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!

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.

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.
 

We Huffed and We Puffed...

Once upon a time in the village of Williston there was a group of third grade engineers. They used what they knew about the Engineering Design Process and weather to design a house that would keep the little pigs safe from the big bad wolf and his storm of wind and rain. The students worked in teams of four to ask, imagine, plan, and create a home that could withstand rain and winds. We tested outside with the help of a watering can (rain) and a powerful leaf blower (wolf winds!)  All of the houses withstood the test, although a few pigs were dryer than others. The students then used google classroom to do a written response about how they used the EDP as a team and what steps they would take to improve their design. Next week they will use this activity to design a home that could withstand the type of extreme weather that they are each studying. Many thanks to the amazing Julie Rogers for supporting this type of awesome learning and collaboration!

We are still looking for some more volunteers for our Harvest Craft Morning that will take place on Friday, October 31st from 9:30-10:30. If you are available to run a craft station please let us know. We would love to have your join in the celebration. 

Personalize your own free digital collage

Hiking for Hunger

We were very lucky with the lovely weather on Wednesday for our annual Hike For Hunger. We donned our awesome new t-shirts and headed to Catamount to walk for a good cause while spending time together as a team. We are still calculating donations, but we anticipate that we will have over $1,000 to send to Hunger Free Vermont. Thank you all for helping to support this great cause.

 This week we also finished Unit 1 in Bridges Mathematics and we will be starting to think about multiplication in Unit 2 next week. Students will have plenty of opportunities to think flexibly and cooperatively about solving problems that involve groups of items. See here to read more about these concepts and how to support your students with them.

It has been wonderful chatting with all of you during our conferences this past week. We appreciate having this time to set goals for the next two years. We look forward to learning and growing together with all of you.

Growing Writers

This week in literacy we learned about the three main parts of a paragraph and how writers use them to organize their thoughts. We practiced thinking like writers using sensory details while enjoying some yummy apples. Now we will be writing strong paragraphs using the strong detail words that we brainstormed.

Writing strong paragraphs will be a focus in third grade across the content areas. The students will get more practice as they begin to research a location on the globe that is faced with extreme weather. This week they have been  tracking the weather in their location and inputting the data into a Google Spreadsheet. Then they will be working in pairs to conduct research about different weather phenomena (i.e. tornadoes, blizzards, floods, and droughts). Then they will be displaying their findings in a Google Presentation. Part of this activity will also involve an engineering task. The groups will have to use the Engineering Design Process to develop a plan to help their town deal with this extreme weather.

In math we have been working on using efficient strategies for solving addition and subtraction story problems. We have also been discussing angles and liquid volume measurement in Number Corner. Next week we will show what we understand about addition and subtraction strategies in the Unit 1 Post Assessment.

Next week is a short week. Students are in school Monday-Wednesday. We will be having conferences on Tuesday and Thursday afternoon. If you have not signed up yet, please see the link on the side bar of the blog. It is located under "Important Dates." We look forward to seeing you and discussing goals for the next two years.

We hope to see you on Wednesday at our Hike For Hunger. We will be getting to Catamount at 10:00 and hiking until about 11:00. 

Happy Fall!

Energetic Engineers

It was so nice seeing and chatting with many of you on Thursday night at the Mosaic Dessert Social. We hope that your kiddos went to bed alright after the initial sugar rush! I know that Mr. Eaton and Mr. Parker were very thankful for their cookie delivery!

This week the kids learned all about the Engineering Design Process through several different activities. We learned many new things about what technology is. Understandably, many of the students thought technology meant that something is electronic and plugs in. They were shocked when we held up items like a pencil or a paperclip and said that these were also examples of technology because they were created by engineers to meet a need or solve a problem.

They learned about the word prototype while viewing an everyday engineer at work as he tried to develop a new way of feeding his neighbor's cat. Throughout this video, the narrator followed the steps of the process to create a piece of technology that could help meet this need.

The young engineers got to put their new knowledge to the test on Thursday and Friday when they used the EDP to solve their own problem. They were given a task to create a tower  at least 10 inches high that could hold an animal (beenie baby) for at least ten seconds. The groups worked together to imagine ideas, plan using discussion and sketches, create using the materials available to them, and then improve after initial testing. As you'll see from the video and photos, they were very excited and engaged and everyone was successful!

Next week we will continue to think like scientists and engineers during our weather and climate unit. The scientists will be learning about climate and weather forecasting. They will then chart the weather of a location of their choice using digital tools and Google spreadsheets.

The location that they choose is also one that is inclined to severe weather of some sort. (i.e. blizzards, hurricanes, ice storms, tornados, or floods). In pairs, they will research and become "experts" on this type of extreme weather and how it affects their location. They will then use the EDP to design an idea for how to minimize the impact of the extreme weather. We will use other Google tools to present our findings. We can't wait to see what these amazing thinkers come up with!