March 18, 2012

Dear Parents, 

Reading Restaurant: as most of you know, we will host our annual Reading Restaurant on Thursday, April 5^th .  It is an evening event. You and family members come to Horizon, and we treat you to a tasty viewing of your child’s writing from across this year. Children work together to serve you their writing, and you leave a “tip” or a comment for every piece you read.

Our Reading Restaurant title this year, chosen by the students, is 

“The Black Hole Diner.”

We’ll also have the room decorated with a space theme, and the kids should look for casual black clothing (at home or at a second-hand store?) to dress up in.

We will have two seatings, and your child will be either in the first one (6:15-7:00 p.m.), or the second one (7:15-8:00 p.m.)  We will be assigning roles and shifts for the kids tomorrow (Monday), and then I will send out a form in the next couple of days for you to make your reservation. By the way, there is no charge for this event. 

Parent-Teacher Conferences:  I have emailed you a sign-up sheet for the second and third weeks of April  (April 9^th - April 19^th). Please let me know if none of these times work for you. 

Space Research Papers:  we are hard at work on our Space Research papers. Students are studying everything from Venus to galaxies to black holes. We’re excited that you’ll get to see them at the Reading Restaurant. 

Building our Space Ship: Eric Van Buren, Anna’s dad, was able to get the wood 1x3s for us to make the skeleton of our space ship--starting tomorrow. Thank you, Eric.  Jessica Lamorey is going to help us with the construction project.  At this point, the only other thing we need is the cardboard. So, send it in!

That’s it for now. Have a great week, everyone. 

Mr. Bolger

February 24, 2012

Ray Holland, Master Storyteller,

Reads Burt Dow, Deep Water Man by Robert McCloskey

To Mr. B’s Fundations Class

Dear Parents,

 I was talking to my Fundations class yesterday about their success on the Unit-11 tests. We were kind-of marveling at how far we have come this year.  We've moved through 11 units,   and there are only about 6 units to go.  The kids were able to talk quite thoughtfully about the gains they have made in their reading.   They also remarked on how their handwriting has improved since September. One of my Fundations students exclaimed, “That is the best “polish” I have ever written!”

With February break upon us and  report cards and conferences coming up in just a few weeks, this is a great time for all of us --  teachers,  parents, and  students,  to reflect on what's been accomplished and what still have left to master --  in the last three-or-so months.

The big thing with reading this time of year: if your child is struggling with fluency, is  reading out-loud books that are a couple of levels below their  instructional level.  Encourage your child to read those stories out loud several times to just practice hearing themselves say the words fluently and with expression. Read the book, you and your child,  as though you were a pirate family on the high seas. Then read it as though you were aliens on a far-off planet. Don’t forget to read it as though you were your dog and cat reading to each other -- whatever it takes to read and read and read. By the way, it is obvious to me as I look at those reading logs, that you all have been relentless in your support at home of your child’s reading. I am grateful to you.

By the way, another fun, and valuable thing to do for fluency is to do Reader’s Theater. Take a Shel Silverstein poem and take turns saying those silly lines. That, too, is a tried-and-true way to build that fluency.

For readers who are solidly on grade level and are reliably reading on their own, the important work now is to help them 1) develop their habit for lifelong reading: help them develop a habit of reading at a regular time every day for pleasure, and help them get used to trying out different genres.  2)  strong, young readers need help thinking about, talking about, and making sense of the more complicated themes that begin to emerge in 3^rd  and 4^th and 5^th-grade level books like Harry Potter or Lemony Snickett.

For readers at all levels, it's so important for us to ask them what kind of books and genres and topics interest them, then try to put in the time to go on websites and talk to bookstore owners to find great books,  great new series, and great new characters that will really strike a chord with them and maybe be the series that they will look back on in twenty years as the one that really launched them as readers.

