Once Upon A Time....

This week Kristyn and Sara had their solo week. They were so happy to dive into working on their own with students and were really pleased with how the week turned out. The students were extra S.M.A.R.T this week and were extremely helpful to both girls as the week progressed. Throughout the week students would be reminding their peers that even though Kristyn and Sara are students, this week they are their main teachers. Students were extra mindful this week when they saw the play Grease, a musical put on by the WCS middle schoolers, and sat next to classmates who they knew would not distract them throughout the performance. Students loved the musical and were even singing the main songs as they left the performance (we sense some future actors and actresses :) ).

This week our students worked extremely hard on their fairytales. They were able to publish their work through typing their final drafts or handwriting their adaptations and then they became their own story-tellers. Students recorded their own voices on an IPad through an application called Shadow Puppet. This application allows students and adults to take real photos and create their own book by recording their voice as they scroll through each photo. If you would like to see more information please visit their website.   We were so impressed with their expression and the way they used their best story-teller voices. Students on Friday then had a fairy tale celebration equipped with their adaptations and of course fairy tale treats. We invited other members of our Mosaic team, including the fourth graders, and we had some other members of our faculty come around and listen to their adaptations. Everyone had an incredible time and felt like they walked into a real life fairy tale. It was truly magical.  We will be posting the links to your child’s stories, and we hope you enjoy them as much as we have. We have some very talented and creative third graders in our midsts.
    In Number Corner, students have been learning about how many minutes are in a quarter or an hour, a half or a third of an hour.  They have been making many discoveries and observations about time and began to understand why adults can use phrases like “quarter past” or “quarter till”. In Math we are still working through Unit 5 and have been working more with  multiplication and division. Students are continuing to develop efficient strategies to solve multiplication and division story problems and they have even been playing math games to use their strategies!  We are really looking forward to seeing what else our smart kiddos come up with in the future!

A reminder that this is Kristyn and Sara’s last week with our third graders. They want to thank everyone, including the parents and students, for their support and they will truly miss everyone in their classrooms and in Mosaic. They also want to thank Liz and Jess for helping them grow as future teachers!

Keep thinking Spring! Let’s have some more 60 degree weather shall we?

Fairy Tale Fun

      A few weeks ago we started our brand new fairy tale unit. The unit began with a full immersion of reading different classical fairy tales in order to get familiar with the various story lines and the sequence of events a fairy tale unfolds in. In this unit the students have been working on creating their own fairy tale adaptation of the classic tales Billy Goat’s Gruff or Little Red Riding Hood. This past week the students have been working so hard on drafting their own adaptation by adding their own twist to the classical tales! Students have been going through the steps of the writing cycle and their talent has truly shined through. This upcoming week the students will be working on publishing their fairy tale using IPads through an application called Shadow Puppet. We are very excited to see the students’ creative masterpieces come alive.

     This past week the students filled the school’s brain cell collector to it’s nose. The school held a celebration for our “SMART” students called Minute to Win it. Taking after the American prime time TV game show, the students had only a minute to complete a variety of challenges! It was a well-deserved school wide celebration and everyone had a blast.

     In math we have began Unit 5 and have been diving deep into concepts of multiplication and division. Students have been working on developing strategies to solve multiplication and division story problems and they have even been creating their own story problems! We look forward to working more closely with these new concepts and investigating different strategies to help us as mathematicians. 

Please remember that Sara and Kristyn will be soloing this week. If you have any information that you need to pass on regarding pick-ups and dismissal please send it to them at their school email addresses. Liz and Jess will be working on planning and curriculum for fourth grade this week. It's hard to believe we are already thinking about that! 

Think Spring! 

Solo Flight

Our St. Michael's student interns have been working hard this semester and the time is almost near for them to test their new knowledge as they lead the classroom for one week of solo teaching. They will both be "in charge" of the classrooms the week of April 6-10. Liz and Jess will be near by, but they are going to be taking over the day to day management and instruction. During this week please direct any email correspondence regarding schedules and pick-ups to their school email addresses. Sara in Mrs. Eaton's room can be reached at smonahan@cssu.org and Kristyn in Liz's room can be reached at kgalligan@cssu.org.


