Great class photo in front of our gorgeous State House after a walk around Montpelier looking at bridges.

                               

                   A new puppy came to visit the classroom the other day!  Thanks Kim and Ava.

December 16, 2016

Dear Families,

     It has been very exciting in the classrooms as students are building paper bridges.  It is mind boggling to think that a paper bridge made out of one piece of paper, 24 x 36, could hold 4 dictionaries.  But we had several that did.  The next challenge was to create a bridge using two pieces of the 24 x 36 paper, being mindful to incorporate what was observed during the testing of the first challenge.  It seems triangles were a huge part of successful bridges.  We will be testing our 2^nd challenge paper bridges this afternoon. 

Important Person in History Information Project:  This week, students were assigned a three part project based on a person in history who made a huge impact on the world.  Students will be writing an information piece on that person.  This will be done in class.  We will be talking about how to use information text features, write a powerful introduction, and a satisfying conclusion, but the most important skill for students to work on is putting information into their own words.  Students will be working on reading information text about the person, summarizing, and making sure they are not plagiarizing.  The second component is to create a poster board presentation of the person.  I will provide the poster board.  This presentation will accompany them as they dress up as their person, the third component, and “become” the person.  They will be knowledgeable about the person’s life and be able to explain what contribution or impact they had on the world, in addition to talking about the person’s life.  We will have an evening of sharing on Wednesday, February 22^nd, 2017.   This will also be a Celebration of Learning for the entire school.  More details on that later, but please save the date.  Students were given a scoring rubric for this project.  A copy of the rubric was emailed to you all today.  

The sun is out right now, the shadows are long, but the shortest day of the year is just around the corner.  After that, the days begin to get longer. 

Stay warm,  Ellen