Posts By: Jon Moss
March 14, 2015
Pi Day 3/14/15
Happy Pi Day, everybody! Pi is one of those nearly magical mathematical values because it makes its appearance in so many different areas of math, especially geometry. Every year, 3/14 is a big day for teachers because it corresponds to the start of pi: 3.14. But since pi continues as 3.141592653, this year is actually a big year, since we can translate it to 3/14/15, 9:26:53am. That’s the pi moment of the century, and it’s happening today! (I think that’s more exciting to math teachers than most people. :-D)
Last Friday, Mrs. Labowsky, our district K-6 math coach, joined our class for a special Pi Day lesson. We examined the cans of food that students generously brought in for donation to Gifts of Love. Students measured the circumference of the cans and the diameter, and they divided the circumference by the diameter in order to find the relationship between the two values. Most groups found a quotient between 3 and 3.5. (The variation was because of the imprecise measurements.) This let us introduce the value of pi (and to reveal our awesome pi day t-shirts!) We discussed that pi is ALWAYS the relationship between circumference and diameter, no matter how large or small the circle is. We also discussed some of the other places in which pi makes an appearance in math!
I hope you have a great pi day! Curious how long pi “feels”? Click here to see the first million digits of pi!
Posted in Class Updates|By Jon Moss
March 3, 2015
Southeast States and Capitals Practice
You can use these websites to practice your southeast states and capitals!
http://quizlet.com/462893/southeast-states-capitals-flash-cards/ – Can you identify the capital when you’re given the state?
http://quizlet.com/2045477/flashcards – Can you identify the state when you’re given the capital?
http://www.purposegames.com/game/southeast-state-capitals-quiz – A game to place the capitals on the map with the right state. (Also great for learning the locations of each state!)
http://www.sporcle.com/games/trwrenn/SERegionstatescapitals – This game quizzes you to see if you can type in the correct capital, so spelling counts! It also times you. (You will NOT be timed in class.)
Posted in Social Studies|By Jon Moss
March 1, 2015
Welcome Ms. Murray!
Please join me in (belatedly) welcoming Ms. Amber Murray to our classroom! Ms. Murray is a senior at Avon High School and will be working in our classroom periodically over the next several months. She is participating in a new internship program at AHS that is designed to give students an opportunity to learn about about the adult career fields they are considering as they conclude their high school career. It is hoped that the program will develop to the point where all AHS students can participate in an internship before they graduate. Ms. Murray is interested in becoming an elementary school teacher and is hoping to learn more about the profession by visiting our class and Mrs. Gregg’s second grade class. Right now, she is just observing the class, but over the next few weeks, I expect to put her to work more by working with groups of students, team teaching lessons, etc. She’s done a terrific job in her first few visits, and I look forward to her continued involvement is our class. Please contact me if you have any questions.
Posted in Class Updates|By Jon Moss
February 27, 2015
Changing Math Lessons
As you may know, I am one of the three teachers from the fourth grade team who are on the math curriculum committee for our grade. With three counterparts from RBS and our district K-6 math coach, we meet ever few weeks to continue the process of revising our math instruction. When we transitioned to align with the Common Core, we found that our former series, Everyday Mathematics, was no longer appropriate in its entirety. As we rewrote our fourth grade math curriculum, we worked to pull materials and resources that were best suited for teaching a given concept or skill. Something those resources came from individual Everyday Math lessons, sometimes they came from OnCore, and occasionally we pulled in miscellaneous resources (including SMART Notebook lessons from SMART Exchange, homework or classwork worksheets from different sources, etc.)
Four our new math unit, which focuses on adding, subtracting, and multiplying fractions, we have chosen to pilot a new resource. EngageNY is a resource made available by the New York State Department of Education. The state has developed Common Core-aligned lessons and resources for each grade, and we have found from small pilots that the lessons are well-structured, include valuable resources, and integrate an appropriate amount of rigor (while not being unreasonably difficult). As a team, we have chosen to pilot this program for our new math unit. You and your fourth grader will see a few changes:
- Lessons are more structured and include more instructional support. While worksheets are still included for practice at the end of lessons, they are less emphasized than other lessons we have considered.
- The word “tape diagram” is introduced. It means the same as “bar model” (which your kids should certainly be able to explain to you!) Both terms will be used interchangeably.
- Lessons begin with a number talk, which allows students to practice mental computation skills and to discuss different methods in which they solved a given problem.
- Lessons end with exit tickets. These are very short (one or two question) worksheets that let teachers get a quick overview of student proficiency. They can be used in different ways, including informal assessments, warm-ups for the next day, etc.
