April Newsletter

I hope each of you are enjoying the beautiful spring weather we have been experiencing. It has been wonderful to see students beginning to make the trek to school on bicycles or walking again now that the weather is improving. It has also been great seeing many of you again as you have been joining your students in walking or cycling to school! As spring settles in, it is the time of year when we begin winding down the current school year and begin the process of looking toward next year. Please keep the following in mind.

This is a reminder that all Vermont students are required to participate in state assessments as part of the accountability system for the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). Please see the 2021 assessment letter and assessment calendar for more information.

Our grade-level teams spend an extensive amount of time assessing the strengths and needs of each child to create optimal, balanced classes. Please be aware that IAA does not consider parents’ requests for specific teachers; however, we do value the insight of families in the process by providing information that may be used in our placement process. Parents will be notified of the names of their children’s teachers for the 2021-2022 school year. We invite you to complete this brief survey and submit your responses by Thursday, April 15, 2021.

Next week we are thrilled to have the opportunity to work with Juniper Creative Arts (JCA). JCA teaching artists will be in our 4th and 5th grade classrooms creating tiles for a mural. The mural will be located at the ONE Arts Center and will go up in June. JCA brought this opportunity to IAA. It is funded through the Champlain Housing Trust. You might remember seeing their work at Champlain Elementary School. JCA teaching artists worked Champlain students with in the Fall of 2020 to create this Afronaut Mural.

What staff members have worked at IAA the longest?

Answer: It’s a tie between Mr. Patrick Whitman and Mr. Bill Myregaard! 19th year!

The March 26th Town Meeting featured Mr. Mike’s 4th grade class sharing their learning around animal research projects.

During the most recent Town Meeting, Ms. Jackie’s 1st grade class shared out their opinion writing. They answered the question, Which Mo Willems book is the best?

ONE-Sings has started up again and we are so excited to see Mr. Brian again. IAA Kindergarten, 1st grade, 2nd grade, and STEP classes will be singing for 6 weeks outside to welcome the Spring weather to reinforce some foundation music and movement skills.

Unit highlight: Ms. Emily has been working with Kindergarten throughout the month of March. We have been integrating drawing illustrations with math (and a touch of literacy). In math students have been applying their understanding of adding and subtracting 0-10. Ms. Holly, Ms. Haker, and Ms. Emily decided to provide an opportunity for students to reinforce these concepts through illustration and learn a bit more about ocean animals! Students worked each day to complete a coloring book. Each page of the coloring book has three parts: an equation, an illustration, and a number sentence or number story. Each page shows a different number pair that adds up to 10 in the three ways (ex. 10+0, 1+9. 2+8, etc.). The first few pages the teachers selected the ocean animals that would add up to 10, but by the end of the unit (and the book) students were making all the choices.

For the illustrations, students used directed drawing sheets (How to draw… worksheets). The drawback to directed drawing can be that all drawings look similar, which is generally undesired in art, however, they do have their time and place in an art program. Directed drawing helps students build confidence in their mark making and build a bank of strategies to break down complex objects, in this case ocean animals, into steps and simple shapes.

This unit also lent itself to Kindergarten literacy goals. Books like Rainbow Fish and Swimmy were read aloud. We had a thoughtful discussion about the purpose of illustrations in a text to communicate ideas using images. Nonfiction texts were also incorporated as we learned the parts of a fish, learned and shared what makes ocean animals interesting (Did you know that jellyfish have been around since the dinosaurs?!), watched videos of starfish walking, and more!

Students worked really hard on these books working over 7 class periods to complete them! At the end of the unit they took home a personal coloring book and a class coloring book made up of one drawing by each student.

This spring and summer, the Flynn is excited to bring live, public arts experiences back to our community. A variety of free in-person and virtual Flynn camps are happening in April, June, July, and August. Kids ages 4-18 are encouraged to join, be creative, and have fun with friends through the summer! The Flynn is also looking forward to a new variety series, the Window on Main. For two consecutive weekends—April 16-18 and 23-25—local artists will perform in the Flynn’s Chase Studio out to passersby on Burlington’s Main Street. And we are beyond thrilled for the return of the Burlington Discover Jazz Festival to Downtown Burlington, June 4-13, featuring free events around town all week. More info coming soon! Visit flynnvt.org

Online Bandlab Multi-Track Recording 101 for ages 8-18

Monday-Friday, April 19-23; 9:45-10:45 am (ages 8-12) and 11 am-12 pm (ages 13-18); pay-what-you-can, suggested cost $50 (any amount, including $0, accepted). https://www.flynnvt.org/Events/2021/4/Bandlab-Ages-8-12. Contact: Sarah Caliendo at registrar@flynnvt.org or 781-718-8185.