You have most likely all heard that Vermont (and much of the country)is in the process of transitioning to a new computerized assessment system for students in grades 3-12. This assessment is called the SBAC and we will begin to roll it out to our students to practice over the next week before administering the actual tests beginning on April 8th. There are still many questions around this test and we encourage you to ask your own. We understand that tests are a part of life and we want  students to persevere and do their best so that we can determine if this assessment is a valuable tool. With that being said, most importantly we want to engage and assess students in authentic, engaging learning activities that are developmentally appropriate and challenging. Rebecca Holcomb, Secretary of Education, writes candidly about this in her latest memorandum and I encourage you to take a look.

As we get closer to testing dates we will be asking for parents to help provide us with snacking options to keep our brains sharp and focused and our bellies full during the testing days. Stay tuned for more information on how you can support us with that in the weeks to come. If you could also please let us know if you have any travel plans the week before or after the April break please let us know as soon as possible as that will help us with scheduling and planning.

Think Spring! 

Fact Fluency

Thank you for coming and supporting the Mosaic students as they presented their Passion Projects on Thursday. They were so excited to see the positive feedback that filled up on their comment pages and they learned so much from each other. Choice is extremely motivating for students and it certainly showed with this project.

Customize your own picture collage

This week we also wrapped up Unit Four in math and are moving from thinking about fractions and measurement to diving more deeply into concepts around multiplication and division. Click here to read more about the specific goals and content of this unit. Your child is expected to be practicing their math facts at home to improve his/her fact fluency. One option is for them to be doing the exercises on the XtraMath website, but they can also practice using different apps, flashcards, or dice games. If you find something that works particularly well we would love to hear about it. We have finished our magnetism unit and went out with a shock as we learned about how magnetism and electricity combine to create electromagnets. The scientists read closely about how these magnets are created and then used their understanding and engineering skills to design their own plan for a small electromagnet. In small groups we tested out their designs and reviewed our understanding of closed circuits. The teachers had very hot hands, but it was worth it for the look on their faces when they created a magnetic field from just a few materials! Now we will be heading into a unit that is focused on writing fairy tale adaptations. Led by our student teachers the students will learn about the story elements of this genre by reading traditional tales. Then they will compare and contrast these with adaptations by other authors before they adapt a tale on their own. Our big basket raffle is coming up next weekend and the baskets are not quite full yet. Please consider donating to this wonderful fundraising event. It looks like mud season has arrived, at least for the time being. The fields at recess are prone to get extremely wet and muddy and we suggest that you send your child with a spare pair of socks in his/her backpack. Please be sure that they also have shoes that they can change into as their boots are quite wet after their fun outside. We look forward to chatting with you many of you next week at our conferences on Monday, March 23rd.

Metric Measurement Math

This week we have been hard at work looking at options and brainstorming how we want to  present our research findings for our passion projects. The students looked back at the work that we did during our Steve Jenkins unit and decided on the nonfiction text features that they wanted to include in their own posters/slideshows. Then they got a lesson from Ms. Birdsall on how to find photos in a way that is safe and digitally respectful by giving credit to the original photographer. Now they are hard at work combining the photos, facts, and features. They are so excited to share what they have learned with their families on Thursday morning at our Passion Project Breakfast. Information should have come home in the Friday folder. The breakfast will be from 8:00-8:45. We hope that you can make it and we would love if you could help to contribute to our feast by bringing a healthy breakfast snack or beverage. Coffee and paper products will be provided by Mosaic. Hope to see you there!