- Classwork and homework worksheets have the potential to be more lengthy. There are times when I may ask students to complete a whole assignment. Other times, I may ask kids to complete certain sections. Overall, however, the assignments will have more items than the five-item worksheets you remember from OnCore. Additionally, most items are open-ended, as compared to the OnCore multiple choice homework worksheets. This allows students to better apply their skills. Homework worksheets more closely resemble the classwork pages, so a correct sheet from classwork can help a student as he or she completes the homework page.
As with all changes to our instructional plan, we will continue to meet as a team to review our progress, discuss what we like and don’t like about the new lessons, and revise our plans based on our experiences from students.
Please feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions!
Posted in Class Updates|By Jon Moss
January 29, 2015
Starting Number the Stars
This morning, fourth graders at PGS started a unit of study about the Holocaust. Throughout this week and next week, theater educators from the Hartford Stage will join our class to teach the kids about the novel Number the Stars, which tells the story of a fictional family in Denmark that helps to hide a Jewish family that tries to escape from the Nazis. Following the Hartford Stage residency, we will begin reading this novel as a class.Posted in Class Updates|By Jon Moss
January 20, 2015
Respect for all races, religions, and cultures
This is my favorite time of the school year, not because of the beautiful weather (yuck) but because of the terrific units we are starting in class. Our class recently read a book called As Good As Anybody, which tells the stories of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Abraham Joshua Heschel – two men who had very different lives but experienced very similar adversities, and who ended up working together to make our world a better place. We always start this a week or two before Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, and it gives us a terrific opportunity to explore the wonderful contributions that Dr. King made to our society. As a class, students identified ways in which the two gentlemen were similar and different, and they used that comparison document to write short answer responses (in small groups) comparing and contrasting the men. This gave students the background so that they could write their own responses to a similar story, The Other Side, independently.
All the kids were familiar with Martin Luther King, Jr, but none of them knew who Abraham Joshua Heschel was. (At that age, I didn’t either.) He grew up in Europe and was a persecuted Jew during the beginning of the Holocaust. He fled to the United States and, along with Dr. King, he worked to promote a world in which everyone was treated with respect and dignity. Although the kids don’t yet know this, our study of As Good As Anybody launched our study of the Holocaust, which will really kick-off next week, as we begin work with the outstanding novel Number the Stars. In the coming days and weeks, you’ll hear much more from me about this unit. Some parents understandably are concerned about their children being taught things that are frightening or upsetting. Rather than focusing on the disturbing events that took place during this infamous time in history, we instead focus on the feelings and attitudes of people – the persecuted Jews, those who secretly supported the Jews at their own risk, those who did the persecuting, etc. We steer clear of the graphic details. As I said, stay tuned for more information coming your way soon.
Have a great week!
Posted in Class Updates|By Jon Moss
December 22, 2014
Narrative Elements, Connections to Text
Well hello! It’s been some time since I’ve posted an update here, so please accept my apologies. A side effect of having easy access to the Chromebook laptops and the student Gmail accounts is the reality that I tend to do more of my communication with students through those means (such as emailing assignments and information), rather than posting messages here. A reminder: Parents should ALWAYS have the ability to log-in to their children’s APS gmail accounts. If you need the username or password for your child, please let me know.
In recent weeks, we finished our first major reading unit, which focused on identifying and explaining the narrative elements in a text. These elements, which we sometimes described as being ingredients making up an ice cream sundae, represent the different parts of a narrative story. While we did work in class on identifying these elements, I found (as I normally do) that this was a pretty straight-forward task for the students. Instead, we focused more on supporting their responses with well-selected evidence from the text. For example, if we wanted to describe the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood as being “sneaky,” we’d look to the text to find evidence that supports the opinion that the wolf is, in fact, sneaky. This is a year-long focus, as kids need to support their responses with evidence in any number of situations, ranging from narrative elements to connections to predictions. In fact, you may often see the same requests made on many math homework worksheets, on which kids need to support their reasons why they agree or disagree with an answer or how they solved a given math problem. When your fourth grader brought home his or her literacy binder recently, you hopefully had the opportunity to review the character traits response to The Josefina Story Quilt, in which students planned their responses on a graphic organizer, wrote a draft response, and later revised their work based on my written feedback and an in-class review of how to craft a well-supported short-answer response.
We’re now starting to focus on making connections to text. In class, we read a story called One Green Apple (a terrific story, if you’re not familiar with it), and you may remember a recent homework assignment in which students had to write about different connections they made to the text. In class, we looked at the difference between a coincidental connection (I, too, have been to an apple orchard!) vs a deeper, more meaningful connection (I, too, have felt out of place when everyone around me spoke a different language than the one I spoke.) Right now, we’re focusing on making connections to feelings.
