Weekly Update

Dear Families,
I have some exciting technology news to share with you!  The students and I started using twitter today as a class and we're inviting you to follow us at home to see what we're up to in school. We will tweet daily as a class and share our learning with you and others around the world, who will hopefully find us soon.  So far, Ms. Davison's Kindergarten class and Ms. Power's 1st and 2nd grade class follow us.  We hope to expand our followers and invite you to sign up at home as well.  Our twitter name is @McCormackPals 
Twitter is an online social networking site and it is currently used by millions of people worldwide.  People have different reasons for joining twitter.  Our purpose is to make connections with classrooms around the world, and to share our learning through collaboration and communication with you at home.  We also hope to celebrate our learning and see what we have in common with other first and second grade classrooms around the world.  If you do not have a twitter account but would like to create one so you can follow us, please go to twitter.com and sign up for an account.  Once your account has been created, search for @McCormackPals and when you find us, click on the follow button.  When we tweet again, you will get a message from us.
As a class, we carefully decide what is important to share with the world.  We take time to carefully decide what we learned in a particular class and what might be of interest to somebody else.  We have a poster in our classroom entitled "Tweetable Moments" to which we add suggestions.  As a class, we vote on one thing to share.  I log on, type the tweet message and a student clicks "tweet".  We do this tweet together on the projector so we can all participate and see.  When other classrooms tweet back, we also see it on the projector.  It is very exciting.  Today, for example both Ms. Davison and Ms. Power's classes shared tweets with us.  Tomorrow, we hope to learn how to tweet a picture.  Stay posted.  If you would like to tweet us back @McCormackPals we would be delighted.  Thank you for supporting your child's literacy and communication skills using technology.
I have more exciting technology news this week.  The students learned how to log onto their email accounts last week and tomorrow, we will learn how to respond to an email message from me.  On Monday, Bonnie Birdsall, Williston Schools Technology Specialist, will join us and discuss how we can make safe, kind and responsible choices online using email.We are very fortunate in our school district to have access to email, even for young learners, and it serves as a great communication tool.  It also enhances opportunities for students to think critically, problem-solve and use literacy skills in a digital format.  In my classroom, we strictly use email for academic purposes.  For example, I might ask the students to retell an event we did together by sending a picture, a podcast or a link.  I might also ask them to listen to a story online and respond to me, using email.  (This type of email is just like our reading logs, but it is online!).  We also use email to share our learning with our families.  Your child can email you as a parent or a grandparent to share some of the exciting activities we do together.  You can also, of course, email your child and ask about his/her day.  I ask that all emails are directly linked to our learning and that no links and spam emails are sent along.  It is a privelege for us at ABS to use it.  Let's do our best to keep it safe, kind and responsible for all.
If you have any additional questions, please do not hesitate to ask me.  I will send all the account information and password information to you via email.  Thank you.

Lastly, I usually start volunteering in our classroom in the month of October.  Many of you indicated that you were interested in helping out, but I understand that people's schedules change.  If you are still willing, and able, to help out in your child's classroom, please let me know.  If you email me, we will set something up.  I hope to get started in the next few weeks.  Thank you.

Thank you again for supporting your child's learning every day.  The reading logs are terrific.  I enjoy reading them every week.  I am very happy to see that the students are writing more and more on their own.  We wish to encourage writing stamina and confidence as we always try our best!  Keep it up.
Maria