Mosaic Moments and a Move!

The construction is ahead of schedule which meant an early move for Mosaic House. We seized the opportunity to celebrate our team on moving day with a day of fun at Maple Street Park. Students and adults enjoyed a gorgeous day filled with friends and activities. By the time we returned to school the Mosaic hallway had been completely moved and ready for us to head into the last few weeks in our beautifully renovated spaces in the brick hallway. Many thanks to all who helped make this possible!

We are enjoying working with new students  in our team-wide Changing Perspectives unit of study. Each small group is learning about a different type of disability, what it is, how it affects people, and how we can show empathy and support towards others by having a new perspective on difference.

We look forward to showcasing our understanding at our Disability Awareness Day on Tuesday, June 12th. Please join us for a presentation in the auditorium and simulations in our classrooms. We will start promptly at 8:30 WCS Auditorium and wrap up by 10:00.  An official invite will also come home this week in your child's Friday Folder.

Erosion Experts

In our most recent science unit students have been working in new groups of third and fourth graders learning about how forces like weathering and erosion shape our earth. This week we headed to the Allen Brook to observe how this land form has changed over time. Some of our big take-aways were how the shape of the river is a direct result of the river banks eroding and how the river is considerably wider then it was even two years ago.

Students then used models to investigate how wind affects sand dunes. We collected data of dunes with just sand and dunes with sticks used to represent plant life. Students will use this data to represent their findings in graphs and think like engineers to solve the problem of erosion washing away land and homes in areas like Cape Cod. What would you do to reduce the impact of erosion and weathering if you home was in a vulnerable area?

Next week students will be taking the SBAC assessment starting Monday, May 14th and wrapping up Thursday, May 17th. Students can feel free to bring extra snacks to school with them during these days. This assessment is a way to provide schools with a big picture view of what students understand and how they show this understanding in a test setting. The results help us to think about instructional goals and objectives at the district, local, and state level.  With that being said, they are not the only way that we assess your student's growth and they cannot measure things like confidence, creativity, perseverance, and critical thinking. We ask for students to try their best, but the SBAC shouldn't cause any unnecessary stress.

Researchers To Reporters

Helping Hands

Thank you to those who were able to make it to our Passion Project Breakfast. The Mosaic students worked hard to complete these projects, completing hours of research and creative thinking to put these projects together. We had a variety of passionate people who demonstrated what they knew and learned about a range of topics from sharks, to football, to rubies, to women in baseball. We applaud all the hard work!

Teamwork on
those finishing touches

 When the fourth graders weren’t polishing up their passion projects, they were learning more about angles, lines, shapes, and everything geometry. We have expanded our mathematical vocabulary tremendously by introducing the terms degrees, circumference, radius, diameter, symmetry, and more! Geometry has been a great opportunity to make learning this new vocabulary a hands on experience through literature, manipulatives, and collaboration.

Proud presenters

Who knew their Halloween Costumes
would inspire their Passion Projects?! 

 This coming week we will be starting our new science unit on the Earth and its forces. One of the best parts of this unit is that students will be thinking about the forces of the Earth globally and locally. To discover the forces of the Earth on the local level, students will explore erosion and human impact in the Allen Brook. Make sure your student is prepared and brings appropriate gear to be exploring in the Allen Brook!

This coming week students are choosing their Red Clover favorites! The following are the options: Daniel Finds a Poem by Micha Archer
Whoosh! Lonnie Johnson’s Super-Soaking Stream of Inventions by Chris Barton
Dragon was Terrible by Kelly DiPucchio
Frankencrayon by Michael Hall
Ada’s Violin by Susan Hood
Penguin Problems Jory John
 I Dissent: Ruth Bader Ginsburg Makes Her Mark by Debbie Levy
Otters Love to Play by Jonathan London
The Princess and the Warrior: A Tale of Two Volcanoes by Duncan Tonatiuh

Continental Math Students
 celebrate their hard work

They All Saw a Cat by Brendan Wenzel

 This upcoming week we will also get to see the "Top Secret" dance choreography that students have been working on in P.E. class. We can't wait to see their dance moves. We will also be saying farewell to our wonderful interns, Zoe D'Olimpio and Tori Barrows as they complete their internships. Mosaic won't be the same without them and we wish them both a bright future as teachers!

Passionate Researchers

The fourth graders have officially finished Because of Winn-Dixie! This week, we have been exploring theme in the text as we have come to a close with reading. In this theme unit, students were able to infer many impressive themes based on the plot of the text. We thought about how we could use mentor texts to help us come up with themes, we thought about why Kate DiCamillo may have chosen certain themes to write about, and we even thought about how we could creatively illuminate themes that we have read.

