Weekly Update

Dear families,
We have had another productive and positive learning week in our classroom.

This week, the students continued working on their small moment writing pieces.  We are almost ready to publish!  The students learned about how authors add interesting action words, or verbs, to their writing. We studied many different books and identified the verbs.  Then we brainstormed other words that almost mean the same.  We learned that these action words often add more details and give the reader more information.  For example, we learned that the word "went" that is so common in our stories can be replaced by "flipped over" if we are writing about a sled that slid into a snow bank, or "ran" if we are writing about how we moved from one side of the basketball court to another.  The students came up with wonderful words!! 
This week, the students were also partnered up with a peer editor.  A peer editor is a friend who reads your writing and then provides feedback.  The students work together and learn from each other as they get their writing pieces ready for publication.  On Monday, we are going to create our covers and give our stories an interesting title.  We look forward to sharing these with you at our conferences later in February.

I started reading assessments this week and will continue next week.  I will assess all day Tuesday and Wednesday so Ms. Winter will sub for me.  We are so lucky to have Ms. Winter with us.  Thank you for helping us.  Next week, the students will start reading groups working on fluency and phrasing, in particular.  They will explore various short stories and reader's theater scripts and perform together.  There are no props in reader's theater and the children do not memorize their lines, as in traditional theater.  Instead, the students are encouraged to use their scripts, but focus their attention on their phrasing and intonation.  The students will also record themselves to listen to their own phrasing, and eventually we will perform our texts to other teachers, who will be invited to visit our classroom.

We will start a new unit on the Winter Olympics next week.  The students will learn about the history of the Olympics, the sports and geography.  The unit will culminate with a researched report on different aspects of the Olympics.  The students will have a choice to write about a particular sport, or an aspect of the games, such as the meaning and history of the torch, or the rings.

Thank you all for checking out our google doc for parent-teacher conferences the week of February 17th.  If these times do not work for you and your family, please let me know and I will accommodate your specific needs.

Have a great weekend,
Maria

Author visit

The author and illustrator David Martin visited our classroom on Friday.  He read some of his books to us and he shared what it is like to write a book.  We learned that it takes a long time to write a book and that he finds inspiration and ideas everywhere.  He said he jots down ideas for future stories on small pieces of paper and post it notes.  We collect future story ideas inside our Tiny Topic Notepads!  Mr. Martin also hared that some of his best ideas come when he is exercising!
Mr. Martin also showed us different ways he makes pictures for his books.  He showed us some vertical pictures, for example!  We will try that too.
Mr. Martin brought his guitar.  It was a wonderful surprise.  We sang songs together and learned that books can even be inspired from favorite tunes! 
Thank you, Mr. Martin for visiting us and sharing your expertise as an author and illustrator.  We really treasured our time together and hope to see you again soon.

Weekly Update

Dear Families,
We have had another great week together in class.  It is so great to get to know Ms. Winter and have her participate in all of our learning activities.  The students really enjoy her company.  Ms. Winter will take on more responsibilities as the weeks progress and I will keep you posted as we explore learning together.  Today, in computer lab, for example, the students used google earth to travel from Allen Brook School to Sydney, Australia, where Ms. Winter went to school for a semester.  The students compared the two places and looked for similarities and differences.  We discovered that Sydney is a very large city, filled with skyscrapers and big, grid-like streets.  We also discovered that they drive on the left side of the road in Sydney.  We learned that they have very similar-looking houses and the city had parks, just like we do.  The students will share their learning on our KidBlog through a new blog post.
We have a new KidBlog.  Sharon Davison and I  had to split our joint blog before the holiday vacation because we ran out of room.  I have linked the new KidBlog on this blog's sidebar.  It sits right above the old learningbuddies blog.  The new blog is called "McCormack 2013-2014".  The sign-in is the same as before.  Find your child's name, click on it and write in the password (which I will email you as this blog is private.  If you remember the last password, I kept the same system.  Hence, your child's password has NOT changed).  You can also access this new blog.  You simply sign in as a "Guest"  and the password for you is Guest.  Please check our blog frequently and post comments for your child and friends.,  We appreciate your enthusiasm and involvement in our learning.  Thank you.  Your child's blog post will not appear for another few days however as we will start posting tomorrow.

I also wanted to share some other web-related information.  I have updated our songs and dance videos on our class wiki.  If your child wishes to sing these songs at home, please visit the wiki under "Songs" and "Dancing".
I have also linked them here:
Songs: 

Dancing

I also wanted to remind you that I have already linked many different types of reading logs to our printable page on the wiki as well.  If your child feels ready to explore some other, more challenging reading logs, please visit the Reading Logs link on the wiki.  I have uploaded many different types of logs, some of which are familiar to your child as we have already covered these thinking skills in class or book club.  Some of them will not be familiar because we have not yet covered these ideas.  Please keep this in mind as you choose a new reading log.  Please also remember that this is voluntary.  I am delighted that some students use these logs and also switch between them every week.  Thank you again for supporting your child's learning.

Reading logs

In writing this week, the students continued working on their small moment personal narratives.  The students started their "Tiny Topics" note pads, a small notebook containing titles for future possible small moments. Next week, we will learn about how adjectives and our senses can help us stretch our stories out.  We will also learn how dialogue, action words and pictures will help us create interest.

In reading the students continued work in our book clubs.  The students worked on various reading strategies to help them figure our unfamiliar words, in particular.  They also continued work on character traits, showing their understanding in art projects.

We had two celebrations this week.  We filled our classroom buzzy jar, so we celebrated with a surprise snack on Tuesday.  I brought in cookies which we enjoyed during our reading class.  It was so fun to read and meet in our groups while also eating cookies!  Later in the week, we had a school-wide celebration as we also filled the BeeHive in the office.  Mrs. Ludwar came to our school and led us in a Jazzercise session in the gym!  We had so much fun dancing and exercising together.

Have a great day tomorrow and a great weekend.
Maria

Welcome back to school

Dear Families and Students,
Welcome back to school and happy new year!  I hope you all had a relaxing and fun holiday vacation.  It was great to see everyone again last week.  I think everyone was ready to be back in school again because the children were so happy to see each other again and worked so hard in all of our classes.

As you might recall from my updates in December, we have a student teacher in our classroom this semester.  Her name is Amy Winter and she is a student at St. Michaels' College.  She is studying education and she will be with us until April vacation.  We are so lucky to have her with us.  Welcome Ms. Winter!
Below is a letter of introduction. 

Hello Students and Families of Mrs. McCormack’s Class,

            I just wanted to take a minute to introduce myself and tell you how excited I am to be joining your class over the next few months! My name is Ms. Winter, and I am studying elementary education and mathematics at Saint Michael’s College. I will be finishing my education degree this semester with my student teaching position in Mrs. McCormack’s class. I grew up in New York, but chose to move up to Vermont, because I loved Saint Michael’s College and found Vermont to be a beautiful place. In my free time, I enjoy drawing and painting as well as other various arts and crafts. I also love spending time outside and love to go hiking and skiing! I look forward to getting to know each of you over the next few months! Thank you for allowing me to be a part of your class as I learn to become a teacher!

                                                                                    Sincerely, Ms. Winter

 Please stop by our classroom to meet her too!

Let's have a great week!

Maria