Classroom Newsletter

Dear Families,

As the school-year is coming to an end, there are many special events and activities to keep track of, so this letter is a summary of what will be coming up in the next two weeks.

On Monday, 6/1/09, the Inspire Team will visit the New Village Farm. We will walk over and we will leave the school at 8:45 am. We will return to the school around 11:00 am. Thank you all who signed up to come along. It would be great if you could meet us in the classroom so we can walk together. At the farm, we will divide into three smaller groups and help the owners with different chores. We will have the opportunity to learn about annuals, perennials, and learn some simple gardening skills. We will also place out our plant markers. Ask your child to explain what plants and vegetables we designed these wonderfully artistic plant markers for. Please remember to wear appropriate clothing for the weather as we will be outside. No flip-flops or sandals please.

On Tuesday, 6/2/09, the Inspire Team will have its Field Day, a day filled with fun games and activities. Thank you for signing up to help us on this very special day. We will start setting up around 8:30 am and the students will come out between 9:00-10:00. We will have six stations, and the students will rotate between them all, in mixed groups with friends from both classes. For one of the stations, we are looking for a large jumping ball, the kind you can sit on while holding onto handle. If you have one of these, please let me know. Thank you! We were also wondering if anyone would be willing to donate watermelon for our “Snack Station”. If so, please let me know. Thank you.

On Tuesday, 6/2/09, SCS is celebrating Lake Champlain’s 400^th anniversary party with many fun-filled activities. Our students have the opportunity to participate in many events. For example, we will listen to Wampum Story-telling, a traditional story-telling form used by the Wamponoag Tribe to aid in the comprehension and delivery of stories. Do you know what it is?

Tuesday, 6/2/09, ends with our Inspire Evening Picnic at Shelburne Beach. This fun event starts at 5pm. Please bring your own beverages and food. The team will provide dessert. Tuesday is a very busy day for us. Let’s hope for SUN!!!

The last week of school is filled with daily activities listed below. Please note that our Author’s Café has been scheduled for Thursday, 6/11/09 at 1:30. Our students will share their narrative stories and we also hope to share our class-story with you as well. This gathering should last for about one hour. There is no need to sign up or let me know. Please come by if your schedule allows. We look forward to sharing our writing skills with you!!

Monday, 6/8/09-Wacky Hair Day (come to school in a fun hair-do)

Tuesday, 6/9/09-Teddy Bear Day (bring your favorite teddy bear or stuffed animal)

Wednesday, 6/10/09- Games to school Day (bring your favorite game to school. No electronics, please)

Thursday, 6/11/09-Pajama/Favorite Book Day (come to school in your PJs and bring your favorite book for read aloud). Author’s Café between 1:30pm-2:30pm (parents invited)

Friday, 6/12/09-Half Day. Dismissal at 11:35am.

Learning about Switzerland

Veronica Bernicke visited our classroom to teach us about her native country, Switzerland. Here are some pictures from her visit. Ask your children about our decorated cows and the cow parades!

Our Mexican Geometric Place Mats

Look at our beautiful Mexican place mats! We explored patterns with colors and paper weaving. We are very proud of the results and hope to use these place mats many times!

May 22, 2009 Family Letter

Dear Families,

We are getting close to the end of the school year and are enjoying many extra activities at Shelburne Community School!

We participated in the school-wide Jog-A-Thon this week, and this fun PTO fundraiser encouraged us all to run and walk together. The weather was gorgeous. It was so sunny and warm, we felt very lucky to be out there first thing in the morning. I hope you saw the number tags your children brought home with all the tally marks on them. The tally marks represent how many laps your child did around the flag-pole circle! We have some amazing athletes in first grade with great attitudes. Sometimes we ran, sometimes we walked and sometimes we “wogged” (that is what Inspire first graders call jogging and running combined), but we completed the task together! At the end we were treated to ice pops, and that felt great after all that exercising!

