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

We’re almost there! Just a couple more snowflakes and we’re reached our goal and earned our special day. I’m proud of these young scholars for demonstrating perseverance while acting as responsible members of our caring community.

On Wednesday, we will celebrate by acknowledging each other’s accomplishments; singing together; making crafts, reciting seasonal poetry; writing a main event with description to accompany Raymond Briggs’ The Snowman; and more! As a special reward for demonstrating good work habits and social skills, students are invited to wear pajamas to school Wednesday. Please keep in mind the following guidelines for appropriateness and safety:

1. Kids will be going outside, so dress for the weather: PJs with tops and bottoms are best. Sweats work equally well, or a combination of the two.
2. Sneakers or regular footwear are a must for coming to school/going home/recess. Kids are allowed (but not at all required) to pack slippers–but keep in mind they’ll be wearing them all over school, including the bathrooms!
3. Nightgowns are not recommended but if they are worn, leggings or shorts must be worn underneath.
4. Logos/pictures/captions on PJs are fine as long as they’re appropriate for school (e.g. sports, animals, Disney–nothing suggestive). Please contact me if you have questions regarding this.
5. No toys, stuffed animals, or accessories, please.

Thanks for your help with the above, and for the countless ways you support your child’s learning. These kids are so well cared for physically, emotionally, and academically and I’m proud to be sharing their journey with you. I wish you the happiest of holidays, and all the best in 2016!

We’re well on our way to earning enough points for our winter celebration on the 23rd! Thank you for your help checking in with your child regarding homework, and even driving it in when it was needed. Your commitment sends the message of the importance of homework and goes a long way to instilling the right kind of work ethic in your child. As a reminder, you can download a blank reading log from the links above if your child misplaces it.

Speaking of celebrating, this Friday the whole school will gather for our annual Holiday Sing-a-long. We’ll be singing and playing together with songs taught during music education. It’s always a heart-warming way to promote our school value of working together.

Our classroom is in need of several tubs of antibacterial wipes (e.g. Clorox; Lysol; germ killers–not baby wipes). Please send one in when you can, and thanks! I’m hunkering down for germ fighting this winter in our classroom.

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 continuous progress and can do it some of the time, or with help. 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, correct punctuation, and mostly correct spelling (including spelling words from quizzes). In math, they should have passed math facts level 7; they should be able to make sense of and solve problems in daily work and on tests; and they should be able to accurately add and subtract 3-digit numbers with regrouping.

 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, students will be taught the basics of division. Just like multiplication was all about adding equal groups, at this introductory level they should understand division as splitting things into equal groups. Think about that while looking at the picture below:

Notice how it calls for creating a given number of groups with a set number of objects in each group. One way to divide, therefore, is to minus groups of 4 from the whole. Hence, 12 – 4 – 4 – 4 = 0. Students will be taught to try out this strategy, as well as others like “dealing” out objects into groups like you would do with playing cards (one in this group, then one in that group; two in this group, and two in that group; etc.). On homework, students will be given pictures to use when solving problems, or else I will have drawn a model for students to continue drawing in order to solve the problem.

As always, feel free to reach out to me via email with homework problems after school. On next week’s blog I’ll present guidelines for pajama day, etc.!

I have started a marble jar in class for earning points toward a celebration before the holidays. I’m looking to encourage habits of mind and social skills, namely: 1) Get started on work right away and work the whole time  2) Cooperate with kids and adults  3) Return math and reading homework on time. Each day the kids will evaluate themselves with my help, and marbles will be added for each accomplishment, helping us reach our goal. Thank you for the wonderful work so many of you do to make sure #3 happens–it’s really making a difference in your child’s learning!

Our celebration will be on Wednesday, December 23rd. Kids in our class will be invited to wear pajamas at school (more on the details to come), and we will spend the day honoring each other’s accomplishments so far. In addition, we’ll have a winter sing-a-long, write a narrative to accompany Raymond Brigg’s The Snowman, and more!

This week we will wrap up our introduction to bar models. The big idea of bar modeling 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 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 the process for part 2. We’ll be using problems like this with increasing frequency in future.

After the test on Chapter 4, we’ll dive into multiplication. What’s important for kids to know is that multiplication means repeated addition of equal groups. Therefore they are encouraged to write and show their work using addition as well as by writing multiplication sentences. Remember you can access the student book anytime (via the Think Central link above) to see how the kids are being taught to understand math concepts.

We will spend the first part of this trimester learning the elements of narrative writing in greater depth than before. This week we will learn what good description sounds like and how to modify nouns with elaborative detail that puts the reader in the picture. Kids will create descriptive paragraphs that bring to life the jack-o-lanterns made on Fall Festival; a basketball game on the blacktop; and a winter setting. Consider the difference between these two descriptions: 1) My jack-o-lantern is orange. It has heart nose. It has two eyes.  2) I was surprised to see the tall, orange jack-o-lantern. Looking closely, I noticed a small, pink, heart-shaped nose. It was impossible to miss its sparkling blue eyes, like jewels. Elaboration is fun, though it can be hard for kids at first. Try playing games that encourage your child to make use of adjectives, such as them describing a favorite toy or holiday decoration while someone in the other room listens; asks questions to elicit description; and tries to guess what it is.

 In Social Studies, we apply our knowledge of scale, orientation, symbols, labels, and view when creating classroom maps. Check out the 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 (orientation). The view is an appropriate combination of map view and bird’s eye view, 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. At home, kids can create similar maps of places important to them, then bring them in to show us!

 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/