Sunday, November 16, 2014

Winter Is Coming

Seeing the first flakes of the season prompted us to remind families that once we have snow on a regular basis kids are required to bring all of their winter gear out to recess. They should have hats, gloves, snow pants, and boots to change into.

This week we did a group writing activity to reflect on our visit from Tom Messner and we hope to be published in the next edition of the WCS Blue and Gold! Then we used our journalistic skills to prepare for a visit from Noah's mom, Sarah Healy. Sarah chose to pursue her dream of being an author and has now published two books! The students had some amazing questions for her about what it is like to live a writing life. Then they put their new understanding to work as they began to brainstorm ideas for  writing their own true stories. Next week we will continue writing narratives as we think about ways that writers get ideas, how to move from a summary to a story, and ways to write an engaging lead.

In math we continue to develop and share different strategies for multiplication that are efficient and accurate. Some of the ways that students like to show their understanding of multiplicative reasoning are  ration tables, using the doubling strategy, and breaking up facts into smaller facts. Students need to be able to understand this relationship between numbers before they are able to use quick procedural strategies. That way, when they move on to higher level math (algebra)  they have a solid foundational understanding of the way that numbers work.

We are SO excited for this Wednesday when we will welcome the incomparable Jeff Kinney to our school. Mr. Kinney has written the bestselling Diary of a Wimpy Kid series that have become a staple on the bookshelves our our young readers. We can't wait to hear what this "accidental author" has to share with us. Stay tuned!




We hope that you all have a restful and relaxing holiday break with your family. It's hard to believe that it will be December when we return!


Sunday, November 9, 2014

Tom Messner Brings A Little Sunshine To Mosaic!

This week we finished up our Weather Home projects using Google Presentation/Drawing tools. The students self reflected and scored themselves using a rubric and prepared the final touches to present to the fourth grade engineers on Friday. They were so proud of their work and you could tell that the fourth graders were really impressed with their engineering ideas and teamwork. Click on the links below to see the presentations.
Eaton Weather Homes 
Parker Weather Homes 

 



We then got to be the audience as the fourth graders shared  comic strips that they had created as they were learning about cause and effect relationships this week. We had done some work with identifying these types of relationships in nonfiction texts and we learned a lot from the fourth graders as well. Their illustrations and story lines were so creative and well prepared!


The highlight of our week was certainly getting to meet Tom Messner! I don't know if he planned it, but as soon as he arrived, the sun came out! He showed us a lot of interesting behind the scenes information and shared his knowledge of extreme weather phenomena. We were thrilled that he included us in the broadcast of the evening news, too!

Next week we will head to the book fair on Tuesday, but the fair is open all week long. We will also have a guest teacher on Wednesday. Mrs. Parks will be doing an engineering read aloud and lesson. I think that she will be impressed with all that we already know about how to think like engineers.

We are also lucky enough to hear from Noah's mom, Sarah Healy, about what it is like to be a professional author. This will be the perfect guest to help us launch our writing unit around personal narratives and true stories. She will join our class on Thursday.

Sunday, November 2, 2014

Digging in the Garden

This week we learned how to use Google Draw and Google Presentations, two more tools that will help us  present what we have learned about weather and engineering in our final project. The teams have been creating "Dream Houses" that have been engineered specifically to withstand the elements of their particular type of extreme weather. The ideas that they have come up with have been outstanding, from heated driveways to rubber roofs, they have truly been thinking outside the box and using phenomenal teamwork. We will be finishing these next week and will present our Google Slides to the fourth graders on Friday! Then the students will self reflect using a rubric and we will share on the in the next week or so.

Next week we are also excited to have Tom Messner, News Channel Five's meteorologist, joining us to discuss all of our weather and climate questions. To prepare for his visit we will be developing strong, thoughtful interview questions in Literacy over the next few days. Pictures of our celebrity guest to follow!

This week we celebrated the arrival of fall with our annual Craft Morning and the Garden Harvest Celebration on Friday. Thanks to all of the families who donated their time or refreshments. It was a hit as always! Here are a few photos and video from the fun morning.




It looks like we will be getting some cold winter temperatures and perhaps some
snow this week. Please remember to send your kiddos to school with hats, gloves, and warm jackets. Once the snow if officially here they will need boots and snow pants everyday at recess.