Our narrative stories are almost complete and this week we have been busy editing and adding a section entitled “Meet the Author”. In this section, first grade writers can introduce themselves to the readers and give interesting information about them. We have also started designing our covers. As an additional treat for this narrative writing unit, first graders will learn to tell narrative stories according to Nahuatl, an ancient Aztec writing form. The Aztecs did not have a written language like ours so they told their stories through art and symbols, a process that first graders began exploring this week. Please re-visit our blog for examples of this very unique way of telling a story. We discovered that the same story can be told in many different ways and art forms, and almost appear as if it is a different story every time it is re-told. The students had a choice between using traditional Aztec symbols, create their own, or simply tell their stories using more familiar arts forms and pictures. We are very excited to share these skills!

News and Reminders:

• The Inspire Team will walk to the New Village Farm in Shelburne on 6/1/09. This fieldtrip is part of our unit on plants. We will help out in the gardens and also contribute some plant markings that we have designed in our own classrooms. If you would like to join us, please let me know. We will leave at 8:45am and return at 10:45am. Thanks!
• The entire Inspire Team will have a school field day on 6/2/09. We set up stations outside the school and play interactive and fun games. We would like parents to volunteer and help us with this fun day. We need parents to set up, manage the stations and clean up. Please let me know if you are interested. If you are interested in helping out, we would like for you to set up at 8:30 am. Students arrive at 9:00 and play for approximately one hour. Please sign up on the attached form and return to the classroom as soon as possible. Thank you for your help!
• The Inspire End-of-the-year School Picnic is scheduled for 6/2/09 at the Shelburne Beach between 5-9pm. This event is an opportunity for everybody to get together and enjoy some good food and games. Please bring your own food. The Team will provide dessert.
• The last day of school is Friday 6/12/09. It is a half day, so students will dismiss at 11:35 am.

Have a great weekend! Enjoy the sunshine.

Regards,

Maria McCormack

Our spider plants are coming home today!

First graders planted their spider plants today. They are planted in small containers for safe transportation and need to be re-planted at home. They should be re-planted in containers with drainage holes at the bottom so ensure that the soil does not get too wet.

I always say these spider plants are great friends because they are very forgiving and good friends are forgiving. If you forget to water them for a few days, they will perk right back and continue to grow once you give them water again! Take good care of your new friend and good luck!

Newsletter May 15, 2009

This past week, first graders were busy in all subject areas. They continued writing their own narrative stories in Writer’s Workshop, continued their work in geometry, and perfected their scientific inquiry skills while studying plants.

In Writer’s Workshop, the students began creating their own narratives, using many different tools to help them get started. Some students benefited from our discussions of potential topics, while others explored topics from books and magazines in the classroom. Some students used our “Word Baskets” to help them create their stories, while another group of students simply closed their eyes to think freely and independently. It was wonderful to see so many authors ready to take on this challenge and truly participate in the writing process the way it should evolve. The students created rough drafts on our color-coordinated helper sheets, with sections for characters, setting, problem and solution. The students also edited and added more details as they polished their writing pieces. They are so excited to share their creations with their friends, but for now, we are trying to work independently, sharing only at the end of class and at our end of the unit “Author’s Café” celebration. We will inform you of time and place so you can all attend this very special celebration as we get closer to its conclusion. Lastly, our classroom narrative unit is complete and we will begin creating the illustrations soon as a collaborative venture in small groups.

Our math unit on geometry exposed us to both 2- and 3-dimentional shapes this week. We also learned what polygons are. Ask your child to explain this mathematical concept to you. This unit is particularly interesting to us, as it allows us to explore geometry in the world around us and in different cultures. Your child will bring home his/her Mexican place mats this week and they have been laminated so they can be enjoyed many times. Please look closely at the precise patterns your child created.

On Tuesday, we were treated to another engaging Hands On Nature class. This time, our parent volunteers taught us a class on honey bees and their behaviors. We learned so much! For example, did you know that the Queen bee eats something called “royal jelly” and that the male bees are called “drones”? Did you know that the worker bees work all the time to bring food back to the hive and do a special dance to let all the others know where the food is located? We had a chance to practice these dances outside, challenging our friends to find hidden flowers in a field. Lastly, we also had the opportunity to study a real bee hive, and discovered that the inside quarters were shaped like hexagons!! Isn’t it amazing—MATH IS EVERYWHERE!!! (Perhaps your child also remembers from our study of the human body that the inside of the human bone is shaped in a honeycomb design through which the blood flows! More hexagons!!).