In writing, our student teacher, Ms. Jacy, is teaching a unit on poetry -- encouraging students to really close their eyes and see the pictures – see the images --  that come up for them. We want them to get used to paying very, very close attention to that internal movie. Once you get good at noticing it, watching it, and  telling about it,  then writing about it is actually pretty easy!

Four Winds:  we tested insulated and non-insulated cannisters of water, and we made mouse homes using cattail fluff and pieces of grass for insulation. We also noticed that Mr. Bolger and Sean were both not very insulated outside (not wearing jackets), so their body temperatures would probably “stabilize” at 32 degrees more quickly than the rest of the class.

Burt Dow, Deep Water Man by Robert McCloskey: We were paid a visit by  Mr. Ray Holland, master story-teller. He read about Burt Dow and his adventures on the high seas for our 2^nd-grader Fundations class. We noticed that Mr. Holland puts a lot of emotion into his reading, and that makes it more fun to listen to. We noticed lots of words with vowel teams in them (like “tail”). We also noticed that Burt is an r-controlled syllable. It’d sure look funny if they’d spelled it Birt.

Friday Folders: are empty today because with report cards coming up, I need to hold onto the papers this week  to review and assess. I’ll get them to you as soon as we get back from break.

Friendship List: completed! Thank you, Jodi.  I will email it to all of you all this afternoon.

Have a wonderful break, everyone.

Mr. Bolger

February 9, 2012

Olivia shares her alligator skull

February 9, 2012

Dear Parents,

It has been a stellar week. 

Science

Ms. Powers has my core class working in the tech lab studying the stars.  I have had her class with me learning about waxing gibbous moons and figuring out why the light on the moon’s surface always seems to go from right to left.  Next week,  we will switch so I will be working with my core  class.  By the way, what a gorgeous full moon we had this week! Ask your child to keep an eye on it and watch it change across the weekend.

Handwriting and typing: we are continuing our work in handwriting using our clock letters. I'm seeing a real difference – though everyone needs practice to be more consistent.  We will be starting with Type-to-Learn 4. TTL4 is available for your child to use at home. Let me know if you are interested.

Reading:

We have begun a new read-aloud called The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet. Ask your child what is happening so far (Chuck and David, two teen-age boys – are building a space ship out of junk in their garage, and they hope to fly to “a nice little planet – just my size…”).

Reading Assessments:  now that the reading assessments are completed, Mrs. Powers and I are very proud of the progress these kids have made in their reading. Ask your child to tell you his or her new “independent” reading level. Email me if your child is not sure.

Variety Show – next Friday (tickets go on sale Monday):

Don't forget that next Friday is the Williston Variety Show featuring our very own Horizon house band with Mrs. Powers,  Ms. Rodliff ,  Ms.Schwartz,  Mr. Mozill , Ms. Jacy,  Ms. Lemieux,  and Ms. Trasciatti-Holmberg, and even Mrs. Rodliff’s husband, Dan,  playing drums. The tickets are seven dollars for adults and five dollars for kids. They always sell out, so get them early. The evening is a real blast and an exuberant celebration of our community and the talent of our children.

Sharing (see accompanying Sharing schedule) : we have resumed our sharing, and your child knows his or her sharing day.  A new feature is that every week, now, we will have a new sharing theme.  Until April vacation, we will share only on these themes. And thank you for not bringing in toys or stuffed animals!

Review of our goals: we are looking at our hopes and dreams for this year – the ones  that we established in September. We are revising them now, as we reach our goals and set a “spring challenge”  for ourselves.

We have been safe, kind, and responsible!   Last week, we celebrated a month of great school-wide behavior with 400 kids and adults doing the Hokey Pokey in the gym.  Imagine.

I am going to try to sit down with Amy and the kids this weekend, and do nothing. I think you should join me.