Our work with One Green Apple will also kick off our author study of Eve Bunting, who has written so many wonderful texts about a variety of meaningful topics. Her books often have many things to which kids can relate, while also introducing new concepts that are unfamiliar to many fourth graders. She’s a top-notch author!
Once again, thank you for your patience in waiting for an update, and I’ll try to post more regularly in the new year.
Posted in Class Updates|By Jon Moss
November 5, 2014
New Student Email Accounts and Chromebooks
Today, students were excited (to put it mildly) to receive their own Avon Public Schools email addresses. We set them up as a class, and students sent test emails to me and to their classmates. These email addresses also enable Google Drive, which will allow for students to collaborate in and out of school on assignments, in addition to making some of our online homework assignments more secure. Students definitely haven’t learned everything, however. Over the next few weeks (months, really), we will learn more about how to use email, Google Drive, Chromebooks, and much more!
Students have their log in information written on post-it notes in their planners. (Plus, if your child has difficulty logging in, I have copies of their usernames and passwords and can help out over the weekend.
We spent a significant amount of time discussing proper email behavior. While we talked a lot about the SERIOUS, MAJOR topics, such as cyber bullying, internet safety, and the permanency of online communications, we also discussed email etiquette. We spoke about how to appropriately use the subject line, choosing how to include recipients, and more. As kids continue to use their new accounts, I will certainly continue to take advantage of teachable moments to extend these skills. Remember, using email isn’t just a technical know-how skill. It also includes new social norms, pragmatics, and problem-solving skills.
Here are a few things you might want to know about the email accounts and how I am managing them:
- As discussed in the Responsible Usage Agreement that students and parents signed in the fall, email accounts are being distributed to students in Avon Schools starting in gr. 4.
- Students can only send email to and receive email from other avon.k12.ct.us email accounts. (So you cannot email your fourth grader, nor can they email you. This is for privacy and safety reasons.)
- All emails (and other electronic communications within the Google system) are archived pursuant to federal law.
- I do have usernames and passwords for all student email accounts. (I told students this in advance of them choosing their passwords since I know some students may have preferred passwords that they use for many things but might not want to share with me.)
- I told students that they MUST share their username and password with their parents. (If they don’t, email me and I’ll share it.) No secrets here!
- When composing new messages within a web browser, it’s easy to send an email to another APS individual with the same first or last name that the user has started to type. It’s important to carefully select the RIGHT recipients.
- I take any sort of online teasing (up to and including cyber-bullying) very seriously. Kids, don’t test me on this.
- Kids may not set up their APS email accounts on any home device (such as an iPad) without parental permission. (Although some kids have their own devices, some parents may prefer that online communication stays on a family computer so they can supervise. That’s why I made this rule.) If parents are ok with this, then be my guest!
- Some teachers have prohibited non-school-related emails between students. I haven’t, because I think that social emailing is a good way to learn the “ins and outs” of email use and etiquette. We discussed how quickly social emails can become “spam” and an irritation to others. Students have been told that it’s up to their PARENTS to decide whether they can socially email classmates outside of school. Friendly emails are fine with me, but excessive social emailing can become an issue. Again, this is not something that kids have an innate understanding of, so we will need to teach these skills on an ongoing basis. (That’s why I don’t ban social emailing – so we can TEACH it, not just prohibit it.)
- Students are welcome to email me when they have questions or concerns. In the past, I’ve always CC’ed parents when I reply to students. But since you will have their usernames and passwords, I may not continue to do so. I explained to kids that there is one of me and 22 of them, so if I get inundated with emails, I will reply to urgent emails more quickly than to social emails.
Posted in Class Updates|By Jon Moss
October 28, 2014
Partial Quotients Support
OC Lesson 43
CC.4.NBT.6
Partial Quotients is a great way to learn division. It typically comes BEFORE learning the traditional method of long division, and it gets kids used to working with vertical division, as opposed to a horizontal equation. There can be slight differences in how different teachers introduce Partial Quotients, so I’m going to share with you a few different instructional videos that each take a slightly different approach to showing the process. This might create some confusion among students (for obvious reasons) so I encourage parents/family members to preview the videos and decide which one will best help their fourth grader, or to simply watch them themselves so they can consider using some of the different ideas when working on homework with their fourth grader.
Video 1 – Mr. Moss shows the methods introduced in class.
Coming soon!
Video 2 – This video shows a slightly different method. Instead of finding the partial quotients by doing smaller division problems, the teacher uses multiplication instead. This might “resonate” with some students more than my method, depending on how they think about math.
Posted in Learning Resources, Math, Unit 1|By Jon Moss