Sunday, August 30, 2015

Welcome Back!


We have had a wonderful start to the school year so far. The fourth graders spent the past three days getting to know some new friends who have joined the Mosaic family, reviewing expectations, and diving into content area learning.

We feel fortunate  to have two student interns from St. Michael's College with us again this fall. Sunny and Ashley are both in the Graduate Licensure Program and will complete their Elementary License requirements at the end of the semester. Click here to find out more about them.


This week we practiced building our reading stamina and recording our thinking in the M.A.A.R. (Myself as a Reading) sections of our reading notebooks. We also reviewed expectations for a productive and respectful math environment and practiced efficient problem solving strategies and mathematicians dyads. The fourth graders began to think like teammates and engineers as they were challenged to Save Fred. In this design challenge they worked together to develop a plan to rescue a stranded gummy worm atop his capsized "boat". Each group had to make a hypothesis, develop a plan, test, and record their conclusions. This was just the beginning of a year full of inquiry, engineering, and teamwork. Enjoy a few images from our first challenge...



We hope to see many of you on Wednesday night at 6:00 for our dessert social. If you can contribute a dessert item it would be appreciated. We will provide paper products. We hope to gather in the courtyard if the weather is nice. If not, we'll be in the dining room.