Dear Families,

Spring has finally arrived and the warm, sunny weather makes for more learning opportunities in our first grade classroom! Our unit on plants started this week and it is wonderful to witness the emergence of growth and vegetation first hand. Throughout this study, the students will not only learn to identify the various parts of plants, but they will also learn about life-cycles and growth patterns. We will start seedlings in the classroom and observe the growth process under various circumstances as we observe our experiments just like scientists. We will also participate in the school garden and visit a local farm, where we will have the opportunity to further help out in the gardening and planting process. Please check out the sidebar on our wiki page for many interactive and educational games on plants. In order to get to the games and interactive sites, please follow the links and click as you go along. If you have any problems accessing the plant unit, please let me know.

We also started our new writing unit this week. For the next few weeks, we will learn how to write narrative stories on our own. We will learn how to use our knowledge of characters, setting, problems and solutions and weave them into creative and imaginary stories. We started our unit by working in small groups, cutting out words from magazines in order to create a classroom collection of creative ideas. One group collected adjectives, another action words, or verbs. Yet another group collected words that described various settings and characters. Our word curiosity is growing daily and as our classroom collection expands, we are discovering that our ability to tell and write stories improve as well. Ask you child to tell you about our first joint narrative story about a dragon, a dinosaur and a mouse in school! Our classroom word collection will serve as an additional tool as your child begins to write his or her own narratives.

On Monday, the entire Inspire Team visited the Flynn Theater to see “The ant and the elephant”. Ask your child to tell you about the interesting form of narration this play provided. (Hint, the narrator entered the story himself and the characters began to write the plot!). We got so many ideas for our own narratives!

We will continue our trip around the world on Friday. On Friday, we will “visit” Mexico. Carol Grau, our wonderful ESL teacher, will visit the class and teach us Spanish words and songs. We are very excited and cannot wait to show you our new knowledge. Carol Grau will visit the classroom twice a week for the remainder of the school-year to help us learn more about Mexico and countries in South America. Next week, we will all be treated to a very special class and activity on “The Eye of the Child”. Thank you Carol for joining our classroom! Please check the blog and newsletter for more details as they unfold.

If you have a special connection to a country, place, or culture and wish to share that with us in the classroom, please do not hesitate to call or e-mail me. We would love to have you visit our classroom.

Have a great weekend!

Regards,

Maria McCormack

Aboriginal Dot Painting Video

Enjoy the video!

Aboriginal Dot Paintings

Here are some examples of our Aboriginal dot paintings. More will be posted later in the week. Have a great vacation!

Classroom Newsletter 4/17/09

Dear Families,

We have worked very hard in first grade this week. We finished our non-fiction reports and had fun sharing them in class. We have worked on this unit for a few weeks and written many reports on different topics. For publication, some students chose their reports on marsupials, while others chose reports on magnets or favorite toys and gifts. The students enjoyed looking through their writing pieces and comparing their rough drafts to the final, edited piece. We have also started writing our reports on the computers. The students write them as a Word document in their own personalized font. Writing the reports on the computers has become so popular that some students wish to spend recess indoors so they can finish them before the break next week!!!
In math, we started a new unit on geometry this week and explored shapes and patterns in stations and small group work. First, we learned to identify two-dimensional shapes and used templates and rulers to create our own. We also learned to make patterns using the Yup’ik Inuit border patterns from Alaska. We learned that these geometric patterns are passed on in families and used in clothing. We used this design technique to make book-marks. Please visit the Inspire First grade blog to view examples of these artistic creations! I hope to post the pictures soon. The students will receive the actual book-marks after the break. Second, we worked in small groups to create a larger geometric mural for our classroom. Each group was responsible for a quarter of the mural. The students were asked to come up with a plan for what they wanted to include and which colors to use. They worked very well together and the results were amazing. Please visit the blog again for pictures.
The concert was a success earlier this week! I had the privilege to see the dress rehearsal earlier that day, and I was very impressed. I hope you all enjoyed this very special evening. We listen to the songs many times in the classroom. We even created a new greeting to go along with these songs. Ask your child to tell you about the “Bubble Greeting”.
We attended the 5th grade dress rehearsal with Jon Gailmor this week as well. First and second graders met with him last week. We also had the opportunity to write a song with him. The students chose the words and Jon Gailmor put it to music. It was great and we had fun!
Lastly, the Inspire team will attend "The ant and the elephant" at the Flynn Theater, Monday April 27, 2009. This is the first day back from the school break. Students need a bag lunch as we will depart at 11:15 and eat lunch in the classroom. Please remember your child needs to pack a peanut free lunch. We will return at 1:30. Thanks.

Have a wonderful week off from school!
Regards,
Maria McCormack

A letter from our pen-pals in Zambia!

We received a letter from our pen-pals in Zambia this week! We learned many new things about this country. We learned more about the Victoria Falls and we also learned that it is very hot in Livingstone, the city where our pen-pals live. In fact, it is so hot that students take their shoes off in school! We do not do that in America.
We also learned that the schools in Zambia do not serve lunches so the students must bring their own.
We learned that some things are the same too. For example, they go on field-trips, just like we do at Shelburne Community School. They do not have a school bus, but take a very large truck! They also keep the alphabet on the walls of their classroom to help them spell and read. We have that in our classroom too.
The letter included many wonderful drawings of places in Livingstone. They are on display in our classroom. Please come and visit. We will write them back and include pictures of Shelburne.

Classroom Newsletter 4/10/09

4/10/09

Dear Families,

We have had another exciting week in first grade with incredible learning!

We were treated to another interesting Hands-On-Nature class on Tuesday. Our parent volunteers taught us about animal camouflage. They performed a puppet show and showed us many pictures with camouflaged animals. It was sometimes very tricky to find the animals in nature in these pictures. Ask your child to tell you about the picture with the deer. We all needed to take an extra look. We also had the opportunity to go outside and see camouflage in action. We were looking for “worms” (yarn) in bright red and blue, but when we searched for the brown “worms” we could not find them!!! Our parent volunteers certainly illustrated this very important aspect of nature perfectly! Thank you!!

In math, we have started telling time in five minute increments and we continue to build basic number sense across all areas. We continue to focus on thinking strategies so we can become self-reliant mathematicians. This week, we also learned to measure by centimeters and meters. Ask your child to tell you about our mathematical exploration comparing meters and feet while measuring how far an Australian kangaroo can jump! Please visit our classroom to see the incredible work these first grade mathematicians completed.

We “traveled” to Australia this week and learned about the capital Canberra, the city Sydney and Mount Conner. We also learned about the Outback and the Aboriginals. Ask your child to describe the Aboriginal Clapping Sticks used as a morning greeting and please visit our new mural and display of Aboriginal dot paintings. We also learned about the different animals in Australia and wrote a report on marsupials. Ask your child to tell you about the characteristics of these interesting animals. Please also visit our new hallway mural entitled “Inspire First Grade travels around the world”. See if you can recognize your child’s portrait somewhere in the world…..

News and Reminders:

• Please do not forget Inspire’s Music Concert on April 14^th at 7 pm. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me or Diana Burritt.
• Enclosed in this folder is information regarding the “Dynamic Dates”, a very fun and popular PTO fundraiser. The Inspire Team teachers participate and we will have a special lunch with special treats.
• The Inspire First Grade Wiki is constantly being updated so please do not forget to check it out periodically. Please go to scsvt.org and click on “Academic Teams”, Maria McCormack and “First Grade Wiki”.

Have a great weekend!

Regards,

Maria McCormack