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

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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Binders and Dividers Needed

This afternoon, I am sending home a note asking families to send in a 1.5 inch binder to be used as a literacy notebook, and a pack of 8-tab page dividers.  Here are some of the choices I found at Staples.  (Click to see each image larger, along with the price.)  I recommend the $2.99 pack that you can write directly onto.  (It’s the top-left picture.)

Posted in Class Updates|By Jon Moss

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Last Call for Strings Registrations

If you weren’t able to attend the information session for the strings program and are still interested in having your fourth grader play an instrument, please register on the Avon Strings website:

http://avonstrings.weebly.com/beginning-string-informationregistration.html

Mr. Strick and Mrs. Johnston are outstanding strings teachers, and kids always enjoy being in their classes.  Please understand that strings lessons take place at different times throughout the day, and students who miss class content are responsible for making up work or instruction that they missed.

Posted in Class Updates|By Jon Moss

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Starting Academics, Remembering September 11th

Welcome to week 3, families!  This week, we are easing into academics as we finish up some of the “getting to know you” activities that we focused on in the previous weeks.  Although we started math today (which I will write about in a separate post), we started our writing and reading lessons even earlier.  In Readers’ Workshop, we have focused on fundamental reading habits, including how to read independently and how to use the class library.  Tomorrow, we will discuss how to choose books for ourselves (making use of the beloved books that the kids brought to school today), and we will quickly shift into reading skills instead of procedural habits.

Our first writing project is the “Summer Snapshot” project.  Students will choose one moment from the summer that they will describe in a paragraph.  (This is where their summer items come in.)  My lessons yesterday and today focused on how to choose one specific topic.  So often, students pick a broad topic to write about – such as “My vacation to Cape Cod” – that has so many elements to include that it would inevitably be either too lengthy (for a typical fourth grade activity) or (more likely) would lack in detail and would seem more like a list of activities.  By choosing a single moment on which students can “laser-focus” (quoting Apple’s Tim Cook), students can dedicate themselves to throughly describing the experience with detail and eloquence.

Today, we recognized the 12th anniversary of the September 11th attacks in our writing lesson.  I described my vivid memories of the specific moment when I first learned of the attacks.  Please know that our class discussion only generally covered the events of the day: merely that there were sad events that caused many people to lose their friends and loved ones in New York City.  I prefer to allow families to choose the depth of conversation they want to have about the events of September 11th.  Our conversation instead focused on being THANKFUL for those we have around us and on not “sweating the small stuff” in our daily lives.

Our year continues to a productive and enjoyable one, and I am eager to see what tomorrow will bring.  Families, your kids are TERRIFIC!  I am really having a great time with this class of kids! 🙂

Posted in Class Updates|By Jon Moss

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