Maria McCormack

Idiom of the Week

Our new Idiom of the Week is

"to keep it sub rosa"

This expression means to keep what is said sercret and confidential. The idiom has a long and complicated history, but most evidence points to the belief in the Middle Ages that roses suspended from the ceiling meant that if you sat below, you had to keep conversation "sub rosa."

The adventures of Mr. Moose continues

Mr. Moose likes to dance, it turns out. He had fun with our Kindergarten buddies last Friday!

Kindergarten Buddies visiting!

New Word Invention

A student coined a new word for us as we explored traditional Self-to-Text Connections. Since we use so much technology in the classroom and in our daily lives, she suggested that we do....

Self-to-Textnology Connections

When you do these types of connections, you are....

Self-to-Textnological

Our next read-aloud, Frindle, by Andrew Clements, happens to be about the invention of a new word. perhaps we can get this into the common usage as well????

I think we are up for the challenge. What do you think?

Weekly Update

Dear Families,

Our second quarter marking period ends on the 22nd and report cards will go out the following Friday. We do not schedule regular parent-teacher conferences this time, but if you and your family would like to meet with me or another teacher, please let me know and I would be happy to arrange that. Thank you!

The students have had many assessments in reading, writing and math this past week and they all did a great job. All of these assessments are administered to make sure your child receives the best possible instruction at the correct learning level and these assessments, in addition to more informal, daily continual assessments are used to guide our instruction. We are looking forward to a “regular” week next week!

Despite all the assessing, the students had time to complete some other projects. They finished the second stage in our reading response to the Red Clover Book Owney, the mail-pouch pooch by Mona Kerby. They finished their individual Voicethreads and now they have been partnered up so they can ask their questions to another student in class, who, in turn, will research and respond to that question. Please check the classroom digital portfolio for postings and the blog, where a link will be posted as well.

The students also finished writing our letter to Sheri Amsel, an author from up-state New York who offers time to Skype classrooms. We hope she likes our letter and will grant us a Skype-session. To spark her interest, the students also wanted to share their digital pictures of their stuffed animal projects. We will keep you posted. (The letter is posted on our digital portfolio in the Red Clover section, Abraham Lincoln).

Thank you all for making sure your child handed in his/her stuffed animal project this week. They are truly amazing. The students did a great job representing their animal and our classroom looks like a beautiful ocean scene now. Please visit if you can.

Lastly, the students and I have had many productive conversations about the proper use of technology. As our students grow up in an increasingly technology saturated world, and they must learn how to navigate this ever-changing landscape, they must also learn to use technology wisely and with prudence. They must learn to differentiate between the beneficial aspects of technology and those that are not. They must learn to critically think and question the ever-expanding offerings on-line. Please be advised that young children should never “surf” the internet unsupervised and encourage your child to talk to you about what he/she comes across online. For example, in the classroom, students seldom use google to do searches. It is a great tool, but not very efficient unless you know how to use it correctly. Please guide your child to the HCS Library space or to my wiki, where I have linked more appropriate search engines (under that name). These students do an incredible job in the classroom and it is inspiring to see how easily and readily the embrace technology and its creative benefits. I am very proud of them!!!!

Have a great weekend!
Regards,

Maria McCormack

Our Ocean Animal Projects

Please view our stuffed ocean animal projects in the slide-show. Thanks.

Look at our new Weather Vanes!

Look at our beautiful weather vanes created in art class.

Our new Kindergarten Buddies

We have new Kindergarten buddies and they will come and visit our classroom once a week. We will join together in many exciting new ventures. Please come back and read more about these projects. We are starting a reading response task shortly and we will use technology as a way to communicate with each other. We had a dance party last Friday. Please view some pictures above.

Idiom of the week

Our new idiom of the week is "on top of your lungs"
This expression means to say or sing something very loudly. In a sentence, it could be "She sang the song on top of her lungs."
Can you think of another sentence? Please share in class.

Weekly Update

Dear Families,

Have you noticed that the days are getting longer? As much as I love winter, I am excited about the first sign of a changing season. It does not look like it outside, however, with lots of snow and freezing temperatures, but things are changing. As a challenge at home, start documenting small signs of Spring and please encourage your child to bring his/her observations into class to share. Please remember to send your child to school with warm clothes every day as we have recess unless it is raining or below zero. Please remember to send your child to school every day with a snack. They need nutritious and hearty snacks in these cold temperatures.

Our unit on ecology is coming to an end. The students have conducted research on an ocean animal for a couple of weeks and will be expected to write a four paragraph essay about how this animal finds food and shelter in the ocean. Some animals are a little bit more challenging to find information on, but the students all help each other and share information. It is great to hear them share things they have learned from each other as they conduct their own research. In addition to learning about the importance of finding relevant information to your stated focus, the students have also learned to re-write and “paraphrase” texts and authors. Your child has learned not to copy word for word from a text, but rather enter the information needed into bullet points, which later will be re-written into his/her own words. Not only are these important skills for writing; they also reinforce the value of the written word in and of itself. Writing reflects a personal and unique thought process, just like art and music. While it allows the writer to express his/her ideas of various topics and the world, it also allows the reader to join in this conversation and dialogue through different reading responses and follow-up discussions and personal reflections.

The students have learned to use Voicethread in more depth this week and have almost completed their second multi-media response to the book entitled Owney, the mail-pouch pooch (Mona Kerby). Please ask your child about this very exciting venture and how we have learned to research various places around the world using resources in our classroom, on the computers and from each other. If you do not know already, Voicethread is an online community that allows for communication and information sharing on a given topic. It allows students to share personal Voicethreads, but it also allows them to respond to others queries and questions. Most importantly, Voicethread allows students to show their understanding of a given topic in multi-sensory ways; it allows them to write, to speak, to draw and to use music and videos. In other words, it allows students to create their own responses. If you have any questions and/or concerns about Voicethread, please do not hesitate to contact me. We are very proud of our new project and are very excited to share it with you. Please revisit the wiki and blog often as these Voicethreads will be shared as soon as they are ready to be published.



Reminders:
• Our Ocean Animal Project is due next Tuesday, 1/19/10. The assignment outline is attached to this letter. If you need materials and help, please do not hesitate to contact me.
• The second quarter is almost over and individual student report cards are mailed home (1/29/10). We do not schedule conferences this time, but if you wish to meet with me or your child’s math or word study teacher, please let me know. Thank you!
• There is not school on Monday, 1/18/10, and the school celebrates Martin Luther King Day.
• Do not forget to access snapfish.com where our classroom pictures are located for you to print out. Please let me know if you need help to access our classroom group account. Thank you.

Have a great weekend!

Regards,
Maria McCormack