Hello folks, We have had another busy week. Students have worked hard on their self selected writing pieces. About three weeks ago each one chose a piece from his/ her journal that he/she would like to do further work on. The work was to include significant revisions as we were working on a grade level expectaion called Writing Diminesions. Students have revised their work, had conferences, revised again and fine tuned their writings. Their work is impressive.

Another area of hard work has been Vermont Projects during Discovery Time. Students have designed their own projects and are executing them. Projects include a model of the Vermont State House, one of a sugar bush, a Vermont board game, a poster about Calvin Coolidge, a couple of slide shows. We will have another interactive slide show that we can use the 'clickers' for. This is exciting work.

On Wednesday I was at a literacy training in Hinesburg. Our school will be adopting a new assessment tool that aligns very well with the probes we are already using as well as best instructional practices in reading. This tool offers a lot to us in the way of moving children's reading skills forward, and I'm glad we've decided to use it.

Our current Read Aloud book is HOOT by Carl Haaisen. It has been riveting for students.

In math we've been struggling with decimals. The concept of decimals is very tricky for many kids. We are stressing that decimals are always 10 parts to the next greater piece: ten thousandths make a hundredth, ten hundredths make a a tenth, then tenths makes a one, or a whole...It is tricky and confusing.


I hope you all have a great vacation week. Things will be very hectic when we return-so many regular events and then the whole advent of moving. There is also FAP led volunteer opportunities for Teacher Appreciating Week(I hope you got the email I forwarded about this) and for moving.

If you are interested in helping pack up the classroom for the move to WCS, please let me know. I'll be trying to sort, organize and purge next week so that my room at least won't be too overwhelming.

As always, ,please check the Bell for special events. I'll put the ones for Discovery on the right where I used to have homework assignments. Please mark your calendars, and remember the Discovery homepage has a calendar link.

Not on the calendar yet are the Maturation Video for grade 4 students, Science NECAP for grade 4 students and transition events.

It's been a fine week, but it's finest today with the sun shining all around. Students were checking the temperature madly before recess to find out whether or not coats would be needed! The school rule is that the temperature has to be above fifty degrees for kids to go outside without coats.

I trust you have all read the note from the teacher who will be replacing me, Becky Martell. I look forward to work through this transition with her. I'm also excited about the third graders' new team. Their new team will be called Equinox. If you'd like to know more about Ms. Martell, check out her blog.

We've been reviewing all of our writing this week. Tomorrow students will choose one piece from their notebooks to revise and publish. Students have talked about how much fun it is to reread their work and to see their own improvement.

Students enjoyed their second round of Vermont workshops. The topics are geography, Vermont symbols, government and citizenship. The fourth workshop is about the economy. It looks at various VT products and the tourism industry. Ask about ways to support VT economy.

Today we switched desks for April. Our goal is to have each table be gender mixed and aged mixed.

Guest readers have been visiting Discovery to share books nominated for Red Clover Award. We heard Wangari’s Trees of Peace read by Mr. Terko, and How to Heal a Broken Wing read by Mr. Nardelli. You can view most receive list of nominees at http://www.mothergooseprograms.org/lit_red_clover_winners.php.

TO DO:

• Please send in the Flynn permission slips if you haven't already.
• Please make sure your child has mud proof outer wear for recess, and even better, an extra set of clothes!
• We have Four Winds again next Tuesday.
• Friday is a half day for parent/teacher conferences. I am enjoying these so far. Thank you for sharing your insights with me.