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February 13, 2013
Valentine’s Day and Friendship Day
Tomorrow, on Thursday, we will celebrate Valentine’s Day here in school. Kids are encouraged to bring in Valentines for their friends (for EVERYONE in class, please, not selected friends) and to wear their nicest outfits. We will have some special treats in class, enjoy a Valentine’s Day story, and reveal the special word clouds we have been working on! There is also a special celebration during lunch, and a town meeting in the afternoon.
On Friday, the PGS Community Council is sponsoring Friendship Day. For a $1 donation, students are invited to dress up like a friend. Everyone will receive a friendship bracelet to give to a friend in class, and students have the option to purchase additional friendship bracelets to give to other friends or siblings for an additional $1 donation per bracelet. Proceeds will help us to purchase a friendship bench for the playground.
Looking for help with tonight’s homework? Scroll down to the next post!
Posted in Class Updates|By Jon Moss
February 11, 2013
Snow Day #6
Happy snow day, everyone! I hope you are enjoying the snow and are making plenty of snow angels, snowmen, and snowballs! Be safe outside; the sidewalks are mighty slippery! I found this video that I thought you’d find interesting. Someone connected a camera to their remote control “helicopter” and filmed the snowfall in their neighborhood. If you watch for a while, you can see a few shots with a shadow of the “helicopter” which lets you see what it looks like. Very cool! Have fun, everyone. No extra work today – just enjoy the day!
Posted in Class Updates|By Jon Moss
January 16, 2013
Happy snow day!
Good morning! Happy snow day, everyone! I hope you have a safe and fun day! Take a moment to log in with your username and password and leave a comment to this post telling us how you are spending your day! (Email me or message me if you forget how to log in.). I have also prepared a fun snow day writing activity for you. Just hop on down to the next post, below this one.
Posted in Class Updates|By Jon Moss
January 10, 2013
Good luck tonight!
I love coming to the concerts to see and hear the kids perform, but sadly I’m not able to attend tonight. I’ll be sure to watch the video, however! (Plus, rumor has it that another Room 209 “celebrity” will be making an appearance.) Break a leg, kids! (Ooh, another idiom for us to discuss as part of our figurative language unit!)
Tonight, there still is a bit of homework. Kids need to finish their figurative language worksheet, do three math problems on a worksheet, and study their spelling words and math facts. If the timing doesn’t work out because of the concert tonight, please remember that parents may send me a quick email or jot me a quick note, and I’ll gladly give an extension.
If your fourth grader (or you) need some help with the partial products homework, here is a video that I recorded last year to help with partial products. You may find that the video and audio don’t sync up well, oddly. I tried to reupload the video. At the time of me posting this update, the video is still processing, but if you periodically check this link, you might find that it becomes available later in the evening.
Posted in Class Updates, Homework Assignments, Learning Resources|By Jon Moss
January 9, 2013
Figurative Language, Resolutions, Multiplication
I hope 2013 is off to a good start for you all! I’ve made a simple resolution for myself: to stop writing 2012 every time I need to write the year. 🙂 It’s good to be back in school, and we’ve certainly hit the ground running! Before vacation, we worked quite a bit on writing summaries and making connections to text. We are taking a brief hiatus from these skills to work on figurative language. Figurative language falls under the umbrella of Author’s Craft and is a type of writing that helps to grab the reader’s interest and to “pull” him or her into the story. It helps the reader to imagine what is actually happening in the text. Before break, we worked with alliteration and hyperbole. Earlier this week, I introduced similes. The kids did a terrific job on the figurative language homework assignment this week, and I really enjoyed hearing and reading so many of their paragraphs! Last week, the students wrote New Year’s resolutions, which I hope to have on display for you next week. Coming up: onomatopoeia, personification, and idioms.