Yours in doing nothing,

Mr. Bolger

 

January 13, 2012




Ms. Jacy, our student teacher

      

Julia Lamorey shared her ukele



  

                                                                                        

 

Dear Parents,

Happy Snowy Friday!  Many of our first and second graders are departing at 1:30 today for their first day of skiing. In order to not have a dozen green Friday Folders blowing across the  hill  at Cochran’s, I’ve decided this week to send home the Friday Folders on Tuesday (No school on Monday). They have done a lot of work, and I don’t want anything to get lost.  

This week, we focused on handwriting, we started a new read-aloud book, The Littles and the Big Storm,  and we predicted that the problem in the story will probably be about  these little people vs. the big people and about  the big storm coming that might put these little people (who are up on the roof) in danger.

We also read from a book written by a 10-year-old from England named Kenneth, called Asperger’s Syndrome, the Universe, and Everything.  Kenneth has Asperger’s Syndrome and he is so smart he is able to describe what it’s like to be him. We have heard about Asperger’s Syndrome, but we’re not sure what it is, so we’re letting Kenneth himself explain it to us.

Reading Logs: thank you, everyone, for getting the reading logs in this week. We thought about the Reading Log question, and we had fun trying to figure out which "favorite childhood books" matched which parents. For example, Julia's mom, Jessica, loved Jonathan Livingston Seagull; Mitchell's dad, Chris, liked "How to Eat Fried Worms"; Luna's mom, Deborah, loved "A Wrinkle in Time"; Leo's Grandma Pat loved "Uncle Wiggly"; James' mom, Betsey, liked "The Babysitter's Club", and Neil liked Where the Sidewalk Ends"; There were too many great responses to include them  all here, but thanks for responding, parents.

We launched our unit on Mapping, and we are working on a bird’s-eye view of our bedrooms complete with a key and a compass-rose.  It’s hard to draw straight lines.

In Writing, we are proceeding on our non-fiction research using laptops to access Kid-info-bits on the Library link to our school website. That has been fun!

Next week: we will have a guest teacher on Tuesday,  but I will be in Horizon doing mid-year reading assessments.  

One last thing: we ended the week with Horizon Hurrahs in the kiva (ask your child about this), and we sang two songs – Have a Little Peace (written by former students) and All Together Now (written by former parent, songwriter Larry Dubin) in honor of Martin Luther King.

Have a great long weekend, everyone. See you Tuesday

Mr. Bolger

January 6, 2012

January 6, 2012

Dear Parents,

We got off to a fast start in this shortened week.

In Reading, we read a George and Martha book (the two hippos); the students made hand signals to show character, problem, setting and solution each time they heard those features come up.

In Read-Aloud, we read a Nate the Great story as a way of studying how mystery stories are different from other stories (the author tells you a problem, then she drops clues so that you can try to figure out the solution -- just like the main character!) In Nate the Great, Nate's friend, Rosamond, has lost her special box. We don’t yet know who took it, but we -- and Nate the Great -- are hot on the trail.

Ear Plugs: I gave each child a pair of foam ear plugs and a baggy. We put initials on the ear plugs, and we practiced using them to keep things quiet when we are doing our reading and our writing.

Writing: we are starting a non-fiction unit. We’re doing research and learning how to come up with a couple of focus questions. We’re also learning how to find information from the pictures and the captions, the index and the table of contents. Who would have thought that ear plugs could be so exciting?

Social Studies: we will start a unit on mapping next week.

Math: second graders are studying doubles (ex: 4 + 4 + ?) and neighbors (4 + 5 =?) as a way of getting automatic with their addition facts. First graders will start studying penguins on Monday in their new unit on measuring and computation.

Want to add your email to our Friendship List? Thanks for the energetic, positive response, everyone, to our idea of having a class friendship list. I will put pictures on the list too. Several parents have asked that we include emails in our friendship lists. Please let me know by Monday if you want me to NOT include your email when I publish and send out our Class Friendship List.

Have a restful weekend, everyone. Your kids have worked hard this week. Way to go.

Mr. B.

