Weekly Update

Dear Families,

It is wonderful to be back in the classroom again and see all of our friends again. It sounds like everybody had a great vacation. Thank you all for sharing your week through Vacation Journals and Blog posts.
We have started our new unit on the Rainforest this week. The students will, once again, have the opportunity to rotate through our Team Harmony classrooms to learn about the rainforest. They will learn what makes a forest a rainforest, and what different types there are. They will also learn to locate them on a world map. We will also explore the different layers of the rainforest as we learn about mammals, non-mammals and plants. As a culminating writing activity, the students will write a report on a tropical rainforest animal. They will research one animal and gather information on what it looks like, where it lives, how it finds food and shelter and how it takes care of its young.
Our classroom wiki has been updated to reflect our new studies on the rainforest. We have a new folder for this area of study with many interactive sites. The students have also learned how to use child-friendly search engines online as we prepare ourselves for our animal reports. Once again, the wiki has options for you and your child as I have pre-linked child-friendly search engines already. If you go to the wiki and look for "Search Engines" on its main page, a new window will open up with many different options in many different academic areas (Click here for a direct link). These sites are geared towards children, but please remember that searching online through browsers allows your child access to the entire world-wide online community, and many sites can contain questionable, frightening and inappropriate materials. If your child researches his/her rainforest animal at home, or any other search, please stay with your child. Please start a daily conversation about internet use, effective searches and encourage your child to talk to you or a teacher if needed. We discuss these issues in school every week.
Our Rainforest unit will also lead us into our Reading Restaurant Celebration, a celebratory event when our students serve a collection of their writing pieces with friends and families (This event is currently scheduled for June 2nd in the evening. More information will follow). We have already started to decorate our classroom for this very special event. If your child has a stuffed animal at home that depicts a tropical rainforest animal and he/she wishes to have it on display in our classroom until the end of the year, he/she can certainly bring it in. These stuffed animals are only for decoration. Please visit our blog again in the next few days as we will post pictures of our newly decorated classroom.
We have a new student in our classroom. Welcome Alexis! We are thrilled to have a new friend. It is wonderful to hear about her life before moving to Vermont. She has connections to both Alaska and Minnesota!!
Lastly, there have been some reports regarding head lice at our school. We have talked about the importance of not sharing hats, hooded sweatshirts and hair accessories. We have also talked about how important it is to honor personal space and keeping our hands to ourselves. Please discuss this with your child. It is also good practice to check your child’s head periodically. Please see this week’s School Bell for more information (Click here for a direct link).
Have a great rest of the week!
Regards,
Maria McCormack

Weekly Update

Dear Families,

Isn’t this warm Spring weather nice? It is so great to see and hear the students’ excitement about their new outdoor activities. They have so much to share after recess every day as they explore new games together. Last week Team Harmony went for a walk on the bike path, looking for signs of Spring and enjoying each other’s company. The sun sure felt great! I hope you and your child have had a chance to visit our KidBlog for all the amazing posts about the different signs of Spring we have found. Thank you!




This week in Reader’s Workshop, the students continued investigating non-fiction elements. They continued receiving direct instruction and practice in non-fiction reading in our guided reading groups, which we call Book Clubs. They also continued looking for non-fiction elements in magazines and articles that we now have in our classroom for everyday use. The students really enjoy reading “National Geographic for Kids” and the magazine “My Big Backyard.” Since we have no school next week, the students will take home their books on Friday. Please check their backpacks as some students might have left their Book Bags at home. We will pack extra books as well, and the students will have some additional free choice and also some extra “Just Right books” that we have not read together in class yet. They will also take home their Personal Readers. The Personal Reader is for fluency practice. Please encourage your child to read and re-read the fun poems and songs. Thank you.

In Writer’s Workshop, the students continued working on revising and editing their creative narratives. In this process, the students add extra interesting details and choose a variety of words as they tell their stories. They also check on COPS. We are almost ready for publication. These stories will be unveiled at our team-wide Reading Restaurant on June 2nd (tentative date). More information regarding our Reading Restaurant will follow as we get closer but this week, the students on our team visited Horizon House for their annual Reading Restaurant. Instead of serving food, Horizon House “served” stories that the students have written throughout the year. We were seated and presented with a menu of different stories. They had waiters and waitresses taking our “orders”. We could leave a “tip” to the author by writing comments about their writing pieces. We can’t wait to do our own Reading Restaurant!




In math, we have continued our probes in math fluency. As a class, we discuss the importance of not sharing the results with other kids on our team as all children learn at different rates. The results are between the child, the parents and the classroom teacher. Please discuss this at home with your child so we can teach tolerance and kindness to all. If there are any concerns or questions, please feel free and contact me.

