Weekly Update

Dear Families,
It is getting very cold outside but I guess we should expect that for Vermont during this time of the year.  Thank you for sending your child into school with warm jackets, boots and snow-pants.  Thank you for also making sure your child has mittens and hats!  We had indoor recess for the first time in a long time today, but the temperatures were in the single digits.  Normally we go outside every day, so the children need the extra warm clothes. 
This is our last week before our holiday break next week.  We have many special festivities planned for the children here at ABS.  For example, Friday, December 20th, will be a school-wide Pajama Day.  Students can come to school in their PJs, but they have to wear regular shoes, so please do not send in slippers.  Since the children must wear regular shoes, Pjs with the "built-in" socks can sometimes cause blisters as the shoes get a little more tight with them inside.  Please keep that in mind as your child plans his/her outfit! 
On Team Harmony, we will show the movie "Polar Express" in the morning.  This is a tradition and the students love getting their tickets to "board the train."  We would like to have a small holiday party in the afternoon in our own classroom.  If you and your family can donate sweet treats, juice, cups and plates, we would greatly appreciate it.  Let me know if you can help us out.  I thank you for your generosity and kindness.
When we return to school on January 2nd next year, we will have a student-teacher join our classroom.  Amy Winter is a student at St. Michael's College and she will be with us every day until summer to learn how to be a teacher.  We are so excited to welcome her to our classroom.  More news and information about her will follow soon. She will slowly take on more classroom jobs and responsibilities and even teach a small unit.
As I think ahead to the next year, I am already planning for our Spring Reading Restaurant.  Reading Restaurant is an event when the students invite family-members to come and read their stories created throughout the entire school year.  We set up the classroom as a restaurant and serve stories instead of food.  In my class, the students also have a scrapbook, filled with special art projects and creations.  I have a few projects completed that needs to be organized into plastic folders and mounted on pretty paper.  If you would like to help us out with these projects, please let me know, and I can send it home with your child, or meet with you to explain what needs to be done.  These projects can be taken home and they do not need to be completed until Spring. I greatly appreciate your assistance and support, making our reading restaurant a true celebration of creative energy.  Thank you.
As promised below are some pictures of our studies in reading and writing.  Enjoy!

We are working on character traits in reader's workshop.  Here is our character trait wheel to help us think of interesting words for our characters.

This is our artistic representation of small moments.  Each seed represent a small moment story and the watermelon slices represent bigger stories as discussed in last week's post.

Have a great week.
Best,
Maria

Weekly Update

Dear Families,

We started a new unit in our writer's workshop this week.  We started writing small moment stories; stories that are personal narratives about something that we have done or experienced.  We discussed that when we choose a story to write about we need to think about why we wish to tell the story.  Sometimes, we tell stories to amuse, sometimes to create excitement and sometimes we tell stories to share our expertise (such as in our all about books).  We used many different mentor texts in our read alouds.  Mentor texts are books by already published authors that reflect what we are learning. We also explored these small moment books in our classroom and created a classroom anchor chart reflecting different topics that we could write stories about.  The students learned the difference between a "big" story (such as going on a vacation or a holiday celebration) and a "small" story (such as a hiking Mt. Mansfield on my vacation, or making pizza dough for my daughter's birthday party).  In the weeks to come, the students will participate in a series of lessons about how we stretch these stories out and make them interesting by adding interesting word choice, adjectives, dialogue, and pictures. 

The students continued reading in their reading groups this week as well.  We are in the midst of a unit exploring character traits.  In particular, the students are exploring what the characters are like on the inside, as seen through their actions, feelings and words.  Rarely do authors of fictional stories state what a character is like.  The reader has to figure it out, and as a detective, find the evidence for the traits through these acts, words or feelings.  We have added many new words to our vocabulary tree in this process as well!!!  For example, we have talked about what cautious, thoughtful, fearless and brave mean.  Ask your child to ask what other character traits we found in our stories.

Report cards went home today.  They are inside your child's backpack.  Please read these reports with your child, keep the report card at home, but return the empty envelope with your signature on it on Monday.  That way, I know that you received it.  Thank you.  As always, if you have any questions or concerns about your child's report card, let me know.

I hope you will all have a great and restful weekend.

Regards,
Maria