Weekly Update

Dear Families,

It is hard to imagine, but the month of September is almost over! It went by so fast. The students have settled into our new classroom routine beautifully and are eager to learn every day. As we move into October, the weather will get colder. Please make sure your child comes to school dressed for the outdoors as we have recess every day (unless it is raining). If you wish to keep an extra fleece jacket or sweatshirt in your child’s locker, that is fine. Just make sure that you check the locker periodically as many items of clothing sometimes gets forgotten or misplaced when in school.

As part of our September theme, the students have learned about Johnny Appleseed. His birthday was on September 26th. The students will bring home Apple Seed Bags this week, bags they decorated and made themselves for collecting and storing apple seeds. We hope that you can all find a special spot where you can plant your child’s apple seed-just like Johnny Appleseed. The students also practiced their scientific skills this week as they predicted how many seeds were inside two apples, one red and one green apple. We had very valuable discussions after the apples were cut open and the seeds counted as we realized what “a reasonable prediction” is. (For those interested, the green apple had 11 seeds and the red apple had 4). Perhaps you can do a similar activity at home and share with us next week. For example, how many apples do you need to eat to get 10 seeds? How many seeds are inside a pear, an orange, a grape? Please share you scientific discoveries! Thank you!

The students continued working on their reading strategies this week in Reader’s Workshop and they feel more comfortable using these strategies independently every day. Your child might have brought home “Reading Strategies” bookmark to guide and support his/her reading. Please use this daily as your child reads. It provides a visual representation of the strategies we are working on now in the classroom. If your child did not bring this home already, one will be included in this week’s Thursday Folder. I will also post it on our Wiki, in our Link Library so you can print out your own. Since we focus on developing good reading strategies for independent reading, the students also used the computer program “Paint” to represent their favorite strategies. Please look for our first publication soon as our book will be published shortly!

In Writer’s Workshop, the students continued writing for many purposes, and this week the students started writing letters to different people at our school. The students learned that letters usually include the date and clearly states who it is for. We started our letters with “Dear” We also learned that it is important to wrap it up at the end by stating who the letter is from. Some students chose to write a letter to a former teacher, some wrote to Mr. Terko, while others decided to write to our paras and bus drivers! The students did an amazing job. We hope to get responses back soon!
In Writer’s Workshop, the students are not only learning to be confident spellers, but they are also learning to be confident authors. They are learning that writing is a process, a process that takes time and requires attention, revision and editing. Ask your child to explain COPS for you, as we use this acronym to check for capitalization, organization, punctuation and spelling.

Your child is bringing home his/her first packet of Daily Language Review this week. This packet represents work your child has completed in the area of grammar and sentence structure throughout the week. All the classrooms on our team participate in this program and the students completed one small daily activity. Please look it over and talk to you child about grammar and sentence structure. Thank you. Your child will not complete this every week, but you will see it come home approximately every other week.

Ask your child about:
• Podcasting 4 Winds (We’re on iTunes now. If you want to RSS through iTunes, Google Reader, etc please access www.mmccormack.podbean.com, or go directly to our Team Harmony web-site and click on Podcasting Harmony.)
• Listen to Understand
• Private Think Time
• Active Listening
• Our new classroom poster about respect and how we can earn stickers for it. Ask you child to explain what happens when we get 100!!
• The song “My Bonnie lies over the Ocean”


Have a great rest of the week.
Regards,

Maria McCormack

We have a butterfly!

Our chrysalis has completed its metamorphosis and turned into a beautiful butterfly! Look at our pictures from this morning as we carefully observed it as scientists and set it free.
I see a story in the making now....what will happen to Stripes? Where will he go? How about friends? Adventures? As we search for stories as Story Detectives, we found one inside our own classroom!

 

 

 

 

Read a book online!

