Thank you

Dear families,
First, I want to thank you so very much for  coming in today to participate in our reader's theater performance and holiday party.  It was a huge success.  Second, I want to thank all of our wonderful children who work so hard every day.  They did an amazing job, reading their scripts in front of everyone.  Please tell them again how proud we all are.  They are truly amazing kids.
I hope you will all enjoy a restful and relaxing holiday break with your family.  School starts again on January 4th.  Until then, take care and thank you for supporting our learning in so many ways.
Maria

Weekly Update

Dear Families,
This newsletter is filled with interesting and fun upcoming activities.  Please remember that we are on school holiday break next week, from Wednesday December 23rd to January 1st.  School resumes again on Monday, January 4th.

Upcoming Events:

On Thursday morning, December 17th between 7:30am and 8:30 am, Team Harmony is hosting a breakfast gathering for families.  This, we hope, will be a great opportunity for us all to spend some time together while enjoying some special breakfast treats.  Please come and join us for a early morning social hour!  Thank you to those who have already signed up to donate foods and items for this party.

Our Thursday morning breakfast will also provide an opportunity for all of you to meet my new student intern.  Her name is Laura Sullivan and she is a student at St. Michael's College.  She is pursuing her teaching degree and will spend time with our class next semester.  She will join our class full time when we return from break and she is scheduled to be with us until April break.  We are excited to have her join our class.  Please come in on Thursday to meet her!

Thursday is a busy day for us.  Team Synergy has planned a new school-wide celebration because the children filled the BeeHive again!  They have planned a special "Stop, Drop and Play" activity for our school.  This will happen at the very end of the day.  We look forward to this celebration.

Traditionally, Team Harmony celebrates the last day of school in December with a Pajama Party and a movie.  I am happy to announce that we will do this again this year.  Please encourage your child to come to school in his/her Pjs on Tuesday, December 22nd.  Please note, however, that we cannot bring in any stuffed animals or wear slippers.  We will have Related Arts and recess on Tuesday, so please make sure your child is dressed for outside play as well!  We will watch the movie "Polar Express" together on our team.  I will provide popcorn (Smartfood) to the children.  Each child will get a bag, but if anyone is willing and able to donate large ziplock bags, I would greatly appreciate it.  Please let me know if your child does not like popcorn (Smartfood).  It would be great if your child has a bottle of water as well as the popcorn tastes a little salty.

In the afternoon of Tuesday, December 22nd, the students and I would like to invite you all to our end-of-the-year celebration.  This year, we hope to perform our Reader's Theater plays.  We also hope to have some goodies and treats for everyone to enjoy after the performances.  If you are willing and able to donate foods to our party, please let me know.  I feel bad asking for this again as we just asked parents to bring in treats for our breakfast gathering.  Thank you for understanding and thank you for being so generous with your time and money.  For our party on Tuesday, December 22nd, we would like the following items:
cups
plates
napkins
muffins
cookies
fruit
juice
crackers
anything else that the children might like!

We hope to start our Reader's Theater performances at 1pm.  Hopefully, you can join us then!

Thanks again for all that you do to support our learning!
Best,

Maria 

Guest reader

We had Nancy Radley, our Reading Recovery teacher, join our class this afternoon as a guest reader.  Nancy read another Tacky the Penguin book to us.  Thanks for joining us. 

Weekly Update

Dear Families,
I cannot believe we are already in December!  It feels extra strange because the weather is still so warm and there is no snow on the ground.  Please know that our last day of school before the holiday break is on December 22nd.  That is a full day. The students return to school again on January 4th.

Upcoming Events:
Team Harmony will host a breakfast gathering on our team so families and teachers can mingle and chat before work.  It is scheduled for December 17th between 7:30-8:30am.  We will be in our kiva.  This is a potluck breakfast so we are asking parents to contribute goodies.  If you would like to donate some items, please access this document to sign up.  Thank you.  We hope to see you then!  We also sent information about this breakfast social in your child's Friday folder.

Harbor House is hosting their annual Fun Night at WCS.  Information about this special event and how to sign up is also inside your child's Friday folder.

Our Learning:
This week, we started a new author study.  We will read books by Helen Lester in the next couple of weeks.  She is the author of the "Tacky, the Penguin" books among others.  We will continue to dig deeper into story elements, such as character traits, setting, problems and solutions.  We will also read a book about her and learn more about the author as a person.  We are making a connection to this in our writer's workshop as well.  The students are in the process of publishing their small moment stories and they are now writing a page called "All about the author" to accompany this book.  We hope we can learn new creative ways to share information about ourselves from Helen Lester!

