PS 79 Specialist Newsletter March 2015

K-3 Music and the Brain keyboard students are learning how to practice a piece for performance. This month, we will focus on the May performance pieces. Students will learn the practice tools needed to approach the next practice step of rehearsing their pieces - playing it from the beginning to the end. I have added solfeggio to practice more in depth the isolation of pitch for better singing. We are using fixed solfeggio with a similar method taught at Juilliard and Manhattan School of Music (college and preparatory curriculums). 4th & 5th Grade Little Kids Rock classes March will be our Rock month. Students will learn and work on power chords, which is a two to three string chord used in the style of rock. We will discuss how the rock style is constructed with attention on the material used to create the rock sound. Besides chord construction, we will work on the pentatonic scale for material to create solo lines.

Ms. Dougherty aka Ms. Darling

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Hello from the Library! Thank you again for all children and families who participated in our recent Snow-Spiration Contest. I am really proud and was amazed by everyones efforts. I awarded prizes for the Top 20 Winners. The top ten winners received books and students who placed eleventh to twentieth received candy bags. All work was displayed and it looks so fantastic that I am sad to take it down. In library during the month of March, we will be working around the theme of Dr.

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Seuss. We will be reading Dr. Seuss books, doing close reading of text, completing Internet Scavenger Hunts about Dr. Seuss, learning about his life and work, and working on many other engaging Dr. Seuss inspired activities. I will again sponsor a contest to encourage creativity. Directions for the Seuss-Spiration contest will be sent home during the first week of March. Please come visit me in the Library, (Room 209)

during Parent Teacher Conferences on Thursday, March 19th.

Mrs. Tartsinis

Mr. George Carter, Principal Compiled by Jessica Brownstein Digital Visual Arts

L!BRARY NEWS

Music Program

Physical Education Mrs. Torres Hi everybody, are you ready for a brand new season? It's been a really rough season but when you think about it, each day that you had to struggle made you stronger! Speaking of getting stronger we are just wild about our animal tracks in the gym. K 2nd grade are traveling like the wild animals in the jungle. Walking tall like a giraffe, galloping like a horse, sliding sideways like a crab, skipping like a sheep, jogging like a deer, leaping like a monkey and running like a cheetah! The students are learning cooperative games such as pass the ball over head and sideways, computer virus buster game, clean up your room and bowling in 4 lanes. The 3- 5th grade are learning to become personal trainers in pairs or small groups. The students perform 3 exercises from aerobics, muscle strengthening and flexibility categories by repeating each rep. from 8 seconds in the beginning stage, to 20 seconds in the intermediate stage and up to 50 seconds in the advanced stages. When they have completed theses exercises in the form of task cards they trade them with their classmates and perform 3 other exercises. After these station visits they play soccer, basketball, tennis, badminton, scooping catch and jump rope or spin the hula hoops. We are finally at the last 2 fitness tests for our 4th and 5th grade classes. During your gym days please remember to bring your sneakers to school! I will see you in the Gym where the magic continues! Stay calm and breathe deeply! Ms. Torres

CONTENT AREA ART Ms. Auman This past month, kindergarten students made Chinese New Year projects, a surprise hibernating bear picture and Ezra Jack Keats Literacy and Art detail pictures. First graders made cut-out snowflakes, did clay exploration and are working on Art and Literacy Owl Moon inspired pastel pictures. Second graders finished their snowflake wax-resistant watercolor pictures and clay coil pot/sculpture exploration. Third graders worked on their national flag hand images for their Respect assembly, made 3-D dragons for the Chinese New Year and continued working on their measurement building project. Fourth grade finished their Wayne Thiebaud inspired cake/pie pictures and are starting their Dutch Colonial America project. Fifth grade finished their Chinese New Year pictures and lanterns and are making modular sculptures, charcoal drawings and a Matisse inspired project based on the recent MOMA exhibit, which is displayed in the hallway leading to the student cafeteria.

Grades 1-5 made beautiful hearts to decorate the gym for the PTA dance. I hope you had a chance to view the large ocean mural and the New York City landmark pictures outside the Art room (120) and the Chinese New Year display in the showcase in the main hallway.

SEUSS-SPIRATION CONTEST COMING SOON. Please start sending in entries by Friday, March 13th.

PS 79 Specialist Newsletter March 2015

Social Studies through iPad Technology Ms. Newson-Lang

CALLING ALL ARTISTS! Entries for our school logo are due MARCH 13th!