I hope you are having a nice weekend together with your family. I hope you get a chance to read as well. I linked an online book for you to try. It is provided by the Library of Congress and entitled "A Apple Pie". Can you please tell me what the story was about? You can tell me next week, or send me an email. Thank you!
Click here to read "A Apple Pie"

Math Video

Weekly Update

Dear Families,

What a wonderful turn-out we had for our school-wide curriculum night! Thank you all for joining us on this very special night. I hope you had most of your questions answered about our new math program, Bridges, and our new school discipline approach and motto, “Be Safe, Be Kind, and Be Responsible.” I also hope you received additional information regarding our weekly schedules and homework assignments. Please know you can contact me any time if you need additional assistance or have questions or concerns. I also hope you enjoyed seeing our math video; I haven’t even showed it to the students yet as I wanted this to be a surprise. I will show it tomorrow and post it on the blog.

As I mentioned last week, I have received a grant to purchase podcasting technologies for our classroom in an effort to improve reading accuracy, reading fluency and reading comprehension. While our MP3 players have not yet been purchased, the students and I started doing some recordings this week. We used my own personal player. They did great, and really enjoyed listening to the sound it produced. We will continue recording in the weeks to come; using my MP3 player but also using a program called Audacity. Most computers have this already, so you probably have access to this program on your own computer and, hence, can use it at home (as long as you have a recording device such as a microphone). Ask your child to show you how to access this program next week and ask what we are recording. Today, for example, we listened to a podcast made by two of my own children, Emilie and Aidan. They conducted an interview and the students had to listen carefully to learn about Aidan. As part of our curricular goals now, the students and I are exploring what it means to be a good listener. Today, we brainstormed a list of attributes and we decided that good listeners give the speaker eye-contact, have calm bodies, and wait to ask questions or offer comments until the end. In other words, good listeners do not interrupt. We also practiced what it feels like to be a good listener. We realized quickly that good listeners are active listeners; they actively pay attention and can re-tell what they just heard. Ask your child to explain how we practiced this in circle!
As discussed during our curriculum night meeting, I have added a podcasting site to our team web-site. You can also access the site through the following url www.podcastingharmony.weebly.com or simply go to our Team Harmony web-site and access it through the sidebar.. I will provide more information on how to sign up for RSS feeds, etc as we start using our MP3 players more. For now, I have linked many audio books and poems so your child can listen at home. Please familiarize yourself with these links and let me know what works well, what you would like to see, etc. Thank you for assisting me as we explore podcasting with our students.
Reading assessments continued this week and will continue next week as well. The students are doing a great job reading with me and being responsible readers in our Reader’s Workshop classes.
Our classroom contract has been completed and is now on display inside our classroom. We created this contract as a google document, collaborating with Sharon Davison’s class. Please visit our classroom to see our current version. It will most likely change as the year progresses and our needs change, and through the beauty of technology, we can quickly adapt it!!
In Writer’s Workshop, we began discussing the many different purposes for writing. Up until now, the students have primarily written pieces about themselves and their own experiences, likes and dislikes. Now, we are exploring other reasons for writing. This week we started writing letters and cards. This theme will continue next week as well as the students write emails to you and write letters and cards to people at our school. One of our students is moving to another school so we have worked very hard on creating beautiful good-bye letters and cards.

Once again, thank you so much for your support and embrace of digital learning opportunities for all of our students!

Have a great rest of the week!

Regards,

Maria McCormack

Digital Reading Strategies

The students practice various reading strategies in our classroom in an effort to become more self-sufficient and confident readers. The text we read must make sense and as we read for understanding, we use different strategies to help ourselves. Please click here to access our digital representation of our reading strategies. I hope you will access this site often as you read books at home. I will add this link on our blog sidebar so you can always access it easily. Please remember that these digital reading strategies are posted on our Digital Portfolio, our public record of our learning this year. Please click here to access our Digital Portfolio. Thank you.

Our Garden of Kindness

We are creating a Garden of Kindness in our classroom. The students are represented by the bees as we commit to Being Safe, Kind, and Responsible at our school. The students worked in small groups and partnerships to show what is sounds like, looks like and feels like to choose kind words. They wrote these words on paper leaves, which were added to our Garden of Kindness. We pick polite words!
We hope you enjoy the pictures. Please visit our classroom to see how our garden grows.