The students accessed google drive today to start typing their "All about the author" pieces.  Google drive is accessed through email, but we will not be using email at this point.  The children were asked not to use it yet as I would like to build some common expectations and understandings of digital safety before we communicate freely with each other.  Please follow up at home about this.  Thank you.  Some children already asked if they can work on their author pages at home.  Yes, of course.  Your child's email address is firstnamelastname@cssu.org and the password is the same as the one already shared for Typing Club.  Let me know if you have any questions.

Speaking of Typing Club....I have re-set some names and checked on our account.  This what we should do from now on:
1. your child's username is his/her first name only, spelled with capital letter as a starting letter and full, formal name.  In other words, if your child's nick name is Ben, but his first name is Benjamin, his sign in would be Benjamin.
2. password is the same as before (which was emailed earlier).

Thanks for your patience in this!  Happy typing in drive and in Typing Club!

Best,
Maria 

Weekly Update

Dear families,
I cannot believe that we are off from school next week already to celebrate Thanksgiving.  Time goes by so fast.  This is truly a time to reflect on what we have accomplished so far and where we want to go in the near future; as students, parents, teachers and members of society.  I hope you all have a lovely time together with friends and family next week.  I will be out tomorrow all day as I am attending a science conference in Middlebury.  I planned a special Thanksgiving day project for the children to do tomorrow and I hope you will find them inside their Friday folders tomorrow.  Perhaps they will be your new favorite center piece at your Thanksgiving Day table?

The Scholastic Book Fair was a huge success.  Thanks to all the volunteers who make this event a true celebration of reading and books.  Thank you also to those who donated books to our classroom. Your support for literacy, creativity and learning is greatly appreciated.

The students started using Typing Club a couple of weeks ago in school.  I have linked it on this blog's sidebar.  I will email you passwords and username information so the children can practice at home, if they wish.  Al;though we have, and try to integrate ipads as often as we can into the curriculum, we have to remember that keyboarding skills are still essential computer skills that everyone needs to learn to master.  Typing skills and file structure/hard drive management are important components to my technology integration classes.  As we use technology too, we have to remember that digital citizenship and the core ideas of being "safe, kind and responsible" online still apply.  For a couple of weeks the children have explored "animation-ish", a creative graphing/story-boarding program created by Peter Reynolds.  The students practiced creating small stories with a clear beginning, middle and end, which were told using multiple frames, similar to a flip book.  Soon, we will share our scientific knowledge of pumpkins in google drive and participate in coding, through the national drive "Hour of Code."  Stay tuned for more information.

As a tradition, my students and I "transform" our classroom into a Colonial Classroom the days before Thanksgiving.  This year, was no different (but I forgot to take pictures of our lovely set-up).  Please ask your child to explain how we had to fetch water "from the well", write with quills, bring "wood" into the classroom wood stove and participate in Spelling Bees and stand up when speaking.  Our desks were also placed in rows.  We had so much fun playing Colonial Classroom.

Once again, I wish everyone a relaxing and restful Thanksgiving break.  Remember, there is no school next week for the students.

Best,
Maria

More pumpkin science

Yesterday, the students predicted how many seeds they thought would be inside our pumpkin.  We discussed what reasonable estimates and predictions are, and this morning, they worked in groups to find the actual amount.  Stay tuned for more updates on our calculations

Pumpkin science

We were busy studying pumpkins in our classroom this week.  We used our senses to describe what they look like, feel like and smell like.  We compared two different pumpkins. One big, and one small.  One pumpkin was also healthy and fresh, while the other one was starting to rot.  This comparison made it easier for us to think of describing words using our senses.  We also made predictions about the circumference before we measured it.  We learned that predictions are like guesses, but they are reasonable guesses.  We will continue our pumpkin science next week by studying the seeds and weight.

Thinking about character traits

This week, the students continued to explore character traits in our reader's workshop.  We learned how we can flag important pages using post-it notes to remember these traits and how they relate to the story.  As a class, we went on a scavenger hunt using the "Piggie and Elephant" books.
We finished our author study of Mo Willems this week.  We will continue to explore character traits next week, using different mentor texts.

Exploring dialogue in writing

The students explored different ways to show dialogue and conversations in their writing this week.  We looked at different books and authors and tried to integrate their ideas into our own writing.  We learned that we can use speech bubbles and thinking bubbles.  We learned that we can be creative when we use those.  We also learned how to use dialogue directly in our writing by using quotation marks.  Here are some examples.