Theme cartoons and poems

To conclude this unit, students created a comic strip or poem about plot and theme in Winn-Dixie using metaphors, creative illustrations, and strong sentences about the plot to show what they know about theme in Winn-Dixie. Many of the themes students inferred were about friendship, loss, inclusion, and loneliness. Comic strips and poems about themes in Winn-Dixie We have also been working away on our passion projects. Students have finished their research on the topics that they are most passionate about and are now in the process of creating their projects. The passion project breakfast is from 8am-8:45am on Friday, 4/13. We hope that you are all able to make it to this event!

 In math, we have started a new unit on geometry. Students have been using pattern blocks and rotations on a clock to help them think about angle measurements in a variety of ways. Through this hands-on approach to teaching geometry, students have been able to work towards

Using familiar tools to measure angles

conceptualizing the concept of measuring in degrees. As we continue this unit, students will explore protractors, how to measure the circumference of a circle, and more! Pattern blocks are a great tool to help students identify angle measurements.

 This Friday, many of our fourth graders participated in Jump Rope for Heart. Thank you to all who helped to make this event a success. Both Williston Central and Allen Brook raised $20,000 for the cause! To celebrate this enormous success, a teacher was slimed and the whole group got to cheer on. 

Next week, the Williston Safety Committee will be hosting an open house/meet and greet for families at 7:45am-8:30am in the WCS dining room. This is an opportunity to become more informed about school safety and the efforts that are in place to ensure school safety. We hope that you are able to attend this event!

Reflective Readers

Presenting our
Symbolic Heart Art

As we continue with our Because of Winn-Dixie book clubs the students have noticed that many of the characters have suffered some sort of loss and have "aching hearts". They used their creativity in conjunction with textual evidence to create symbolic "hearts" that represent many of the amazing characters in Kate DiCamillo's novel. Next week we will conclude the book and we will look closely at the concept of theme in this novel and in other mentor texts.

Dyad partners wrestle with
two different solutions 

In mathematics we have been exploring several different strategies for adding and subtracting "big" numbers into the ten thousands. Many students have discovered that (despite popular beliefs) the standard algorithm (Carrying)  is not always the most efficient strategy. Some find it more helpful to use strategies like the constant difference/give and take or jumping to friendly numbers on a mental or sketched number line. (Ask you student about these ones!) The beauty of mathematics is that our minds work in many different ways and usually there are multiple pathways to discover the same solution. We have been comparing and evaluating strategies by listening to understand each other and explaining our reasoning clearly.

Using tile to help build our calendar pattern
and create a generalization

Next week students will be making decisions about what their Passion Project topics will be and they will help each other to develop research questions. We look forward to seeing students push themselves in year two of this exciting project. We will share our projects with you all on the morning of April 13th.

If you haven't signed up for a spring conference there are still spots available. We look forward to chatting with you about your child over the next couple of weeks.

Word Study partners working
 with Long i patterns (write/right, live/live)

It looks like winter is going to stick around for a while, so please continue to send you student in with all of the gear they will need to play outside and stay warm and be dry and comfortable in class.

Think Spring!
Liz and Jess

Because of Book Clubs

Kelly Clark 

Cavin Coolidge

Ethan Allen 

Thank you to all of your who were able to come and support the Mosaic historians at our Vermont History Museum event. I have included some photos of "exhibits" for those who couldn't be there in person. Next month we will have another opportunity to showcase our hard work at our annual Passion Project Breakfast. Stay tuned for more details on this project and event.

Book clubs discuss
their "reading tracks" 

Grace Potter 

We are using Kate DiCamillo's award winning novel Because of Winn Dixie  as the text for our class book clubs. Each student will get their own copy of the book and this week our students reviewed strategies for close reading fiction to prepare for the first club meeting. We have practiced having productive discussions in groups about a wide variety of topics and used unifix cubes to "grow" our conversations. This week we learned about what our responsibilities are in a book club and got to meet and give ourselves a score for how we participated in the discussion, how we prepared our written thoughts, and how prepared we were overall.

Groups practice growing their
conversations using unifix cubes

In mathematics we have moved into Unit Four. After taking the preassessment students set goals for themselves for the unit. Some of the goals that we are working on are around converting measurements from one unit to another, using place value to compare numbers into the hundred thousands, and using the standard algorithm and other efficient strategies for multi-digit addition and subtraction problems.

Students are looking forward to Valentine's Day this week and list of names have gone home if your student is interested in making valentines to exchange. Please remember to include all students in your child's homeroom class.

Deciphering Decimals

Some friendly fraction competition

Using tools to
build decimal numbers

As we close this unit in mathematics students are using what they know understand about fractions to explore their relationship with decimals. Showing our thinking in numbers, sketches and words helps us to represent and explain our understanding and justify why our strategies make sense. Games like Decimals More or Less and Fractions and Decimals help us to collaborate to make sense of this relationship in concrete (and fun!) ways.