Update: We have a Crysalis now

Our caterpillar is currently undergoing a metamorphosis. It has changed into a crysalis. Please look at our picture above. What changes do you notice? Please visit our Digital Portfolio for updates on our scientific discoveries as well. Please click here to access directly. Thank you.

We also voted on names for our three caterpillars....Their names are Stripey, Ella and Lightning Bolt.

Be a Story Detective

Stories are waiting to be discovered everywhere. We just have to find them!
Please help us hunt for stories and characters as we go through our everyday lives. Please add your story ideas to this post by simply clicking on the "Comment" link below. Thank you.

Our new Classroom Pets

We are so excited about our new pets as we can practice science every day in our classroom.




Please look at our new classroom pets; our three adorable caterpillars. We will vote for names tomorrow. What do you know about caterpillars? Please add a comment below, by simply clicking on comment. Please indicate your name. Thank you.

Weekly Update

Dear Families,

We have had another productive week in our 1st and 2nd grade classroom with lots of learning and celebrations.

In Writer’s Workshop, we continued discussing the different tools authors use when they write. We discussed the importance of finding the right type of paper and pencils. We also discussed the various strategies we can use when we get stuck on the spelling of a word. Ask your child to explain how we can tap our words out to check on our own spelling. We also discovered that different stories require different types of paper. Some stories are so long, we need more lines (or even pages), while some stories we write only require a single page. The students also started compiling a list of possible topics for future stories. We want to make sure we do not run out of ideas. This list will grow throughout the year. Please encourage your child to be a “Story Detective”, searching for hidden, invisible stories in our everyday lives. I have added a “Story Detective” survey onto our classroom blog. Please encourage your child to add his/her ideas to this survey. The students will also access this at school.

In Reader’s Workshop, we continued exploring what good readers do when they read and we also talked about the importance of learning for understanding. We discussed how a quiet spot, a book mark and a just right book can help us read for understanding. We also discussed the many strategies we have at our disposal when we try to read. This week, the students learned the importance of finger-reading (following along in the text with a finger or book-mark), sounding out words, reading the whole word (from beginning to end), and looking at the pictures to help us understand. We will continue to practice these strategies in the weeks to come.

Reading assessments will start later this week and continue into next week. I will be out for at least two days to complete these assessments, but the students will have regular days with a substitute teacher. I will also be out two more days next week for a CSSU math training course. I will continue to check emails, so please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or concerns.

Our classroom has three new pets! We have three caterpillars now and they are growing and changing every day. The students are busy observing them and noting the differences from day to day. Please ask your child to explain how we can use adjectives, or “describing words” to explain their individual features. We will continue to explore these little creatures and read many books on the subject. We will also vote on names for them so please return to the blog for updates! Thank you all.

I have some very exciting news to share with you. I have received a technology grant from the VT Department of Education to support reading instruction on our team. The grant provides for podcasting technologies, projectors and document cameras in an effort to improve reading accuracy, reading fluency and reading comprehension. Please stay tuned as more information will follow as I introduce these new digital tools to our students. Thank you.

The students continued to work on our interactive google doc with Sharon Davison’s class this week around our school motto “Be Safe, Be Kind, Be Responsible”. This document is going to be our classroom contract once it is finished. Please visit the classroom to see it displayed.

The students also continued learning about email this week. The students are now expected to reply to emails so if you wish to send your child an email at school, we would love it. Your child’s email address is firstnamelastname@cssu.us
Full first names are used. Not nick-names.
Thank you!

News and Reminders:
• ABS Curriculum Night is September 22nd at 6:30pm
• School Picture Day is September 22nd
• No peanut butter snacks on our team
• The weather is getting colder and wetter, so please send in thicker jackets, pants and shirts every day as your child has outdoor recess every day (unless it is raining)
• If you would like to keep an extra set of clothing in your child’s locker, please send in a small plastic bag containing those items with your child’s name attached
• Library day is Tuesday. Please remember to bring you books back.
• Thursday folders are due back in the classroom on Fridays (emptied of contents)
• Homework Folders containing reading logs are due back on Thursdays. Please read every day.