In math we have shifted our focus from fractions to measurement using the metric system. The students rotated through three different workstations where they learned concepts an vocabulary around mass, liquid volume, and solving story problems that involve these types of measurement. We have taken a hands on approach to this by having the students come up with benchmarks to refer to. For example, our benchmark for a gram is a paperclip and our benchmark for a kilogram is a big Harry Potter novel! These types of benchmarks help students to be more accurate in their estimations of how big, heavy, or long something is as they use these types of measurements in the future in math and especially in science.

Liquid Volume Investigation

Solving Problems using Models

Finding Mass

Using a balance to investigate mass

 If you would like to sign up for a spring conference time please click on the link under the important dates heading on the sidebar of the blog. For Mrs. Parker's sign-up you can click on her name at the top of this page. These will be offered on Monday, March 23rd.

Ready To Research

We were fortunate to have the opportunity to enjoy two artistic events this past week. We supported our friends as they made their debut at the WCS chorus concert. They all looked great and sang beautifully. Then we headed to the Flynn Theater on Friday to see A Light In The Dark as told through dance.

We all made our choices for Passion Projects and we've got a great variety of topics from Joe Montana to Covered Bridges in Vermont to Prairie Dogs! We have split the researchers into four groups based on their topic category. They met in these groups to come up with specific questions to research and now they will use several different research sites that are located on the class blog to find the answers to their wonderings and practice their note taking skills. Next week we will learn more about how to use an engaging writer's voice when creating informational writing pieces. Then the students will have the opportunity to put all of their findings together into a small report before moving on to their individual projects. We can't wait to share all of their wonderful discoveries with you at our Passion Project breakfast. This will be held the week after we return from February vacation on March 12th. More details will follow.

Next week we will celebrate our 100th day of school and Valentine's Day. Information about these events should have come home in this week's Friday folder, so be sure to check it out. We encourage you to remind you students to bring in 100 (alergy-safe) snack items on Wednesday for us to celebrate with a 100th Day Gorp Snack. (i.e. Cheerios, raisins, Chex, etc.) We will also be exchanging Valentines on Friday afternoon and we remind students to please include all classmates in  when making out Valentine's cards. We also included the names of students in the other third grade class that your child may want to send a message to.

We have been having lots of indoor recess and Mrs. Eaton  has been made aware of a need for new board games for the classroom by the students! If you have gently used games that are looking for a new home please don't hesitate to send them to Mrs. Eaton's room where they will get lots of love before the temps rise again!

Thanks!
Jess, Liz, Sara, and Kristyn 

Get Passionate!

We enjoyed investigating forces and motion this past week. We learned about Sir Isaac Newton and his important laws of motion and  we also got to use the EDP once again to design our own Pendulums. To prepare for our trip to the Flynn next week we read about Helen Keller and wrote strong opinion pieces about whether or not the library should carry braille books for each title or not. The students were very convincing and we shared them with Ms. Hennig to get her feedback on the matter. We also participated in a simulation of what it must have been like to be Annie Sullivan and Helen Keller. We are looking forward to learning more about these two amazing women when we head to the Flynn on Thursday, where a dance company will tell their story thorough their beautiful movements.

Personalize your own free slideshow design

On the day of the field trip we will be eating lunch at 10:45 to make it to the 12:00 showtime. We would like to request that you let us know by Tuesday if your child will be needing a bagged lunch on Thursday since the cafeteria will not have their regular hot lunch option at the time. We are also hoping that we will represent our team by wearing our white Mosaic House t-shirts on that day. Please help to remind your child as the day approaches.

This week we will get passionate about research for our Passion Projects! The students came home over the weekend with the assignment of deciding on a topic they would like to research over the next few weeks. They will learn about note taking and informational writing and then they will have the choice to present their work in another form as well. Kids in the past have done posters, slideshows, boardgames, homemade books, cooking, artwork, collage, etc. We will work on most of this at school and you do not have to buy any additional materials, though kids usually get really into the project and might want to do some extra work at home. We will celebrate the students' hard work with a breakfast the first week in March. More details will follow about the date and time.