Student writers give each other
feedback to polish their writing pieces

Writers used the peer editing process to polish their biography information pieces to prepare for our Vermont History Museum next Friday. We have learned lots of interesting and important facts about our famous Vermonters and we can't wait to share our thinking with you.


In our January Four Winds Nature studies activities this week we learned about how animals like bears, snakes, and frogs survive during the winter. These hands on activities were an engaging way to thinking about the natural world around us. Thanks so much to our parent volunteers!

Report cards are coming home today (1/26) and we would appreciate it if you could send the signed envelope back to school so we can reuse it in the spring. Thanks!

Fondly,
Jess and Liz

Biography Buffs

Biographers have been hard at work during literacy time. First they chose a famous Vermonter to research and used appropriate tools and elements of a biography to take notes about different categories they would include in their informational writing.

Students have learned a lot about their person's childhood, education, challenges, and accomplishments. They have also been looking for character traits to describe their person. We have been supporting that work during our read aloud time by reading biography picture books and looking at the way the author structured his/her text. Using mentor texts helps to inspire writers to push the level of their thinking.

Another way to push your writing is to understand the goal of the writing genre. To do that work students have been looking at what makes a quality lead, strong organization, and elaboration in an informational writing piece. They are currently aiming to have:

 * A lead/introduction that hooks their reader by telling an important fact, uses a quote or gives a big picture idea. The lead also lets the reader know they will learn about different parts of this person's life.

* They are looking to organize their writing into logical categories that stick to one topic/idea throughout the paragraphs. For some sections they are aiming to have multiple paragraphs.

* Writers are aiming to elaborate each section by giving specific details like dates, names, and examples that teach the reader even more.

Next week we will edit our pieces and begin to add visual elements like timelines, photos with captions, and other nonfiction elements to create a strong presentation for our culminating event-The Mosaic Vermont History Museum. The museum will be "open" for you to visit on the morning of February 2 from 8:00-8:45. We will send home a formal invite this week and we hope that you can all make it to the museum and learn from your students' hard work.

Budding Biographers

The first week back at school was brief and below zero, but we excitedly began our new integrated unit on biographies. During read aloud students listened carefully for the elements that this special nonfiction genre contains.

Once we had created a through list of elements (i.e. challenges the person faced, accomplishments, education, told in third person, chronological structure, etc.) students then worked as biography detectives, reading  biography passages from a wonderful digital resource called Newsela and checking off the elements that they found.

This week the students will transfer what they learned as readers into their writing as they begin to interview each other and write autobiographies. Once this genre of writing is "in their bones" they will choose a famous Vermonter to research and write an informational report about.

Students will turn Mosaic into a live Wax Museum for the culminating project of this unit. The date will be in early February. Stay tuned for more information and a formal "ticket" to our exhibit.

Please remember that we head outside for fresh air and movement daily and students should come prepared with all of the winter gear they'll need to do so. They should also bring a pair of shoes to change into as winter boots are chilly on the feet and they salt they collect can damage our lovely new carpets.

Stay warm!

Liz and Jess

Our Great State

This week in our Vermont history/geography  theme unit we moved ahead in time  from the Abenaki to the late 1700's when Vermont was settled as a state. The two fourth grade classes participated in a simulation where one class represented the New Hampshire Grants and the other class played the role of the (New) Yorkers. These two groups of people were sold the same plot of land and it was up to the unpopular King George to settle the dispute. He sided with the Yorkers and that launched the rebellion by the well known Green Mountain Boys. The students loved debating their opinions and came up with ideas for their own Vermont Constitution that sounded very similar to the one that was written so many years ago.

Now students will use what they know about Vermont history in a special literacy project that will combine their new understandings with poetry.

We also explored equivalent fractions by using tools to build what these fractions represent. Using tools and models can help to make more abstract concepts like fractions seem more concrete and accessible to mathematicians at this stage of learning.


Next week we will lead up to the break with some exciting events. The holiday concert will be on Wednesday, followed by R.A.D. (Reading All Day) on Thursday and our Craft Morning and Cinema Day on Friday. Thank you to all that are going to be volunteering your time or snacks. We know it is a busy time of year and we greatly appreciate the help.

We hope thatyour families have a peaceful holiday and we look forward to seeing you all in the new year.

Fondly,
Jess and Liz

Ready Researchers

This week we read about the Abenaki people and then Mosaic students identified questions they were interested in researching to learn more about their amazing culture. Students were introduced to a concept web as a tool to take notes as well as guidance on how to search appropriate, accurate sites using key words and phrases.

