Viewing: Class Updates
August 18, 2015
Welcome to our class!
Hello! Welcome to the online home of PGS Room 209. During the school year, I will update this web site regularly with information about activities happening in Room 209, bulletins and news items, current events related to what we’re studying in social studies, online assignments, and much more.
About Me
I graduated from the University of Rhode Island summa cum laude in 2004 and have a degree in Elementary Education and Psychology. I also have a Masters Degree in Educational Technology at Central Connecticut State University‘s Center for Innovation in Teaching and Technology. In addition to my teaching role at Pine Grove School, I am our school’s lead educational technology teacher and work to help teachers integrate technology into their teaching in meaningful and valuable ways.
This will be my 12th year teaching at Pine Grove School. I taught third grade at PGS for five years before moving to fourth grade. While at URI, I taught grades 3, 4, and 5. I have also taught kindergarten, first, and second grade summer school, and I have interned with an elementary school principal in East Hartford. I have a background in experimental research in the field of social psychology, so you’ll probably see my interest in research and statistics come through this year during math lessons!
This fall, I am excited to welcome Mr. Brendan Walmer to our classroom. Mr. Walmer is a senior-year education student at Central Connecticut State University and will be completing his student teaching experience in our classroom.
Click “more” to learn more about me and about our classroom!
Posted in Class Updates|By Jon Moss
June 11, 2015
What’s New?
I was speaking with someone yesterday, and we got to talking about our class website. I realized that it had been quite some time since I posted an update for you! I apoglize for that oversight. The end of the year is notoriously busy, and this fell by the wayside. If you’ll share a few minutes of your time, I’ll bring you up to speed!
This week, students finished presenting their TUSS projects! I was so very impressed by the kids’ work. This year, there was such a wide variety of research topics, and kids used so many different kinds of methods. I really admire the thought and care kids put into their projects. Stay tuned for feedback.
This week, we’re wrapping up our unit about expository writing. This unit integrated our social studies focus of US regions by allowing students to research and organize information about the economy of a midwestern state. Students conducted research on the internet and in books, and they organized their information on a graphic organizer called an expository pillar. In doing so, students learned about thesis statements, how to structure main ideas and supporting details within a five paragraph essay, and how to craft a conclusion. This organization made the process of drafting the essay very simple!
We’ve recently completed our unit about measurement (focusing more on understanding different units of measurement, as opposed to actually measuring objects with rulers and scales) as well as a mini-unit about geometry.
Stay tuned for more information!
Posted in Class Updates|By Jon Moss
April 24, 2015
Change to SBAC Schedule
I will be out Monday morning, so our class will start SBAC testing on TUESDAY next week. There will be no SBAC test on Monday. We will catch up with the other fourth grade classes on Wednesday, when we have some flexibility in scheduling. Please understand that this change in schedule affects ONLY our class, not the other gr. 4 classes.
Posted in Class Updates|By Jon Moss
April 23, 2015
Teach Us Something, Somehow
I’ve really enjoyed reading the kids’ idea proposal forms for the Teach Us Something, Somehow project! This is a project that is near and dear to my heart, and seeing the kids’ terrific, creative ideas is wonderful. I developed the project back in 2011 as a way to motivate students to excel in research. So often, we prescribe a topic or a method to students, and the outcome might be a lackluster interest in the project. My logic was that if students have near autonomy to choose a topic and a method of presentation, they can’t help but have a substantial interest in their project. Hopefully this is the case for your children! As the project continues, please be in touch with me if you have questions or experience challenges. I’m happy to help! Thank you to the families that attended the TUSS parent session on Tuesday! For more resources throughout the TUSS project, visit the TUSS webpage.
Most of the proposal forms have been approved and will be returned to students tomorrow or Monday. Kids are welcome to begin working on the project as soon as I’ve approved their proposal, whether it’s been returned to students or not. This is the fun part, and I hope you enjoy it! 🙂
Posted in Class Updates|By Jon Moss
April 22, 2015
New Method for Spelling Assessments
In order to streamline the process of giving and scoring spelling assessments on Fridays, I’ve started having students complete their assessments online. This allows students to complete the tests at an individual pace, hear words repeated as needed, etc. I can also get an instant score report. Unfortunately, there is no way to email reports, so I cannot “push” a copy to parent inboxes. Knowing that parents will want to see their children’s spelling results, we have started saving the score reports to a folder in each student’s Google Drive. Your fourth grader should be able to show them to you on-demand. So far, this process has gone very well!
Posted in Class Updates|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 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