Vermont's Victory

After lots of sneaking we managed to send Ms. M and Ms. Cota off with a complete surprise last week. We thank all of you for the contributions that you made to their teacher bags and our celebration snacks. There were laughs, tears, and many well wishes for these incredible future educators.

This week we wrapped up our unit of study on Vermont History and Geography. Over the past few weeks we have been simulating a reenactment of the struggle over this land between the NH Grants and The Yorkers. We were all quite angry with King George because of his greed and poor decision making and wrote strong opinion pieces to back up our positions. We were fortunate to take our new understanding (and heated feelings!) with us as we visited the Vermont History Museum in Montpelier. While here, we got to read more about some of the key players and see how history continued to unfold and be filled with many successes and challenges in the years to come. While at the museum the students got to act like curators and anthropologists as they looked through artifacts from an 1800's home that had burned down. Using these clues and their understanding of that time period, they were able to determine many things about the Wheelers and what early life in Vermont might have been like.

This week the students settled their dispute by writing their own Vermont Constitutions. We compared our declarations to the actual constitution that was written in 1777 and many of the same ideas were still just as important to our "student settlers." To assess their understanding of the many events that lead to the 14th state, the students created a comic strip storyboard highlighting the important events. You will see these on display in Mosaic soon.

In math we have been tackling concepts around equivalent fractions and looking at how to make sense of mixed numbers and improper fractions. To do this the students created fraction strips, a hands-on tool that allows them to compare the size of fractions and how they relate to each other. Soon we will use more hands-on activities to show how fractions and decimals are related.
Students should continue to practice their facts at home at least four days per week to build their fact fluency. Multiplication should be the focus at this point.

We are looking forward to a few special events coming up at school this week and next. The holiday concert, booster cell challenge "cell"abration, and our annual Mosaic Rad Day and Crafter Morning. Information has come home in your Friday folder this weekend with more details on these events.

For R.A.D. the students are asked to bring in some of their old 3rd/4th grade books for an exchange. Students can bring in as many or as few as they'd like. Everyone gets to "shop" for new to them books and go home for the break with new reading material. We also have mystery guest readers, buddy reading, digital reading, and more!

For the Craft Morning we are always looking for volunteers to run a craft. You would have three rotations of 8-10 students each. We also appreciate any healthy snack/beverages that you might be able to contribute that day.

Thank you so much for all that you do!