After finding the answers to their questions they came back together in subtopic groups to participated in a discussion about what they learned. Former Mosaic students (now on Swift) volunteered their time to help us have a productive discussion and guided students to pull out key details and terminology to create a word cloud.
Next students will use these word clouds to help them sketch ideas for how they will tell about what they learned in a mural they will be making in art class with Mrs. Beeken. Stay tuned for how their new understandings take shape in a collaborative painting for all to enjoy.

A sign-up sheet for our Mosaic Holiday Craft Morning went home in the Friday folder. If you are able to volunteer please send the form back in with your child as soon as you can. We thank you for helping us make this festive day a success.

Don't forget to look through your (2-6th grade) books for our Mosaic book exchange on Thursday, December 21st. The more books that come in, the more books students will go home with to read in the new year.

Happy Holiday,
Liz and Jess

Googling Geographers

To complete our Vermont geography mini-unit the young geographers worked in teams to create an interactive Google map full of information about different Vermont Attractions. Using online resources and a new micro-progression for writing with strong word choice they created an informative map for anyone looking to visit the Green Mountain State. Visit it here.

Putting notes and key details
 into our own writing

Pinning our locations
 on our Google Maps

We also ended our math unit this week and showed what we now understand about strategies for solving more complex multiplication problems and division problems that involve remainders. To do this challenging work students use visual models. Seeing, touching, and sketching ideas create pictures in the mind's eye, helping learners construct, understand, and apply mathematical ideas.  Next week we will reflect on our goals and move into Unit 3, where we will explore fractions and decimals. See here for more information on this unit's big ideas.

Using tile to model the solution to a
division story problem. 

Homemade feeders for our
 feathered friends to enjoy this winter

Our Four Winds Volunteers came in on Thursday and we all learned so much about the migratory behaviors of our feathered friends. This inspired one student to bring in his homemade birdhouse and bird feeder to hang up outside the classroom windows. Hopefully we will see some of the species we learned about this winter.

Please remember that as we head into the winter months your students will be going outside each day. They should have boots, snow pants, gloves, and hats daily. Please feel free to leave a pair in school.

We have a few fun events to look forward to this month. Stay tuned for more information about our R.A.D. Celebration and our Craft Morning in your child's Friday folder.

Think Snow,

Jess and Liz

Here Comes The Sun

Thank you to our parent volunteers who made our Harvest Craftermorning a success! The students always look forward to this day and after the excitement of the storm and no school it was a nice way to ease back into the week!

We spent some of the rainy days last week using our data and what we learned from Gary B and his solar bus to build our prototypes. Then the sun finally shined and we were able to test them. None of the teams were entirely successful with melting the cheese on their nachos, but they did discover that by adding plastic to the tops they were able to create a greenhouse effect and many of them got hot! We wrapped up our solar energy unit by using all of our new understandings to write reflections about how successful our designs were for how they heated up and how much of an impact they had on the environment.

Now the students are moving into a social studies unit. They will learn about the geography of Vermont and follow its history from the days of the Abenaki to its statehood. Students will head to the Flynn this week to see a presentation about the Abenaki tribe presented by the Vermont Abenaki Artists Association. They will then work in small research groups to become "experts" on an aspect of Abenaki culture. Their informational writing will be on display alongside a mural  that they will create in art class with Mrs. Beeken. Stay tuned for more photos and information on this unit of study.

The days are turning colder but we still want students to be able to head outside during the day for fresh air. Please help your students to be sure and pack accordingly so they can be warm and dry during the cold winter months. We hope that you all enjoy a relaxing Thanksgiving holiday with your families.

Fondly,

Liz and Jess

Going Solar

This was an awesome week with some special visitors and events sprinkled into our regular schedule.

On Thursday we learned about how seeds travel from our Four Winds Volunteers. Students identified the different parts of seeds using a lima bean model, engaged in several hands on activities to understand how they travel and spread, and enjoyed fruits with different types of seeds. Thank you to all of our amazing parent volunteers!

On Friday, Gary Beckwith and his Solar Bus came to teach us more about the science and engineering involved with solar ovens. Students learned about the three different types of solar energy and how they can power everything from a calculator to a car (or bus!). Gary was really impressed with all of the understanding that Mosaic students already had from our unit and we even invited him to come back and see how our solar ovens stand up to the test of making nachos this week!

We ended our week in the garden celebrating all that it brings to our school and community. Kaleidoscope lead us in song and our wonderful staff and parent volunteers served us up some delicious hot cider. It was a beautiful day to celebrate!

Just a reminder that we will be having our Mosaic Crafter Morning on Tuesday, October 31st from 10:30-11:30. Thank you to those of you who are volunteering your time or sending in a snack for us to enjoy.