Learning To Go Mr. Avery's Class on the Web 

Please note: Our blog will be taking a break for the holidays, and will return on January 5. In class, there will be no homework assigned nor math facts/spelling quizzes given on the week of December 22. I wish you all the very best this holiday season, plus safe journeys and a prosperous New Year!

 Our CAFE focus this week is on Inferring, which is a strategy we use all the time to help us understand what we’re reading. When we infer, we use our schema (what we already know about something) and combine it with clues from the text to understand something new. Consider these lines from Eloise Greenfield’s poem Things: Went to the beach/Played on the shore/Built me a sandhouse/Ain’t got it no more. My schema tells me that at the beach we build sandcastles, which is what she likely means, and sometimes the ocean comes and washes them away–that’s why the speaker “Ain’t got it no more.” Kids and grownups infer all the time in real life, for example: Snow is in the forecast. When the phone rings at 5:30 AM we can infer school will be delayed or cancelled! It’s smart to catch it when it happens and ask “How did you infer that? What were your clues?” Here is a site that, while designed for teachers, has lots of great info and links on inference: http://www.minds-in-bloom.com/2012/02/tips-for-teaching-inference.html

We’re finding the hardest part of narrative writing to be stretching out the main event; therefore, this will be the focus of writing instruction this week and next. The students are largely adept now at creating a beginning/middle/end to their life stories: I got the basketball. I threw it. I scored! What’s required next is for young writers to really slow down the action and toss in some specific word choice: I grabbed the basketball with both hands and dribbled it twice. I looked up at the net hanging above me. I aimed carefully and raised the ball above my head. I bent down, then jumped up high, throwing the ball as straight as I could. This kind of elaboration is necessary to produce writing of the caliber required by state standards in grades two and above.

In math, we have worked hard at problem solving that requires students to think deeply about problems and apply efficient models and strategies. I have created problems for this week’s homework that help direct students in their thinking. They are challenging, and are similar to problems being worked on in school. The cover sheet for each homework, Mon-Wed, is the same. It reviews how to make each kind of bar model correctly and suggests when to use each. Each problem on the next 2 pages require creating 2 correct bar models (including labels and numbers); using addition or subtraction to solve; checking the work with subtraction or addition; and writing the answer. We will wrap up this initial chapter on bar modeling this week and take the test on Chapter 4.

We will then begin Chapter 5, which is an introduction to multiplication and division. In case you’re following along in the student book at home, we will do the Chapter Opener beginning on p. 128. The book assumes our kids have prior knowledge on this stuff, but since we used a different program, I’m taking time this week to teach them the basics of multiplication (sets; equal groups; addition of groups as multiplication). I’ve added the Math in Focus “Think Central” link to the Parent Resources tab above. For directions how to use it to access the student edition ebook, refer to the green paper sent home last month, or refer back to my Week 13 blog post.

In science, students are learning the properties of air and how to prove it is there (it can fill a container/be captured; it is evident from the way stationary objects are moved/blown; it can be manipulated).

This week we will also learn that air can be compressed, and the resulting air pressure causes reactions. Here’s a link to our science program’s overview page for this unit: http://www.fossweb.com/delegate/ssi-wdf-ucm-webContent?dDocName=D980854

And here’s some awesome investigations you can do at home! http://www.superchargedscience.com/documents/Top%20Ten%20Air%20Pressure%20Experiments%20to%20Mystify%20Your%20Kids.pdf

 In Social Studies, we have been applying our knowledge of scale, orientation, symbols, labels, and view when making classroom maps. Check out the terrific example above! Notice how the places in the classroom are draw to relative scale, with the center of the room in the center of the map. The view is a bird’s eye view for the most part, and objects/places are symbolic (e.g. just a shape) and labeled. The compass rose is placed correctly to show position and is labeled, too. Students will be using their maps to hide a treasure and lead other students to it by writing a list of directions from one place to another using cardinal directions. The kids are totally getting this! Try doing the same by making maps of places at home!

You’re invited! Our class will be performing songs and poems with a Winter Theme in the cafeteria on Friday, December 19, at 9:30 (snow date: Monday, December 22, 9:30). We will remain in the space after, for photo opps and congratulations. <”) Please come: family and friends welcome! This is our Winter Celebration, and takes the place of a class party. Per district recommendations, please do not send in food or drink to share, though you are of course welcome to send in something special, nut free, for your child to enjoy at snack time.

Report cards will be coming home next week! A few notes about grading: Gone are the days of letter grades, and the system in place now works a little differently. A “3” is Achieving the standard, and that is similar to an “A” grade. A “2” means students are making progress and are not independently there yet. A “4” is rare: it means students are working a grade level above grade 2 benchmarks. A “1” is even rarer: should any student have been heading there, we would have communicated it well before now (and no one is)!

To be achieving on this term’s report card, students should be reading on level 20 and reading fluently while comprehending text on whatever level they may be at. In writing they should be able to write complete sentences; to show evidence of writing opinion and informative pieces; to tell a story about one event from their lives with a beginning, middle, and end in a clear manner; and to write with spaces, correct upper/lowercase letters and correct punctuation. In math they should have passed level 10 math facts on quizzes; shown the ability to add and subtract 3 digit numbers with and without regrouping; and shown how to correctly model addition and subtraction stories (parts-and-total; base ten diagram; bar models).

