Hello Families,

While the snow and cold weather outside is getting tiresome for some, it was great to return to school and your children this week.   It has been a very busy four days!  

In writing we continue with our Persuasive Essays.  Now that most students have four paragraphs which include an introduction (with background information, a strong claim and two reasons for the claim) two persuasive paragraphs (evidence) and a conclusion, they are working on editing their work in partnerships using checklists for things like punctuation, language and structure as well as a rubric for the standards applying to the persuasive essay at each grade level.  These essays will be finalized next week.

Blogging this week focused primarily on our schoolwide immersion in the 2014-2015 Red Clover Awards.  With that as a subject, we focused our attention on refining the writing, in the areas of grammar and punctuation.  Some students also learned how to add links to their posts.  We are in the process of critiquing these posts so they will be finalized for posting on Monday.  Feel free to urge your child to review his or her post at home this weekend.  We did a lot of revising as a group on Friday but not everyone got to correct the errors found by their peers.

We have had a very strong emphasis on literature this week.  The 2014-2015 Red Clover Award (Vermont’s picture book award for children, voted for by children in grades K-4) was launched in our school under the direction of Karen Hennig with the help of many on staff.  

Each of the ten books will be read to our class by a staff member who does not have his/her own classroom.  So far we have heard books read by Ms. Rossier, Ms. Nadine and Ms. Parks.  This project is a great way to build our school community, enjoy great literature and learn about the world together.  As a whole group and in small reading groups we are looking closely at author’s craft (a nice fit with our writing), making inferences and the overall message of a passage or a book.  

In both math classes we are working on subtraction, subtraction and more subtraction!  In the fourth grade class students are learning to assess problems to determine the most efficient strategy for solving the problem.  This is very different fromt the way we adults are used to thinking of subtraction but it has been challenging, fun and illuminating to discover new ways to look at numbers together!  Next week we will be working with more measurement of all types in Grade 4.

Many students continue to struggle with fact fluency.  In school many of them find it difficult to devote three minutes of focused work on Xtra Math.  I am encouraging students to put in their practice time at home where there are fewer distractions.  Because this program is online, they have access to it both at home and at school.  Please let me know if this would be a problem for your child.  

This week we have also revisited our norms for SMART behaviors at school.  Each student set a goal for herself or himself which you can see and review with your child on Monday.  These goals are written on the purple ‘to do’ sheets that will come home in their folders on Monday.  

As always, please don’t hesitate to contact me with any questions, concerns or comments.