Last week, we started a new math unit that focuses on large numbers and multiplication. After reviewing place value, we worked on strategies to round and estimate sums and products involving larger numbers. One of our big concepts was that the way you round depends on your PURPOSE. Some purposes require more precision in rounding than others. For example, if you need a precise count of the number of people at a baseball game so that you can order prizes, perhaps you’ll need to round to the tens or hundreds place. On the other hand, if you are trying to estimate how many seats are in a baseball stadium, rounding to the nearest thousand may be good enough. We also talked about the idea of being a RESPONSIBLE estimator and that some methods of rounding may be technically accurate but might give misleading results. (For example, if I drove 41, 44, 49, 48, and 51 miles on each of the five days of the work week, I could round to the nearest hundred before adding the numbers up (0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 100) and get an “estimate” of 100 miles traveled. While mathematically sound, the estimate is highly inaccurate.
Now, we have moved on to different strategies for multiplication. I explained to the students that parents often prefer to teach the traditional method for multiplying numbers and that this can often appear to be at-odds with the Partial Products Method, which we use in class. But I reminded them that EITHER method will be acceptable, BUT that I want them to learn a variety of strategies so that they can make an informed choice about which strategy works best for the way they think.
Posted in Class Updates|By Jon Moss
December 4, 2012
How to Solve Our Problem
In class today, we talked a lot about some of the problems we have had in class with side conversations or other disruptions during lessons or work time. We reviewed our class constitution and talked about different ways in which everyone can help to make our class a learning environment in which everyone can focus and feel respected.
Please post a comment in which you explain how YOU (yourself) can help to make our class a successful learning environment. What will you do to help solve our problem? (You may have been doing this all along, or maybe it’s something new you will try to do. It doesn’t matter which – as long as we’re all working together.)
Tonight, I want you to focus on the GRAMMAR and PUNCTUATION of your responses in addition to (of course) the quality of your ideas.
Posted in Class Updates, Homework Assignments|By Jon Moss
November 13, 2012
Candle of Hope
This holiday season, Avon Teachers invite you to honor the special people in your life with a “Candle of Hope” by making a donation to Kids for Kids, Inc.
This active A.H.S. student group raises money to help fight childhood cancer. Proceeds will be donated to The UCONN Children’s Cancer Fund at C.C.M.C. in tribute to Avon Students Morgan Platt, Kam Rahman, and Robby Brisco.
For each $5.00 donation, you will receive a certificate and a votive candle to present to a special teacher, family member, or friend.
For more information, please download the flier and order form! Thank you!
Posted in Class Updates|By Jon Moss
November 13, 2012
Picture Retakes
Photo retakes will be THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 29th, from 9:00-10:30am in the cafeteria. Please call the school office with any questions.
Posted in Class Updates|By Jon Moss
November 12, 2012
Honoring our Veterans
In school today, we celebrated Veterans’ Day. We discussed how easy it is to enjoy a day off and to forget why we are enjoying the day off. Having a town meeting to pay tribute to our veterans gave us a special opportunity to recognize the true meaning of a holiday and to say thank you to people who have sacrificed a lot to help our country. I was so proud of our entire school community today!
For homework, please post a message that finishes the following sentence:
If I saw a veteran today, I would…
For the purposes of this assignment, don’t worry about strangers and not talking to strangers. (Imagine that the veteran is someone you know and that you’re allowed to talk to and interact with them.) Finish the sentence and explain what you would and would not do. Remember our “best practices!”
If you choose to comment on someone else’s post, keep your comments purposeful and thoughtful. Please – make no more than three replies total. (That means that you may post 4 messages in all: One original post and up to three replies.) This is to keep the number of website posts manageable for me as we get started in these online discussions.
Posted in Class Updates|By Jon Moss
November 7, 2012
Homework – Testing Your Login
We will soon start to use our website for class discussions in a SAFE online setting. We will discuss safe online habits AT LENGTH before beginning any activities online. Tonight, just test your login information:
- Click on the login link (top right of the screen).
- Your username is the school year code, a dash, and your class number. Such as 1213-23 (if you were student 23).
- Your password if your last name, all in lower case.
- Come back to this article, click on the comment link, and leave a simple comment like “Hi” or “Hello” or “I love snow!” NO NAMES AT ALL! NONE! ZIP! ZERO! ZILCH! NADA!
- If you have problems logging on, come see me tomorrow. NO PENALTY. But please TRY to login. You can also email me with problems.
Posted in Class Updates|By Jon Moss