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.

Fact Masters

It is hard to believe that we are already half way through the year in third grade, but it is already here! At this point  we like to introduce the students to XtraMath, a computerized program that helps to build math fact fluency. The students each have their own account which they can access both at home and school. They begin with addition facts and attempt to master each operation by completing all of the facts in three seconds or less. Most students are very excited by this new program and have been asking to go on it daily. We already have some mathematicians who have received their first certificates of achievement!

We are asking our classes to get onto XtraMath as much as possible on the evenings when they do not have math homework. This would ideally mean that they are practicing their facts at least three times per week. We realize that some students do not enjoy the XtraMath program because it is time based and can make some feel frustrated. If this is the case for your student, please let us know and we will be happy to suggest some other fact fluency activities that you can do at home to support your child's computational development.

We have been applying our inquiry skills as we have jumped into a unit on forces and magnets. Over the past few days the students  have learned about Newton's laws of motion and have been designing and testing experiments around objects in motion and the forces that move them. This coming week, they will be using their engineering skills in combination with their new understandings to design a revolutionary ping pong paddle and they will work in groups to design and test their own pendulums. Stay tuned for some great photos of these creativ thinkers at work.

We are excited to head to the Flynn Theater to see A Light In The Dark: The Story of Helen Keller next week on February 5th. We will be doing some activities to build our background knowledge of this amazing woman before we enjoy the performance. 

With the cold temperatures, please be aware that we do go outside for recess everyday unless it is below zero (w/wind chill). This is just a reminder to be sure that your student has the appropriate winter gear with them everyday.

Thanks so much!

Jess and Liz

New Year, New Faces!

Welcome Back and Happy New Year!

We are so lucky to have two new faces on Mosaic this spring. Both third grade classrooms will be hosting an intern from St. Michael's College. These bright young ladies will have the opportunity to spend each day observing, learning, and practicing the craft of teaching. We look forward to working with them and helping them on their journey into their careers. Meet Sara and Kristyn:

Hello Everyone!

My name is Sara Monahan and I will be student teaching in Mrs. Eaton’s classroom from January until the end of April. To get started I would like to tell you a little bit about myself. Currently, I am a senior at Saint Michael’s College majoring in Elementary Education and Sociology. My family is from Hingham, Massachusetts and I have an older sister Alison, an older brother Billy, and a Jack Russell Terrier named Riley. For the past three summers I have taught swimming lessons to children and I have loved every second of it. During my junior spring semester of college I studied abroad in Florence, Italy and had the opportunity to volunteer in a fourth grade classroom and to travel to a variety of countries. In my free time I enjoy cooking meals, walking my dog, and spending time with family and friends. I love working with children and I am very excited and looking forward to a great experience teaching and learning with your children over the next couple of months! 

Hello all! My name is Kristyn Galligan, and I am Mrs. Parker’s student teacher for this semester. I am a senior at Saint Michael’s College and I am a double major in Elementary Education and Music. I am from Canton, Massachusetts and I have been traveling to Vermont since I was about 8 years old. I immediately knew Vermont would be where I wanted to attend college from the moment I started research on colleges. I am a very social and active person, and I knew Saint Michael’s College would be the best fit for me. It is hard to believe that in May I will be leaving a place I have called home for so long, but I am looking forward to the next chapter of my life. I have been in the teaching field since my freshman year at Saint Mike’s; my first placement was actually helping Mrs. Karla Kennedy at Williston Central! I love working with students and watching as their minds grow and seeing how they begin to form opinions about our world. I am looking forward to getting to know the third graders, and working with the rest of Mosaic house J. I am thankful for how quickly I am fitting in with the students and teachers alike and I am excited to learn alongside everyone. In my spare time I love to sing, act, as well as spend time with my cousins and friends.

This week we began a literacy unit on reading informational text. We are using the books of Steve Jenkins to look closely at nonfiction text features and explore how they are used, their purpose and how they help us as readers. Jenkins' books are so accessible to young students because of his focus on animals and his unique way of presenting fascinating information. His artwork is also amazing and the students will work with Ms. Demas to create their next project with inspiration from his cut paper technique. Stay tuned for their creative creations! 

 In math we are working on developing efficient strategies for 3-digit and 4-digit addition and subtraction problems. The students are thinking flexibly around ideas about removing and finding the difference and will soon begin to understand how to use the standard algorithm (the procedure that many of us were taught as kids). This is one efficient way, but does not always lead to accurate answers if students have not developed a conceptual understanding of why they "borrow or carry." Our goal if for students to have a procedure that works for them that they are able to explain clearly.

Next week we will begin a new NGSS (Next Generation Science) unit around forces and motion. The students will be engaged in several inquiry tasks around balanced and unbalanced forces, static electricity and magnetism. I can't wait to see what they discover!