Lastly, I am sending home “Vacation Journals” this week. These are voluntary. If your child wishes to write and draw about his/her time off from school, we would gladly hear about it when we return. Of course, your child can stay in touch with everybody through our KidBlog page. I am looking forward to reading many new and exciting posts next week. There are also many interactive books and poems on our podcasting and wiki sites. Click here for the podcasting site containing poems and audio books. (Links on the left) Click here for the wiki. (Interactive read alouds are in literacy). Please explore these next week.

When we return we have a new 1st grade girl join our classroom. We are so excited to have a new friend join our learning community. Today, we were busy making a “Welcome” card. We also had the classroom re-arranged to fit another desk. Thank you Wayne for helping us move furniture around late last night. You are the best!

Have a great rest of the week and a restful vacation.

Regards,

Maria McCormack

Weekly Update

Dear Families,

We have had a great week in our classroom, with many new units starting.

In math, 1st grade mathematicians began a new unit on geometry. We will learn all about the different 2- and 3-dimensional shapes, their attributes and specific characteristics, such as edges, faces, and corners. We will also learn about how geometric shapes can be flipped, rotated and created by combining many other shapes. Please look for math homework again as the students will begin to bring that home in the Homework folders. Although our previous unit on penguins have come to and end, we hope that you still play and explore the many games and materials sent home to you. Our Digital Portfolio has also been updated with many new pictures from this wonderfully interactive and hands-on unit. Please visit our Digital Portfolio under “Best Practices in Math.” 2nd grade mathematicians have continued their work in structured math dyads and practiced the importance of listening and learning from our partners and friends in various discussion settings. They have also finished math problem-solving.
This week, Team Harmony began “Mad Minutes” in math. “Mad Minutes” are small, sequential mathematical probes into the different strands of math, such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. The students participate in the “Mad Minute” math probe inside the classroom a couple of times a week. They have 20 math problems to solve in one minute and they get corrected. If the student gets 20 correct, he/she leaps to the next step. There are 10 steps in each strand. We do the “Mad Minutes” to encourage and practice math fluency facts. Every week, your child will take home these math probes so you and your child can look over these together. Please practice these at home, if necessary and integrate math into your daily conversation with your child. We love these “Mad Minutes” in school and look forward to practicing our skills together. If you have any questions or concerns, please let me know.

We are also preparing for our new unit in science, which is going to be on the Rainforests around the world. Once again, the students will participate in team-wide workshops. Through rotations between the classrooms, the students will learn about the different types of rain forests, the vegetation and layers of the rain forests, and the animals and plants of the rain forests. Each student will also write a report on a rain forest animal. The students will research what “their” animal’s habitat, its food, how it takes care of its young, and how it survives in the wild. They will also have an opportunity to gather interesting facts about “their” animal. Some students have already decided which rain forest animal they wish to research. Please discuss this at home with your child. We will do all the research in school and write the report in school, but if your child wishes to share resources, such as internet web-sites, links, books, magazines and pictures, please bring them in. In school we have started our research in books and on the web-site www.enchantedlearning.com (there is a direct link to rain forest animals on the left, in green). I will add a new “Rain Forest” folder to our Team Wiki, so your child can access games and resources to help in this learning. It is being constructed still, so please visit the wiki in the next few days. Thank you.
In reader’s workshop, we have also started a new unit. Our new focus is non-fiction reading. The connections between reading and writing are very clear in non-fiction as we explore captions, headings, titles, labels, indexes and glossaries. Your child will take home non-fiction books for the next few weeks. When your child reads these at home, please discuss these features. How do headings and table of contents, for example, help us be more efficient readers? What is the purpose of photographs or charts?

In writer’s workshop, we have started our new narrative unit. This writing unit is based upon creative writing skills and imagination. The students love it! In these stories, we develop characters-characters with names and traits that make them real. We get to know them through their actions and through what they say. The students are writing conversation between characters now and have learned how to use effective dialogue and quotation marks to convey meaning. This writing unit will be part of our end-of-the-year Reading Restaurant, when parents and family members are invited to our team-wide celebration of writing. The students will also select their favorite pieces from other writing genres, such as small moments, personal narratives, book responses, poetry and report writing. More information will follow.

Our unit on the Iditarod has ended, but the students will not take home these Book Summaries yet. We are reading the summaries together as we discuss literature together in our classroom. The students will also choose a piece for our Reading Restaurant. Please remember that we are writing an article on this for the school newspaper, “The Blue and Gold”, which will be linked on the school web-site when it comes out.






Lastly, I wanted to remind you that the school will also link a parent in-put survey for placement of 2nd graders for next year. You have the opportunity to share how your child learns best. Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns about this. Thank you.

Have a great rest of the week! Also, thank you all Nature Detectives who have shared on our KidBlog about “Signs of Spring”
Regards,
Maria McCormack

Guest Reader

We have had many other guest readers in our classroom for the Red Clover reading program. The students are voting on their favorite book this week at the Allen Brook School. Stay tuned for the winner in the state of Vermont!