December Newsletter

Happy holiday season to each and every member of our IAA community family! I truly hope you are finding creative ways to remain connected with extended family and loved ones. Connections are even more important this holiday season as we all work to remain responsibly socially-distanced from those who are not a part of our immediate household but also strive to ensure our loved ones are not emotionally isolated as we practice social-distancing. Please remember to take time to check in with those who are important to you.

Our students and staff have remained vigilant with our safety precautions and protocols here during the school day. It has been great to have our students back in school four days a week. Our staff is committed to following guidance from our health experts with the hopes that our society will begin to flatten the curve soon and students will be ready to transition back to a five day school week by the spring. We truly believe it is in the best interest of our students as soon as it is safe to do so.

Dates to Remember:

Dec. 22nd: Students last day before winter break

Dec. 23rd - Jan. 1st: Winter Break (schools closed)

Jan. 4th: Students first day after winter break

Jan. 7th: PTO Meeting; 6:00 p.m.

Jan. 25th - Feb. 12th: Winter Assessments

Stay safe and have a great holiday season!

Did you know that the IAA Playlist on the Burlington School District Youtube channel now has 13 Virtual Town Meetings? In case you missed it, some highlights include the Black Lives Matter Flag Raising Ceremony, Celebrations of learning from Mr. Currier’s 5th grade, Ms. B’s 5th grade, Ms. Rose’s 2nd grade, and Mr. Scott’s 3rd grade, the kick off to the IAA Creature Crawl. These virtual Town Meetings have been fun to put together and it’s exciting to see all of the student work and hear their voices. We hope you enjoy and stay tuned for more.

ONE-Sings The first session of ONE-Sings wrapped up before the November break. If you would like to learn some of the repertoire, Mr. Brian has recorded some old favorites to share with you. Scroll down to see his videos for You Sing a Song, Resham Firiri, and more!

ONE-Strings will be hosting virtual sessions with violinist, Rebecca Anderson, and cellist, Alan Richardson in each of our 4th and 5th grade classes this winter. These virtual sessions will include music and interactive activities and discussions with the musicians. We look forward to hearing some strings in our classrooms.

Arts integration:

Creature Crawl Whole School Residency

Teaching artist Ms. Alissa will be back at IAA for her final sessions with students in December. She will continue to install their artwork in outdoor galleries into the new year. Videos and other content related to the IAA Creature Crawl can be found on UA google site-- you can find the creature map, images of student artwork, and lots of videos. It has been fun to watch students, staff, families, and neighbors delight and make connections throughout this public arts project.

On Wednesday December 9th, K-5 teachers across Burlington School District engaged in professional learning to deepen their practice of Number Talks. Number Talks are classroom conversations where students share their process for solving problems mentally. All students benefit from seeing & hearing the different approaches to solving the problem. Accuracy, flexibility, and efficiency are emphasized during the conversation.

Check out January opportunities from the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts and Burlington City Arts. Fantastic scholarship opportunities are available.

It has been an exciting and engaging time during drama integration. Our 5th graders explored the story of equality through slam poetry during our arts integration unit. We wrote a collaborative slam poem in response to the questions “what does equality mean?” and “how can I take action?. Each 5th grader wrote a line and created a gesture to go along with it. When the 5th graders learned that we would be raising the Black Lives Matter flag they decided to perform the poem at the flag raising ceremony. The ceremony can be seen on the Friday Town Meeting video.

I can’t believe it’s December! Classes continue to be a flurry of creativity. We’ve been playing with color through looking at Wassily Kandinsky’s works. DId you know that he could hear the colors as he painted? It’s called Synesthesia. We’ve also been talking a lot about equality and are working towards removing biases, stereotypes and false narratives in our work. 2nd graders discussed human/kid rights. They chose one that felt true to them and created a symbol to represent it. They are in the process of becoming brightly colored flags that will adorn the room. 3rd graders are awash in conversations about climate zones and painting their chosen animal that will become part of the big mural across from the office. Our kindergarteners are enthusiastically experimenting with lines, shapes, art materials (Sharpies this week) as well as humorous, richly illustrated books. Feel free to reach out at sadamson@bsdvt.org. Thanks for reading. And don’t forget to partake in the Creature Crawl if you haven’t already!

December has seen Mr Myregaard working with Ms Low's 5th grade and the STEP program students. The 5th graders have learned how to identify feelings/mood, instruments and musical techniques in musical listening examples. Then, they took their own stories, about creatures, and created their own musical compositions to tell their stories, using mood, instruments and musical techniques. Exciting!

The STEP program students have been exploring many different ways to move to music and to develop a solid, steady, internal beat!

Enjoy the break, everyone!

Mr Myregaard

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

Instagram: @iaamusicvt

Happy December!! We have been in a flurry of activity in our library classes and by the end of this week, I’ll have seen every single class! Students are working hard on reading our Red Clover Nominees, researching in PebbleGo and PebbleGo Next, and making their way through the (newly renamed) Golden Dome Book Award Nominees (formerly Dorothy’s List). We have worked on Art Integration projects using Book Creator, Google Slides, SeeSaw, and Google Drawing. This week some classes are working on coding for computer science education week, and 4th and 5th graders are focusing on Artificial Intelligence pros and cons.

I know that many of you are disappointed that we were not able to participate in Square 1 Art this year, but the logistics of teaching in pods and all the work that fell on teachers plates this year made it overwhelming. You can always purchase past years art, by looking your student up on the website or contacting Square 1 Art. Hopefully we will be able to proceed as normal next school year.

As always, if you have any questions please feel free to email me: jpeake@bsdvt.org If you are looking to donate a book to the library, check out our Amazon Wish List

I am very excited to announce that I have now seen every class for their two week rotation! It has been a very different year for our kiddos and they have done a wonderful job adapting. For the next rotation, classes will focus on Winter Olympic themed events during P.E.. We are going to continue to hold P.E. outside as much as we can, as long as it is a safe temperature. If your child has P.E., please send them to school with clothing that will keep them warm outside. (jacket, snow pants, hat, gloves and boots) If your child needs any of these pieces of clothing, please feel free to contact the school and we will do our best to help provide them with what they need. I hope everyone has a safe and wonderful holiday season and feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions. cjuckett@bsdvt.org

Hello Everyone! Sending out a reminder that we will have holding a flu shot clinic for students this coming Tuesday, December 15th. The flu shot is free. Please fill out and return the consent form that went home in your child’s backpack pack prior to December 15th if you would like your child to receive the flu shot.

As always, please remember to wash your hands, wear a mask and try to keep a 6ft distance between yourself and other people! If anyone is looking for a popup testing site in Burlington, please see this flyer! Have a great holiday season!

“Better late than ever!”, Hang in there!”, “Let’s call it a day”. These are some of the idioms we use everyday around kids without realizing that they might be a challenge for some of our English learners. This past month, EL fourth graders have been learning about some of the most common idioms in the English language. They had so much fun trying first to guess what each idiom meant. They soon realized that they cannot interpret idioms literally! They read Amelia Bedelia books and identified a few new idioms. At the end of our unit on idioms, they created their own idioms (see examples below) and interviewed their family members about idioms used in their own home language. So next time you see an EL 4h grader, ask for their favorite idiom!