IAA Newsletter

Happy New Year to our entire IAA community! I hope 2020 will be a great one for you and your families. I also hope 2020 will see our IAA community continue to prosper for another 10 fantastic years. Your engagement and care is what makes our community truly special. I look forward to us continuing to work together to make our school community the best experience possible for our students.

Save-the-Date for the Kids Are Alright Concert! March 29th at Higher Ground. Stay tuned for more details.

The Flynn is thrilled to welcome IAA families for fun and inclusive arts experiences. Our Free Family Saturdays Series continues through the spring, starting with a family dance party hosted by DJ cRAIG mITCHELL on 1/11, and followed by Flynn artist-in-residence, DBR, on 2/8 (both at 10 am). We will also hold two free Sensory Friendly Drumming workshops for all ages on 1/26 and 3/22, as well as a free Inclusion Fusion workshop for teens and adults on 4/4.

Spring classes for all ages begin as early as this week! Highlights for the spring semester include Music Together and Mini Dancers (both for the littles, ages 0-5), as well as Hip-Hop, Breakdancing, Youth Dances, Rhythm Kids, Filmmaking, Juggling, and vacation camps in February and April (for elementary students, ages 5-12). A complete list of class and camp offerings—for ages zero to 55 and beyond—is available online at www.flynncenter.org<http://www.flynncenter.org>. The Flynn remains firmly committed to accessibility for all; please contact Sarah (registrar@flynncenter.org<mailto:registrar@flynncenter.org> or 802-652-4537) to discuss any questions or concerns you, your family, or your students may have. We are happy to assist you with class selection, financial aid options, facilities tours, or to help connect with faculty.

Whole school dance residency with teaching artists Ashley Hensel-Browning and Hanna Satterlee kicked off on Thursday, January 9th. Every class in the school will be exploring civics and geography themes with movement. Exhibition of learning to take place at Friday Town Meeting on Jan. 24th at 2:10-2:40pm with a snow date of Jan. 31st.

Thank you to all of you who attended and sang-a-long during the ONE-Sings sing-a-long on December 20th.

Unit two of ONE-Steps with teaching artist Ms. Lois from the Flynn is up and running in kindergarten, first, and second grade classes.

Kindergarten wrapped up making playing cards and has started to use them to play math games. They also finished painting their Jasper Johns inspired 10-frame on the eisles. Next, K’s will be creating shared papers for artmaking!

First grade completed their moon rattles and moon tiles now they are waiting for them to come back from the kiln so they can add color! This month, first graders will begin to investigate their community using maps and studying the architecture and vegetation. They will use what they observe to create a collaborative community map.

Second grade wrapped up their drama and science unit on bats. Each class applied their learning by writing a non-fiction poem and performing it for the kindergarten classes. Next, second grade students and teachers will be working with Mr. Myregaard.

Third grade teachers and students will be working with Ms. Princi create climate zone color wheel. They will research the different landscapes in each climate zone and use collage techniques to show their understanding.

Fourth grade, finished their exploration of waves with Mr. M. Ask your fourth grader what the difference between a longitudinal and transverse waves are! For the next six weeks, fourth grade teachers and students will be working with Ms. Piper to investigate Vermont History.

Fifth grade completed using their understanding of volume to construct an art installation inspired by the Burlington skyline. Keep your eyes out for the to-scale installation-- you can check the 5th grade’s math!

Quick tips to stay healthy; wash your hands often, get a good amount of rest, and dress warmly. Please remember that if your student has a temperature please make sure they are fever free for 24 hours before returning to school! Thank you!

Happy New Year from the Music room! 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th graders have once again been invited by the ECHO Center to come down on Monday, January 20th and sing for their annual MLK Day Celebration. This makes the 7th year we have been invited! We will be joined by students from our sister school, the Sustainability Academy. This activity is optional, for those who wish to join. A shuttle bus will be provided between ECHO and the IAA/SA. We will try to catch the shuttle before 11:30, arrive at ECHO before 12:00, and we will be singing 3 songs (one with SA) at 12:30pm. Students riding the shuttle back will be returned to the IAA by 2:30pm. An information sheet about the event will be sent home with the students with song lyrics and a section to return if they will be attending.

Here is a picture of Ms. Emily’s Kindergarten class singing “Chee Chee Cha”.

Hello IAA Friends and Family,

It is nice to see everyone back in the swing of things in the new decade! The art room has been buzzing with activity since returning to school. Kindergarteners have kicked off the year by learning about three-dimensionality and are creating paper sculpture self-portraits. First graders are finishing up their Piet Mondrian inspired abstract cities. They are implementing the primary colors while focusing on abstracted shapes. Second graders have begun learning about texture and are working on texture plates that will be covered with gold foil. Third graders are finishing impressionistic landscapes based on techniques used by Vincent Van Gogh and Claude Monet. They are also incorporating depth by focusing on foreground, middle ground, and background. Fourth graders have finished up their optic art projects and are moving into studying complementary and analogous colors. Fifth graders are finishing up their still life studies and drawing from observation. The emphasis has been on value and shading. Attached are some images of work that students have been working on.

Have a wonderful rest of the month and stay warm!

Be sure to check out the art room’s Instagram @cprinciart!

Warmly,

Ms. Princi

Happy New Year to All! We kicked off January with a review of our Actor’s Toolbox. Actor’s use their body, voice, imagination, concentration, and cooperation. This is our ritual for how we begin our class. It is a way for us to come together and prepare ourselves and agree to bring all 5 tools to class. We will be moving into creating tableaus and spoken word to honor the work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr I hope that you find warmth and joy this month.

Happy New Year IAA!

To start out this new year, we have some new book displays up about Martin Luther King Jr. and Civil Rights activism. Classrooms will be checking these out to teach to in the classroom and students are free to browse through them and take them out.

Kindergarten through 4th grade will keep plugging away at our Red Clover Nominees. We just read Misunderstood Shark written by Ame Dyckman and illustrated by Scott Magoon. Interspersed with that, we will be exploring different coding activities, and learning how to use databases and the library catalog. Fifth grade has been plugging away at the Dorothy's List books, and we will be revisiting them this month to reignite excitement before voting in April. They have also been working on understanding how to be smart digital citizens and how to identify fake news.

Thank you to all the families that ordered Square 1 Art!! Because of your participation we were able to raise $1200 for new materials for the students of IAA.

Want to share some love with the library, here's our Amazon Wishlist

Follow along with our learning on Instagram: @iaa_library

As always, if you have any questions please email me: jpeake@bsdvt.org

Thanks,

Jen

It’s Testing Time for English Learners!

We will be doing a lot of tests with our English Learners (ELs) coming up in February. February 3 - February 14 we will be testing all ELs from kindergarten to 5th Grade. Each student will take four different tests to see how much progress they have made in reading, writing, listening and speaking in English. All of these tests are used to help us improve our teaching so that our students learn more. Individual student scores on tests are not used to advance students to the next grade. To help your child do well on these tests here are some things you can do:

• Make sure they get a good night’s sleep before their test days

• Make sure they get to school on time

• Encourage them to do their best

• Praise them for working hard and doing their best even if the test was hard