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