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