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