Our spider plant shoots are almost ready to be planted and the roots are growing long and thick. We observe them periodically and take note of the changes we see. Our beans are starting to sprout as well. We discovered that the roots are coming first, before the stem and the leaves. Ask your child to explain why.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Regards,

Maria McCormack

Inspire First Grade learns about Switzerland

Veronica Bernicke visited our classroom today and taught us many new and interesting things about her native country, Switzerland. We learned that Switzerland is a small, landlocked country in Europe. Although this country is so small, its citizens eats the most chocolate in the world!!(On average, each person eats about 15 pounds per year...to understand what 15 pounds is, we tried to think of other things that weigh the same. Ask your child to share our findings with you).

We also learned that Switzerland's flag is a square. Most other countries' flags are rectangular. Its flag is red with a white cross on it. The founder of the Red Cross, J. Henri Dunant, came from Switzerland, so to honor him, the Red Cross decided to create a flag for itself in the exact same colors, but mirrored. Hence, the Red Cross now has a flag that is white with a red cross on it.

We also learned that there are many similarities between Swizerland and Vermont. For example, Switzerland has mountains, just like we do in Vermont, but their mountains are called the Alps. We also learned that they have many cows in Switzerland, just like we do in Vermont. They also use the cows for milk, cream, cheese, and ice cream, but their style of farming is very different from ours. Their cows get to go to a "camp" during the summer months so the farmers can cut the grass into hay. The cows move up the mountains as the farmers work the land and as they move upward, they also get to wear the traditional bells around their necks (so the farmers can find them). When the summer is over, the cows return to their villages in a big parade. They are dressed up, with the milking stool placed upside down on their heads, which are filled with evergreens, flowers and other beautiful decorations!!!!

Lastly, we learned that they speak four different languages in Switzerland. They speak French, German, Italian, and Romansch. Try to match the following phrases for "hello" to these four languages: (Also, don't forget to check out our Wiki-page for more information and games about Switzerland)
Bon Jour
Grusse
Bongiorno
Bien di

Classroom Newsletter 5/8/09

Dear Families,

Another fun and educational week has just ended in first grade.

We continued to “travel” around the world, and had the opportunity to explore geometry with Mexican paper cortados. We cut out various shapes in colorful tissue papers, which we hung in our classroom. Ask your child to tell you about the patterns and shapes he/she chose to cut out. Mexican paper cortados are usually used during “fiestas”. Ask your child to explain. We also had the opportunity to explore geometry while making Mexican place mats. We used rulers and cut one-inch paper strips, which we wove into other paper strips. The finished products are amazing. We are waiting for them to be laminated, so they will come home shortly! Ms. Grau visited our classroom this week, and with her help, we learned to count to ten and sing some songs in Spanish. Ask your child to teach you!

Our plant unit continues with many interactive experiments and explorations. We observe our spider plant shoots daily, recording and discussing our expanding scientific knowledge. We were very fortunate to have another visitor in our classroom to tell us about some very special plants that grow from bulbs. Ms. Bachilas joined us for a presentation about ranunculus. She recently traveled to Carlsbad, CA, and showed us pictures of these very special flowers. She told us they grow on large fields and because they are planted so close to each other in rows of different colors, they look like colorful blankets covering the ground from far away. Thank you, Ms. Bachilas, for sharing your knowledge and experience. Please visit the blog again for pictures of these amazing ranunculus flower fields.

Next week, first graders will learn that plants can also grow from seeds! Our garden fieldtrip is scheduled for June 1^st (9am-11:00). Please let me know if you are interested in joining us. Thank you!

Our classroom narrative story continues to develop as well. Last week, the students and I chose to write a story together about a dragon, a mouse and a dinosaur. We practiced our listening and speaking skills this week, taking turns sharing the pen and discussing different ideas for our narrative. We have so many creative first graders. Ask your child to tell you what the dragon’s name is and what he looks like and acts like. We will share the whole story when we are finished as a class.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Regards,

Maria McCormack

Exploring geometry around the world

Below are some examples of Alaskan Yup'ik Inuit geometric patterns. We used our finished products as bookmarks. Enjoy!