In-Person and Online Summer Camps for ages 4-18

June, July, and August; pay-what-you-can, suggested costs vary from $80 to 350 (any amount, including $0, accepted). https://www.flynnvt.org/Education/Classes. Contact: Sarah Caliendo at registrar@flynnvt.org or 781-718-8185. The Magic Toybox, Not Just a Box, Magic Treehouse Adventures, Choose Your Adventure, AfroFUN Dance Camp, Highlights from Junie B Jones, Highlights from High School Musical, Dare to Delve Deeper: Theater Intensive, Broadway Dance Bootcamp Jr and Teen, Lights, Camera, Action!, Teen Shakespeare Intensive.

We have been continuing our work with 6 words poems in response to the question “What do you stand for?”. I have been so moved by the energy and enthusiasm around this question. Friends have been writing about climate change, equal rights, human rights, the environment, animals and the list goes on. I am inspired by their creativity and passion to create change using their voice. Spring is here which means it’s time for the Variety Show! We will be holding our second Virtual Variety Show on May 28th. Submissions will be due on May 14th. Please stay tuned for information to come home with your child next week. Last year we had around 40 submissions and I am looking forward to seeing all the creativity that flows in this year. Please reach out if you have any questions. Keep thinking spring!!

porwig@bsdtvt.org

Art continues to be a fun and creative adventure with each and every class. This rotation Kindergarteners worked on the under the sea theme as well learning and creating a work inspired by Keith Haring using neon acrylics. Second graders are continuing to work on social justice projects through collage, painting and some cartooning. They created ‘good citizen’ self portraits holding banners with positive messages. Third graders are working on what makes a strong community. We toured all around the O.N.E and talked about businesses that help others. They worked a lot with clay (pinch pots, slabs and glazing) The focus is on the Fill the Bowl event that will be happening sometime in May. Stay tuned!

We have been composing songs in 5th grade, learning math through music in 4th grade and moving a lot to music in 1st grade!

Mr Currier’s 5th grades have been composing “Fantasy Soundtracks” that create a mood from a setting in one of the fantasy books that they have been studying. We listened to and analyzed real soundtracks from 8 popular movies. This gave them inspiration and ideas to use for their own compositions. At the end, we all shared the songs and put them on a playlist on SoundCloud. You can listen to them here: https://soundcloud.com/mr-myregaard-music-class/sets/5c-fantasy-soundtracks-2021 Some of the 5th grades compositions may be used in upcoming Town Meeting videos, so stay tuned!

Mr Myregaard

Email: bmyregaa@bsdvt.org Website: www.iaamusic.weebly.com Twitter: @IAAMusicVT

Instagram: @iaamusicvt

As we roll into this final rotation with students I'm making sure that Kindergarten-4th grade finishes up reading our Red Clover Nominees for this year and is getting ready to vote. Voting opens at the end of April (after break) and goes through part of May. While I may not be in your students particular classroom during this time, I will be making sure to schedule time in that classroom to review the books before we vote on them.

The same thing will happen for the Golden Dome voting for 4th and 5th graders. While this is another year that we cannot come together as a whole group to celebrate and vote, I will try to make it as exciting as possible. I've been reviewing all 30 nominees, and having students who have read books share about them. After reviewing last week in a 4th grade classroom we had a drastic increase in check outs of Golden Dome Nominees.

April is Poetry Month and to celebrate, I'm sharing some Riddle-Ku's (riddle haikus) that were created by different classes. See if you can guess what each Riddle-Ku is about.

Happy Spring!

Ms. Jen

jpeake@bsdvt.org

Hi Everyone,

The weather has been cooperating so far this spring and we have been able to start our tennis unit outside! We have been very fortunate that the tennis courts have been open for us to use at Roosevelt Park and we plan to use them as long as we can. Some skills that we will practice are, racquet safety, ball control, forehand and backhand volley, drop shot and smash. If you are looking for something to do with your child on a nice day, bring them to a court and see what they have learned! We are going to continue to hold P.E. outside as much as we can, so please keep sending your child to school with warm clothing. It's still early in the spring so we do have cooler days to get through. Feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions.

Mr. Juckett (Mr. J)

cjuckett@bsdvt.org

With the weather getting warmer please remember to still pack warm clothes for your student and a spare pair of clothes to help with mud/rain season! As always, please remain diligent about wearing a mask, washing hands and keeping physical distance when able!! We’re all looking forward to Spring and getting outside!

Feel free to reach out with any questions or concerns!

awasko@bsdvt.org

Nurse Ali