Small moments

We are in the midst of writing our small moment stories.  We created a mural in our classroom to help us come up with new story ideas.  We think of our small moment stories as the seeds inside watermelons.  They are small parts of a bigger whole.  For example, a good small moment story idea could be when I went to the beach with my mom. While going on vacation with my family would be "too big".  We learn to zoom in and stretch our ideas out.
We also discovered that we have many small moments here at school together so we created a visual reminder of those as well.

Weekly Update

Dear Families,
I wanted to share with you a story I tell the students over and over again.  It pertains to reading.  Many years ago, a second grade student said to me, "You know what, Mrs. McCormack?  Reading is like going to the beach."  I was surprised by the sudden announcement and asked, "What do you mean?"  The student said, "Well, some people take a plane, some people take a car and some people walk, but in the end, we all get there."  Such wisdom!  I share this story with you because at this point in the school year, we need to remember to encourage all of our students to "get to the beach".  It does not matter what your reading ability is, we all set personal goals, and we all need encouragement to make ourselves improve.  Thank you all for supporting your children at home.

Our Learning:
Reading: We continued working on finding character traits in our books this week.  The students learned how to "flag" their pages using post-it notes to easily find the pages that shows character traits.  We worked together as a class, using the Piggie and Elephant books written by Mo Willems.  Thank you Ms. Davison for letting us borrow them for a couple of weeks.

Writing: Our small moment stories are in full swing.  We discussed "good beginnings" and what makes "good beginnings".  The students also explored the use of dialogue in writing, speech bubbles and thinking bubbles.

Math: First grade mathematicians continued working on various addition strategies.  They also learned about graphing.  Please scroll down for more information and pictures.

Upcoming Events and Reminders:
We will start our science unit on "Creepy Crawlies" next week.  The students will participate in a series of workshops, visiting all the classrooms on Harmony, while learning about bats, snakes, spiders and the Venue Fly-trap.

We are going to the Book Fair at WCS on November 10th.  This is a change, as we were initially schedules for another date.  Please be advised that we are dismissing from WCS on Tuesday November 10th.  If your child will be picked up, please do that at the front office at WCS.  If your child attends "imagine After School at ABS", your child will ride a bus back to ABS.  All other children will board their normal buses.  Thank you!

Have a great weekend,
Maria

Classroom celebration with Mrs. Wentz

We filled our classroom buzzy jar and celebrated by visiting the library smartboard with Mrs Wentz.  She showed us the app "Don't let the Pigeon run this app" on her iPad (using airserver) and we got to create our own Pigeon books on the iPad.  We do not have this app on the iPods at school, but perhaps you do at home?

Graphing in first grade math

First grade mathematicians used goldfish crackers to graph how many they got of each color.  They also compared how many more, and how many fewer, they got of the different colors.  We used horizontal graphs.  Here are some pictures.

Pumpkin decorating

The students at ABS have been busy decorating pumpkins for our schoolwide celebration for filling the bee hive this month's.  Here are some pictures of our creative pumpkins.

Weekly Update

Dear Families,
My apologies for the late post, but I encountered some technical difficulties last week.  I hope you all had a great weekend.  The weather is certainly getting colder.  Thank you for sending your child in to school with warmer clothing.  We have outdoor recess every day, unless it is raining.

Our Learning:
Reading: The students continued work in our small guided reading groups.  In these groups, the children receive instruction targeted to their own unique reading needs and read book on their "just right" levels.  These books normally go home in our book bags on Mondays, unless we are reading a longer book that extends our learning over several weeks.  Thank you for supporting your child's reading at home.  daily practice is very important and reading out loud reinforces many skills and strategies worked on in class.  We are currently studying character traits as a class.  The students are learning how to find evidence of what characters say, do and think and how to use their own words to describe these characters.  

Writing; We started our small moment writing pieces a little while ago.  These are personal narratives which we extend over several pages.  We use mentor texts to help us write better.  We read books by published authors and find examples of how that particular author used his/her words to make the story more interesting and then we try to apply those skills and techniques ourselves.  In other words, we read as writers. When the children read, they are encouraged to think about if they read as writers (looking at the text features and the language), or if they read as readers (i.e. we think about the plot, the characters and setting).  To make this distinction as clear as possible, I wear different hats in class when we read our books.  Later this week, the students will make their own "Read as Writers" hats.  

Technology: The students started Typing Club on Friday.  I will send home the link so you can continue working on typing skills at home, if you wish.  This, of course, is voluntary, but the students seemed to really enjoy this program and the feedback it offered them as they mastered each section.  We encountered some problems with my classroom domain link, so I will share this Typing Club link later this week (after I have resolved the technical issues).