SPACE: K-2 Kindergarteners learned how to show space in their drawings by drawing objects that are closer to us at the bottom of the page and larger. Students created their own scratch art and created a composition with a foreground and a background. First graders are studying the desert in order to inspire their collages. Second graders finished their Huichol Nierikas and are starting a character unit inspired by Dr. Suess. TEXTURE: 3-5 Third Graders are engraving their Mandala designs and are using implied and actual texture to continue the radial symmetry pattern onto a background. Fourth graders finished their Hokusai Waves and are using found objects to create a Suess Creature. Fifth graders are finding creative solutions to creating a land/city scape using mixed media. Artist Coops: K-3 are working together to create a paper quilt inspired by Maritza Soto. 4-5 are creating their own comic strips.

Who am I? Where do I live? Who makes up my family, my community? Select 2nd 3rd graders are answering these questions by creating a movement selfie (a short dance about themselves and their community). Look for finished projects by the end of March or early April on the Dance Bulletin Board or possibly in a Dance Attack and who knows when or where that will happen. 1st grade and Kindergarten continue exploring nouns and verbs and their very own mad lib

movement sentences complete with punctuation (i.e. Do kangaroos swim?). 5th grade has come full circle and are in the final stages of presenting their Elements of Dance mini lessons to the entire class. 4th grade has

finished with their Poetry in Motion project and will be moving on to other movement manifestations of great literature. Dr. Suess, anyone? After a successful premiere for Family Fun night at our annual Book Fair, despite the snow storm, all dance companies are back in the studio refining old dances and devising new ones to everything from classical music to rap. Cant wait until our Spring Arts Festival when we strut our stuff again. Best Mr. J

Parents! Teachers! Friends! Here is whats happening in theatre: Kindergarten, 1st and 2nd grades are continuing to explore diversity and problem solving through an in-depth exploration of animals and their features. Students are exploring and paying close attention to unique features. They are discovering new ways that their animals could use their unique features to help problem solve. 3rd grade is working on different projects around the theme of respect; students are analyzing and discovering what respect means to them through the deconstruction of stories and personal experiences. Students are learning to describe and physicalize what respect looks like, sounds like, and feels like using theatrical techniques. 4th and 5th grades are moving on to improvisation. One of the magical things about improvisation is, once you start you never know where you might end up. Students learn and develop essential skills that apply to life in and outside of school. Improvisation helps students develop stronger listening and responding skills, problem solving skills, analytical skills,

communicative skills, and so much more. As we move into March, and get closer to spring, students creativity and drive are truly beginning to blossom. Thats all for now, I hope everyone has a marvelous, March!!

Dance Program Mr. Jannetti

Theater Ms. Cowan-Krause

Digital Visual Graphics Ms. Brownstein

Dear Parents, One of the challenges of being a 21st Century educator is finding new and innovative ways to teach difficult concepts so that ALL students can process and understand them. This month, our students (K-5) have been working on their iPads with a new app called Cloud Art. This app creates word clouds. Students can demonstrate their understanding of the differences between theme, main idea and key details in Social Studies by using this app. I would like to share their successes with you. A word cloud is an image that uses text in creative ways. The size of the word is determined by how frequently it appears in a paragraph, or how often your child types that word into the app. So, the fourth grade unit on Three Worlds Meet in New Amsterdam in 1664 (the theme) is the largest word in the word cloud. The main idea (Groups: Dutch Merchants, Native Americans, Indentured Servants or Slaves) appears smaller. Key details (CameToTrade or TradedWampum) are the smallest in the word cloud. The beauty of using this app is that inputting the text requires precision. Every letter and space counts. Each phrase must be connected, using capital letters and no spaces. One mistake and the app sends the word all over the word cloud. Our students must be both highly engaged and extremely focused. Note that these are the same skills needed to code in programming. Back in the App: Once the text has been input, our students can change the layout, color and font to suit their own creativity. They absolutely LOVE this app! I absolutely love their level of engagement! Student Work: First, I taught how to use the app by having students create word clouds using their own names and positive words that describe themselves. The Power of Positive Words Next, we moved on to demonstrate our understanding of theme, main idea and key details in our Social Studies units, using the Cloud Art app. Grades 4 & 5 Word Clouds

Visit the schools wiki space to listen to your students work on line at PS 79q.wikispaces.com