Have a great rest of the week!
Regards,
Maria McCormack

Happy Dot Day!

Peter Reynold's wrote a book entitled "The Dot" and it was published on September 15th, 2003. Tomorrow it is the second annual "Dot Day" around the world, celebrating the importance of believing in oneself and never giving up. The students and I have talked a lot about the importance of a positive attitude and perserverance.
Just like the main character in this powerful book, we wanted to "make our mark". We decided to upload all of our classroom pictures and make a mosaic, comprised of 2000 frames. The image, within which our pictures sit, is the earth-the biggest dot we could think of. Enjoy!
Please click on the picture to zoom in and enlarge it. See if you can find yourself and your work in these 2000 tiles. Have fun!

 

Movie of our class

Self-Portraits

Please view our self-portraits. The students worked very hard on them and they turned out great. We will use these pictures as our avatars online as we explore various digital platforms. Can you find your picture?

 

Our School Motto

 

Weekly Update

Dear Families,

We have had another fantastic week in 1st and 2nd grade. We have spent time getting to know each other and the new classroom routine together. What a class! I am continually impressed with their thoughtfulness and kindness.

As the school-year progresses, you will receive more homework assignments and letters of communication from the school through our various folders. It is of the utmost importance we all understand their various purposes.

The green Thursday folder comes home every Thursday. It contains the weekly newsletter (until I will send out another reminder/questionnaire about reading on the classroom blog only). The green Thursday folder also contains work, written pieces, drawings that your child completed in school the previous week. You can keep this at home as I already checked it. Lastly, the green Thursday folder might contain correspondence, letters and information from the Allen Brook School, the nurse, and various administrative departments. The green Thursday folder returns empty to the classroom on the following day (which is Friday).

The blue Homework folder contains our weekly reading logs. The students are expected to read at least 20 minutes each day and record their thoughts on the weekly reading logs, already included inside the blue Homework folder. The blue Homework folder comes home on Mondays and should remain at home until Thursday, when it is returned to the classroom. Please note that parents are expected to write a note at the bottom of the weekly reading log. Please share your comments and compliments as your child develops into a sophisticated and confident reader. Thank you!

As some of you might have noticed, your child might have brought home books this week that are either “too simple” or “too hard”. As part of our literacy instruction at the beginning of the year, students learn how to select appropriate books “just right” for them. It is important that the students themselves experience choosing their own “just right” books. Books that are too difficult will quickly become so challenging that reading them becomes too cumbersome, and books that are too easy will quickly dampen your child’s interest in reading. Please be patient as your child discovers his/her own reading level. Please encourage discussions around the books brought home. Why did you choose this book? Why do you think this book is too hard/too easy? What might be a better choice next time? Formal reading assessments will take place in the next few weeks and the results will be shared with you at conference times. The students are currently participating in a study on “What Good Readers Do”. Please ask your child to explain what good readers do to do their best reading. Please ask your child to explain why finding a good, quiet spot is so important. Please also ask your child to explain how we choose books. We will work on these themes in the next few weeks. If you have any questions or concern, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you.

The students started their Fundations and their Writer’s Workshop classes this week as well. We started by discussing the various tools writer use as they create their stories. The students have Writing Journals in the classroom and starting Monday, they will write in their “Monday Journals” creating a written account of their weekend activities. The students were also introduced to various papers and picture boxes and we talked about the importance of adding details to your words and pictures.

The students also participated in classes inside the computer lab and in the Library using our Smartboard. We are learning about email and google docs this week and next. We are currently cooperating with other classes at the school creating an interactive google doc regarding our school motto, “Be Sfae, Be Kind, Be Responsible.” Please also visit our blog or classroom to see the pictures of our “Garden of Kindness” as it grows. In the meantime, please ask your child to explain what the “bees” mean and why “we pick polite words”. Regarding email, you should expect an email from your child’s student account sometime next week. Please indicate on the attached list which email you prefer your child to write to. We hope you will reply and write your child back. More information will follow. Thank you.

