Seeking AAA Materials

Are you a member of AAA?  If so, can you help our grade?  I am trying to collect multiple copies of the AAA tour book guides (see photo) for northeast states.  Currently, AAA offers tour books in the following combinations:

• Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont
• Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island
• New York
• Delaware and New Jersey
• Pennsylvania
• District of Columbia and Maryland

If you are an AAA member, I would appreciate it if you could stop at the local AAA store to pick up your free (to members) copies of these six books for our fourth grade team.  Thank you so much!

If these are as valuable for students as I expect them to be, I might make similar requests of you in the coming months as we study other regions.  Thank you!

Posted in Class Updates|By Jon Moss

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Lucy the Elephant Information

My family sitting outside Lucy this past August.

Eager to learn more about Lucy?  Here are some websites or resources that you might find interesting!  “…But you don’t have to take my word for it…” -LeVar Burton, Reading Rainbow

• Lucy’s official website
• Lucy on Wikipedia
• Read about how Lucy survived Hurricane Sandy
• Weird NJ visits Lucy (There is a terrific video tour of Lucy, but there’s a little comical fighting, so get your parents’ permission first!)
• Lucy turned 132 years old this year!
• Scroll down on this website to zoom in on a satellite photo of Lucy, taken from space!
• An article about some money Lucy received for improvements.  (Do you spot a familiar name in this article?!)

Posted in Class Updates|By Jon Moss

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Destination Research

I was tremendously pleased with the kids’ mini-projects last week!  When the kids brought in their magazine advertisements for the Connecticut destinations they chose, I was immediately impressed with the time and detail that clearly went into their projects!  I loved seeing how each and every student took a unique approach to creating their advertisement.  The kids enjoyed having the chance to share their work in a “museum walk” (where one desk group at a time spread out around the classroom, and the rest of the class meandered around to listen to each student speak a bit about their work.)  This was a fun way of giving each student an opportunity to showcase his or her creativity, and it was clear to me that their understanding of their topics exceeded what they included in their advertisements.

This week, students have an assignment to conduct some very cursory research about three other destinations in the northeast.  You should have received a copy of the assignment today, but please let me reiterate the directions: This is not the same task as last week, multiplied by three.  Rather, the kids need to find three locations that seem interesting to them (that they may or may not have personal experience with) and write a very brief response about each one.  This will help to create a “jumping off point” for our next in-class project (which I hope to begin later this week or early next week.)

To help with brainstorming ideas for different destinations in less familiar states, here are a few websites that might help you and your fourth graders:

• Northeast Family Vacations (about.com)
• MommyPoppins (mommypoppins.com) – NY, NJ, CT, MA only
• Travel With Kids (about.com) – Not all northeast states included.
• 5 Fun Northeast Travel Ideas (TLC.com)
• 25 Northeast Getaways (nytimes.com)

As ALWAYS, I strongly encourage parents to supervise their kids when they use the internet.  Websites are never permanent, and it’s always possible that a site could be entirely kid-friendly one day and less-so another day.  (The best example tends to be legitimate news sites – I could link to a kid-friendly article at 5:00pm, and come 7:00pm, a breaking news banner might suddenly appear on the screen and share content that you’d rather not have your kids seeing.)  Plus, we all know easy it is to click on an advertisement that takes kids to another website, or to improperly type in a URL that takes the user to an unintended website.  I am providing these links to you as a possible resource, but since I am not the author of these sites, I cannot vouch for their ongoing accuracy or suitability.  Disclaimer over. 🙂

Posted in Class Updates|By Jon Moss

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State Riddles for Monday

Kids – Interested in a fun challenge?  Answer these two questions.  Feel free to get help!

1. What food is Maryland known for?
2. Connecticut is known for having the nation’s oldest, continuously operating ___________________.

Kids who come with the right answer will earn a CHANCE for each correct response.  This is optional, but fun (I hope)!

Posted in Class Updates|By Jon Moss

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The Value of Partnership

As much as I want students to learn from me, I absolutely want them to learn from one another.  Throughout the school year, you will see instances of me having students collaborate with one or more classmates for a variety of purposes including reading response, checking work, problem solving, and much more.  Kids often have a wonderful ability to explain concepts to one another in ways that are clear and understandable.  Partnerships are valuable to all students – in mixed-ability groupings (one of several ways that I form partnerships), strong students better understand material when they need to explain it to their peers, and students who may be struggling may feel more at-ease sitting with a trusted friend, not the teacher.  Plus, collaborative work teaches valuable life skills, including how to compromise, how to explain your reasons, and most importantly how to genuinely work together.  (This is always a challenge for fourth graders, as they often view “working together” as working side by side to each do the same work, or to divide the work in half.  In our class, “working together” should never be silent, and everyone should be equally involved in all parts of the task.)  Finally, collaboration has a key role in the “gradual release” model of instruction, in which learning shifts from being teacher led (when new skills are introduced), to small-group based (for practice), to independent application.

This week, students collaborated to identify the main problem in texts.  We started off by reading and discussing a story together (Melissa Parkington’s Beautiful, Beautiful Hair), and we wrote a shared response as a whole class.  Then, as partners, students read and wrote similar responses to the story The Josefina Story Quilt, which is one of my favorite books to use throughout the year.  (See photos, below.)  Today, we looked at our new Short Answer Response (SAR) rubric, and partnerships began to share their responses.  As a class, we looked at strengths and weaknesses of the responses, and we scored them together (so kids can begin to calibrate their understanding of how they are evaluated).  To do this successfully, kids need to have a certain level of respect and tact in their interaction with others, as well as an understanding that suggestions and constructive criticisms are not personal attacks.  So far, the kids are doing very well in this area, and I am eager to see them continue to grow in facilitated partnerships as the year progresses.

Posted in Class Updates|By Jon Moss

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