Reminders and Upcoming Events:
We will attend the Book Fair at WCS on November 11th.  The bus will take us there and then back again to ABS for regular dismissal from ABS.  Please look for more information as we get closer.

We will start our "Creepy Crawlies" science unit in Novemeber.  The students will participate in workshops and learn about bats, spiders, snakes and the Venue Fly-trap.  Stay tuned.

Our school-wide celebration for filling the beehive is in full swing.  Each classroom decorated a pumpkin and they are currently on display in our hallway, outside the gym and the cafeteria.  The pumpkins were donated to our school by "Foley & Fontaine Farm-stand" right here in Williston.  Thank you! Please stop by to see these creative pumpkins.  
Have a great week.

Best,
Maria

Harvest soup

We enjoyed our annual Harvest Soup last week.  The weather was beautiful so we could dine outside.  Harvest soup is created from vegetables grown in our school garden and from vegetables donated to us from families.  Thank you all for making this another scrumptious lunch.

4 winds

We had another engaging 4 winds class last week.  The students learned about trees and acted like scientists, observing tree bark and the inside of tree trunks.  They used magnifying glasses and were encouraged to use their senses to describe what we studied (no tasting!).  Here are some pictures.  Enjoy.

Character traits

The students are learning about different character traits in our reader's workshop.  We are exploring inside and outside characteristics using Mo Willem's Pigeon books and many other books in our classroom.  The children are encouraged to think about the characters in the books they read by themselves.  Here is a picture of our class poster.

Pumpkin decorating

I just wanted to share a picture of our class pumpkin that we started to decorate for our schoolkids celebration later this month.  Thank you to the parents who helped us start this project this week.  Our pumpkin is going to be a bat.  It is not done yet, so please stay tuned for more pictures.

Vermont science

This week, the students observed different types of soil found in Vermont.  The students were encouraged to act like scientists and use their senses to describe it (tasting was not allowed).  Then, the students were challenged to figure out what type of farming might occur on that soil.  Ask your child to explain what we learned about soil used for farming vegetables, corn and barley.  Also ask your child to explain what we learned about the soil used for hay, maple trees and dairy farms.

Weekly Update

Dear Families,
It is hard to believe that we are in October already.  The weather certainly has changed so thank you for sending your child in with warmer clothing for outdoor activities.  We have recess every day, except for when it is raining.  The students need sweatshirts or jackets for recess now.  Thank you!

Our Learning:
Reading: This week, the students continued to explore Mo Willem's books about Pigeon.  We learned that the setting is important to telling a story, but Mo Willems does not expand on the setting in his stories about Pigeon at all.  We discussed how the setting is important for the stories we read, and why.  The students were encouraged to develop a setting for pigeon.  Some children decided to place pigeon in outer space, while others placed him in cities with tall skyscrapers.  These settings will be particularly important later on when the students develop their own pigeon adventures.  In computer lab today, the students explored Mo Willem's web-sites, which I have linked on the wiki, under "Authors".  Please check it out at home.

Writing:  This week, the students finished their letters to a family member or a friend.  Some of them they were able to deliver, and some of them are inside this week's Friday folders.  We learned to re-read our own writing this week, checking COPS.  COPS stands for capitalization, organization, punctuation and spelling.  The children will eventually get editing partners who will help them reflect on their writing before we publish in class.

Math: This week, first grade mathematicians played different games learning about "ten and some more."  We explored the teen numbers and the components of teen numbers, while thinking about decade groups.  We also continued working on our number lines, numbers before and after as well as justifying our mathematical thinking.

Upcoming Events and Reminders:
 Next week, I am starting parent teacher conferences.  If you have not yet signed up for a lot, please do so by accessing our google doc.  Thank you.  I look forward to seeing you all again and share our elarning.

2nd grade students will visit WCS next week to meet Dav Pilkey, children's author.  This is a quick visit during the day and a teacher from Harmony will go with them.  First grade students will stay at ABS.

Next week, students at ABS will participate in our district-wide writing assessment, often referred to as "On-Demand."  All students in the same grade level get a topic to write about.  This topic is not known before the writing assessment.  This is a formative assessment and we ask that the students do the best they can.  This assessment will guide our instruction throughout the year and better serve the individual needs of our students.  The students will take the same assessment at the end of the school year so we can look at growth and progress.

There is no school on Friday, October 9th and 12th.  

I hope you have a great weekend and enjoy our fall weather:)

Best,
Maria
 

Nature scavenger hunt

We went on a nature scavenger hunt with Mrs. Benoit's class yesterday.  We walked the Allen Brook Discovery Trail by our school.  The students acted like scientists and had to use their senses while they were trying to find things in nature together. Enjoy the pictures.