12/9/11

December 9, 2011

“Hey, Mr. Bolger, I already picked up 49 pieces of paper from the floor.”

“Alright. See if you can pick up 100. How many more would that be?”

“Let’s see… 1…and then 50 more --that’s 51 -- ‘cause once you get to fifty, you just need 50 more ‘cause 5 + 5 = 10.”

Dear Parents,

We have been firing on all cylinders this week…

Reading: Ms. Ward and Ms. Bakshi have joined us starting this week to help with reading groups. For at-home reading, especially with the younger students and the older, struggling readers, it’s so important to have them read out loud to you for 10 minutes or so every day. I know that can be hard to fit into our busy evenings, but reading experts tell us that having your child read to you out loud (a book they have already read and can move through pretty easily) is the single best thing you can do to ensure future reading success. It builds confidence, it builds their ability to get beyond reading word-by-word, and if you are hearing them read, you can correct them. It takes four or five times of seeing a new word and saying it correctly for our brains to create the neural model of that word in our brains.. If you can help your child get solid with knowing that when means when and not one or won or win, they will be able to store the correct neural representation of that word, and from then on, they will recognize it automatically.

So, whether your child is bringing home a book each night from his or her guided reading group, or whether your child is reading, quite independently, a book from the school library, please think about getting into the habit of having your child read out loud to you for ten minutes or so each day. Thanks!

Writing : in writing, we are working on our handwriting (!) and our grammar at the same time as we are finalizing our “special moments” stories. Students have also chosen topics for their ILPs (Independent learning Projects). I will have more info for you in the coming week about the ILPs, but, in short, they are mini-research projects your child will be completing (about one every two weeks) on a topic of his or her choice. Ask your child what his or her ILP topic is!

Read-Aloud: ask your child which character he or she is most like (Lumphy the buffalo is nice, but kind-of grumpy, the Shark is the new kid on the block and was misunderstood by the others. The Stingray is bossy. Plastic the ball is friendly. The Washing Machine likes everyone to join him in the basement for rock-n-roll dances!)

Ask Your Child About The Sneetches: We read The Sneetches by Dr. Seuss today, as part of our World of Difference Unit. Dr. Seuss is brilliant in the way he writes about important social issues in a way that kids can understand. You’ll remember that The Sneetches is a story about Star-Bellied Sneetches who have stars on them being snobby towards the non-Star-Bellied Sneetches. A shrewd salesman comes along and sells stars to the non-Star-Bellied Sneetches. Then, to help the Star-Bellied Sneetches be different again, he removes their stars – for a price.

It goes back and forth like that in frantic see-saw until in the end, all the Sneetches are broke, the salesman leaves town a rich man, and the Sneetches realize that stars are irrelevant; it’s being accepting and kind to each other that counts.

Upcoming Polar Express Day: On December 22^nd, (we have December 23rd off) remember that students should come to school dressed in their pajamas. We will be watching The Polar Express, we’ll drinking hot chocolate, and we’ll be doing a series of holiday crafts.

A Word About Gifts: Dear Parents, I have spent this entire fall being the lucky recipient of countless, overwhelming gifts -- both material and emotional – in the wake of the flood my family and I experienced in Moretown. I have always loved my job, but this year, I have felt, with a sharper perspective, a gratitude at being part of this wonderful community. It’s fun to give and receive gifts at this time of year, but know that I hope you will take a break and a breather and take a pass on giving me yet something else. If your child would feel better giving me something, I will certainly oblige, but know that I have a special fondness for toilet-paper-roll napkin holders and anything made out of coat hangers. I love paper snowflakes. I love log cabins make out of pretzels. I would love for your child to look in your recycling bin and think of something cool and weird and funny and thoughtful (and quick!) to make me for a holiday gift. Something that’s long on inspiration and short on details is just fine.

Have a great weekend, Everyone. Easy on the eggnog.

Mr. Bolger