Thank you for being supportive and interested in your child’s education. Please let me know if you have any questions and concerns. Don’t forget to check our blog, wiki, digital portfolio and podcasting site! Thank you!

Regards,

Maria McCormack

Our First Kiva Sharing

Please view this video of Ms. Crowley's students as they showed us what "Kiva Share" is all about. We get to do it next week!

Smartboard Class

Last week, we had the opportunity to visit the Library to use the Smartboard. We explored many interactive features as well as sites on our classroom wiki. Below are some of the links we used. Please explore these sites at home too and let me know what you think. You can comment by clicking "comment". Thank you!

We visited our Music site. If you click on the second link, you can select a classical composer by name. My favorite composer is Rachmaninoff. Who is your favorite?

We also visited our Art site and drew pictures together.

Lastly, we also played with arrow cards on our math site.

Have fun learning!

Mrs. McCormack

Our First Week of School

Please view our slide-show from our first week of school. Thank you.
Have a nice, long weekend. See you all on Tuesday!
Mrs. McCormack

Personalize a free picture slideshow

Our Class Collage

 

Weekly Update

Dear Families,

We are had a wonderful day in our new classroom today, with many opportunities to get to know each other better. We had a Scavenger Hunt in our Team space, which gave the students an opportunity to familiarize themselves with our extended learning community. The students also met our para-educators, Ms. Gail, Ms. Nat and Justine, who work closely in all of our classrooms daily. They also met our fantastic Teachers’ Assistant Ms. Kristen, who, in addition to helping us out in administrative task, also supports the students during lunch and recess. Please ask your child to tell you in his/her own words what else we did during our Scavenger Hunt.

We read two very special read alouds today. The first one was a story about a teacher who thinks the new student joining her class is a dinosaur. It tells a funny story about how easily one can misunderstand each other and what can happen if we do not ask questions if we do not understand something. The students and I talked about how important it is to ask questions, or ask somebody to repeat a statement, when we do not understand something. There are only good questions, because questions tell the speaker that you are actively listening. Learning must make sense!

The other read aloud today is entitled The Kissing Hand. It was written by Audrey Penn. This book tells the story of Chester, a raccoon who is nervous about his first day of school. His mother helps him through his anxiety as she shares a very special family tradition. Please ask your child to explain how she made Chester feel better. We will discuss this story throughout this week as the themes are very real for all of us starting school again.

The students also had a chance to walk around the school today and meet many other important support staff, administrators and teachers. We visited the gym, the art room, the computer lab and met the school nurse. We also ran into some “old” friends and teachers in the hallways! It was great to see them again.

Today, the students had library as their first class of Rotating Related Arts. We will have library time on Wednesdays until early October when we switch to another class. More news will follow. The students enjoyed a lovely book outside with our school librarian. Please ask your child to tell you what book they read. Also, ask your child if he/she thought it was hot today….I certainly think so!

Since the weather is so warm, some children keep a water bottle at their desks. This is fine as long as your child takes this bottle home every day to be washed. Please note that we do have a water fountain inside our classroom and a sink so students have many opportunities to stay hydrated. Thank you all for separating lunches and snacks and for being mindful of our peanut allergies on our Team. The students were very responsible and respectful.

Lastly, I wanted to inform you that my weekly updates/newsletters will be published on the blog on Wednesday nights, early Thursday mornings as the Team will send home Thursday folders. Please empty the folders at home and return it empty the next day. Thank you.


I hope you have a great rest of the week and weekend! Please check the blog periodically as I post throughout the week, but know that every Thursday, our classroom letter will be there. I will send home paper copies for the first few weeks as we are all getting used to a new routine again.

Thanks for your support.

Regards,
Maria McCormack

Our Class; First Day of School