A note about the report card: I have discovered that the math descriptors I shared at conferences are close but in a few cases dissimilar to the final printing. The main difference is that students will not be scored on reading the calendar or on skip counting. I have tried unsuccessfully to update the report card link on our blog; this link should take you there, or you can access it via the Shrewsbury Public Schools link under the Teaching and Learning tab: http://schools.shrewsbury-ma.gov/egov/docs/1415385240_711547.pdf

This week our math work is all about problem solving, as you will see by looking over our homework. The big idea is for students to think logically and deeply about problems and to create bar models that a) help to organize information,  b) help to make sense of the problem, and c) help to solve the problem. What’s different this week is that many of the problems will have more than one step needed to get to the answer. Consider this problem from the MIF student book:

Notice how each step of the problem is broken down, modeled, and solved in a logical order. Kids should be doing the same when encountering multi-step problems like this: reading, thinking, modeling part 1, then repeating for part 2. Notice too the box for checking work. It is intended for checking answers a few different ways instead of just performing one inverse operation.

It is expected we will wrap up and take the test on Chapter 4 this week (things can change based on the needs of groups of students). As before, I will score and send home the “Chapter Review/Test” whenever we take it.

In writing, we will be pursuing effective main events by writing about a recess time on the blacktop. Personal Narratives have proven challenging for many students, and rightly so: they require the most effort and originality. We will continue to focus on them for several weeks. We have also been learning to write in friendly letter format, writing compliments to students on their birthdays! In addition, we have continued our study of poetry by learning terms and analyzing quality works. This week we learn about the heart of poetry, metaphor. Soon students will be writing great poems of their own–can’t wait!

 Our science work with Air and Weather continues this week as well. Using a variety of objects (bicycle pumps; straws; balloons; feathers; water; vials; and more), students will be investigating what air is, what air can do (e.g. how it can be manipulated, how the force of wind causes reactions), how to prove air is there and takes up space, and what air pressure is.

 You’re invited! Our class will be performing songs and poems with a Winter Theme in the cafeteria on Friday, December 19, at 9:30 (snow date: Monday, December 22, 9:30). We will remain in the space after, for photo-opps and congratulations. <”) Please come: family and friends welcome! This is our Winter Celebration, and takes the place of a class party. Per district recommendations, please do not send in food or drink to share, though you are of course welcome to send in something special, nut free, for your child to enjoy at snack time.

I hope you had a fantastic Thanksgiving break, everyone! My trial wrapped up, and then I had time to spend with friends and family and to recharge. I was indeed thankful! Onward into term 2…

Our reading focus is on learning to use nonfiction text features to make sense of informative texts. Think about a magazine article you’ve recently seen. As accomplished readers, we never just dive in and hope we understand by the end of it; yet, that’s often what kids will do. Instead, we read and think about the title, headings and subheadings, pictures, diagrams, captions, maps, and all the other things that make concepts more comprehensible, all while relating them back to the main idea. This week we will learn many of these features, go hunting for them in text, and use them to improve comprehension. This Reading Mama’s blog puts it well (and is a good source for learning many elements of reading): http://thisreadingmama.com/comprehension/non-fiction/non-fiction-text-structure/

And you can practice using nonfiction text features to improve comprehension with your child by using magazines, websites, informational books, and at http://kids.nationalgeographic.com.

In writing, we’ll be applying our knowledge of “choosing the seed” (best small moment), entertaining beginnings, and main events as we write about our individual Thanksgiving holidays.

 

 Our thorough examination of bar modeling is paying off! Students are becoming adept at relating them to parts-and-total problems, using them to make sense of problems, and understanding numbers involved by drawing them bars with appropriate scale. This week we are learning to use bar models to make sense of comparison problems. The model looks different from before because our thinking about solving the problem should be different. For example, consider this problem:

Notice how setting up the model this way shows understanding of what “more than” means. Using our knowledge of the parts-and-total bar model previously taught, it makes it easy for kids to see that what is required to solve this problem is addition. See how helpful a tool bar modeling is?

 In social studies, we are improving our knowledge of map skills by exploring the concept of symbols and map keys. We will then apply this knowledge, along with considerations of orientation, scale, direction, and view, as we create maps of our recess blacktop.

 Our science focus this term is on earth science, specifically weather. Our guiding questions: What is weather, and how does it affect the earth and us? How can weather be measured? How does recognizing patterns in weather help us predict it? How does the sun affect weather and the earth? We will begin by evaluating methods for recording temperature and learning to read a variety of thermometers. Here’s a link to the FOSS weather unit page, used by teachers in the district: http://lhsfoss.org/scope/folio/html/AirandWeather/1.html. A quick web search will present you with lots of kid-friendly sites such as these, which we will use in class: http://eo.ucar.edu/webweather/

http://www.weatherwizkids.com/

You’re invited! Our class will be performing songs and poems with a Winter Theme in the cafeteria on Friday, December 19, at 9:30 (snow date: Monday, December 22, 9:30). We will remain in the space after, for photo opps and congratulations. <”) Please come: family and friends welcome! This is our Winter Celebration, and takes the place of a class party. Per district recommendations, please do not send in food or drink to share, though you are of course welcome to send in something special, nut free, for your child to enjoy at snack time.