IAA Newsletter

November

Principal's Note

As I have been settling into the IAA community, I have had the opportunity to get to know your children. They have been working very hard over the past two weeks to prepare for the Taiko school wide performance next Friday 11/12 at Roosevelt Park starting at 1:45. Thank you to all the families who participated in the Family Night Taiko Drumming. My favorite part was hearing the children’s laughter during the Lion Dance.

During the November and early December, I will be meeting with our School Advisory Group (SAG) to:

Receive a brief training on the BSD budget development process and model;
Share what they believe is going well and areas where investment could be helpful;
Review our school’s budget allocation including its RISE- define RISE Allocation; and
Make very specific recommendations for how our school’s RISE Allocation could be budgeted to implement focus initiatives to support the priority student groups.

There will be an opportunity for parents and community members to give feedback through the BSD website as well.

I would like to welcome our new faculty members: Alissa Faber is our new part time Art teacher and Haleigh Morgan is our new First Grade teacher.

Taiko Residency

Final Student Performance and parade at Roosevelt Park have been rescheduled for Friday, November 12th at 1:45PM. This is an outdoor performance and families are welcome to spectate. Students have been working hard with Paton Sensei to prepare for the performance by learning lines of songs on the drum, movements, words in Japanese, and formations. This has been an exercise in focus, collaboration, and body regulation for everyone!

Thank you to all families who were able to join us for the Community Drum Night on November 4th. We had about 80 students and their families that participated! We stayed warm by drumming and getting little good luck nibbles from the Lion.

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Town Meeting

The October Town Meeting was perhaps our most epic virtual Town Meeting to date! It starts by honoring our Students of the Week for the month of October and then launches into a celebration of all the math, writing, and rapping that we did with Baba Bomani. We look forward to continuing to work with him this school year.

ONE Sings!

With the days growing shorter and nights longer, Mr. Brian is working with kindergarten, 1st and 2nd graders to learn the song “Even in Midwinter.” It is a gorgeous song all about how things are changing, some things remain the same.

ONE Strings!

Mr. T’s 4th grade class enjoyed a special visit from Soovin Kim, Artistic Director at Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival. He played a fast song and a slow one, then fielded questions from the students. They had some excellent questions such as “What is your favorite song?” and “What is your favorite song to play?” We are looking forward to more classroom visits and future collaborations with Soovin this year.

Arts Integration

Grade 5 is working with Ms. Sue and Ms. Alissa to create story quilts during their social studies. This unit will take them around the world and back home.

Grade 4 and Mr. M are integrating science and music in an exploration of Waves.

Grade 3 and Ms. Jen are putting a new spin on their Healthy Neighborhoods, Healthy Kids social studies unit by integrating with Library Media Arts. They are asking the question, “What does a community need to be healthy?” and answering it by designing an organization using TinkerCAD!

Grade 2 is working with Ms. Piper to integrate drama and Social Diversity and Human Rights. Students will write their own declaration of Human Rights and embody it with gestures to reinforce the meaning of the words. The goal is to use their bodies to communicate an idea.

Grade 1 has started work with Ms. Emily to integrate science and art as they observe the moon and its many phases. They are looking for patterns and making connections about different types of cycles in nature.

This year, Kindergarten is focusing on integrated math and art. Currently, their artmaking is taking them to the easel as they work in the style of Jasper Johns to create a 10 frame.

Drama

We have had such a joy bringing to life stories centered in Japan and around Taiko! Grades 1-4 read a story about a little girl who liked to do things in a BIG way and had a time finding a hobby as energetic as she is. She found her special hobby is Taiko! We had a great time exaggerating gestures from the story. We brought to life the story, “The Drums of Noto Hanto”. Ask your child to tell you a little about these stories or have them show you :). In grades k-2 we worked with choral story telling. We engaged in active storytelling with gestures and repeated phrases for the stories “The Little Old Lady Who Wasn’t Afraid of Anything” and “Anansi and the Moss Covered Rock”. Ask your child to tell you the story! We are looking forward to bringing stories to life centered around diversity, feelings, and empathy.

Art News

Greetings from the Art Room! The year is rolling along with creative gusto and it is absolutely fantastic to have your children working away in the art room! The focus this month is on artist Yayoi Kusama. Students have been so fortunate to be doing TAIKO this month, that it felt like a natural fit to travel to Japan and tie in the works of this incredible japanese artist. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOu_v369BRg . If you would like to know more about her, this short video will most likely get you going down rabbit holes to learn more and seeing the world in colorful dots.

The art room welcomes Ms. Alissa this week. She will be teaching in the afternoons with K and 1st grades as well as the arts integration with grades 3-5. Alissa has been working as a teaching artist with IAA for the past 7 years. She has been the guest artist for multiple school residencies facilitating student artwork that decorates the inside and outside the building. She is so excited to be joining the IAA team and making art with students.

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Music

Music has been fun these last 4 weeks in the music room! The younger grades have been learning about instrument families by watching and discussing the instruments and characters in the musical story of Peter and the Wolf. The older grades have begun to learn about composers and composing, which we will focus on for the next 6 weeks. The third grades and I have just finished our Integrated Arts unit that combine music and math, and specifically fractions. They learned the basics of notes, beat and measures and composed some of their own rhythms.

Mr Myregaard

Email: bmyregaa@bsdvt.org

Website: www.iaamusic.weebly.com

Twitter: @IAAMusicVT

Instagram: @iaamusicvt

Library

Here in the library we have finally started reading the first of our 10 Red Clover Award Nominees to K-4th grade, and 5th graders have been working on lessons about implicit bias, social justice issues around banned and challenged books, and their rights as readers.

We currently have a book display up to celebrate Native American Heritage Month and are exploring different indiginous cultures through picture books in our library lessons.

If you haven’t placed your Square 1 Art order, all orders are due on Monday November 8th.

Ms. Jen

Library Amazon Wishlist

Instagram: @iaa_library

PE

Currently we are doing a Taiko residency in PE. Students are working with Paton Sensei. Before this residency we have done activities to help incorporate teamwork and communication. This has allowed students to properly learn how to communicate with one another in a positive manner. We are looking forward to doing a basketball unit in the future after this residency.

Health

As the weather continues to get cooler, please make sure you are dressing your students appropriately. Please send them to school with a hat, mittens/gloves and a jacket. If anyone needs assistance in getting any of these items, please reach out! Please see this flyer regarding masks! We are going through a lot of masks during the day and are now starting to see a shortage of supply. Have a healthy November!

News from Ms. Meredith, School Counselor

Over the next several weeks of November and early December, I’ll be teaching the Personal Safety unit to K-4 students (I’ll teach it to 5th graders in the spring). All Burlington elementary schools use the same research-based curricula from PCAV- Prevent Child Abuse Vermont (Care for Kids and We Care Elementary) to support the Act 1 state law, which requires all students to have access to sexual abuse prevention education. For more information you can go to Protecting Kids from Child Sexual Abuse.

Students in grades K-2 will learn their bodies are special and that they are entitled to feel respected and safe. I will teach anatomically correct terms so that children are empowered to better advocate for themselves and ask for help, if they need it. We will also spend time thinking about trusted adults at school, home and in our communities whom they can go to for help. There is a large focus on asking for help and being able to identify trusted adults.

Students in 3rd and 4th grades will learn about healthy relationships with peers and adults. Lessons will help students better understand feelings, read body language, ask for help and establish personal boundaries.

In all of the classes I will be teaching students about consent, respect and rights in relation to personal safety. Please feel free to contact me anytime at mhoising@bsdvt.org or 864-8475, ext. 4. Take care.