Week 16 December 19

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Posted by kavery508 | Posted in Uncategorized | Posted on December 19, 2016

We’re almost there! Just a couple more snowflakes and we’ve reached our goal and earned our special day. As a special reward for demonstrating good work habits, students are invited to wear pajamas to school Friday. 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 (not required) to bring 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. No toys, stuffed animals, or accessories, please.

On Friday, we will celebrate by making crafts, reciting seasonal poetry; writing a main event with description to accompany Raymond Briggs’ The Snowman; singing together at an all-school sing-a-long; and more!  Thanks 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 2017!

MIF workbookIn math this week, students will be taught x5 math facts by counting objects; skip counting on fingers; and using dot paper, which shows arrays.

A note about arrays: Arrays are rectangular arrangements of objects like the dots in the picture above. For our purposes, we always count the number of rows first and multiply that by the number of things in each row (columns). In this example, we are looking at a 4 x 2 array (read ‘4 by 2’), the total of which is 8. We can also turn the array on its side like this:

multiplication array 2This is a 2 x 4 array, with the same total as 4 x 2. We use these rotating arrays to teach students the commutative property of multiplication. If we know 4 x 2 = 8, then we immediately know that 2 x 4 = 8. There is no need to do the math a second time, and now we’ve learned 2 math facts at once.

And as a fun way to combine skip counting with math facts, we’ll be playing along with this old favorite!


air-has-weightAs part of our study of weather, students began investigating what air can do and what we can do with air. The kids concluded: You can trap air; You can use air to move things; You can make wind with air; You can use air, including suction, to control the directions of objects; You can control the direction of air; Air has weight. They then designed an experiment–on their own!–to test this last claim by weighing balloons with and without air. Last, they were taught to make careful observations; analyze their data; and draw conclusions based on their initial claim. Cool!

 

air14 air15 air16 air18 air19 air20

Week 15 December 12

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Posted by kavery508 | Posted in Uncategorized | Posted on December 13, 2016

report cardReport cards will be coming home next week. A few notes about grading: Gone are the days of letter grades, and the system 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 20K, 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. In math, they should have passed math facts level 10; 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.

cafeboardOur reading focus this week is on Finding the Theme and Author’s Message. A reading theme is a big idea that we encounter again and again in literature, such as bravery or honesty or perseverance. The author’s message, on the other hand, is the moral of the story. We find evidence of it by looking at what the main character(s) learned, usually through failure. In The Gingerbread Man, for example, the theme is boastfulness. It’s a broad idea we find in many books, movies, and songs. The lesson to be learned (author’s message) is Don’t brag about yourself to others. We know this because when he did that, he came to a bad end. In any case, notice how looking at stories this way helps children to think deeply and critically about text, which is a big goal of reading instruction! You can try it at home with your young reader using any fiction story, and of course Aesop’s Fables are a great resource for finding the moral of the story. Here’s a great online collection from the Library of Congress!

aesops

 

narrative writing diamond Adding description to narrative writing helps it come alive. Here are some great examples from this week’s work describing jack-o-lanterns made at Fall Festival from 1) Melanie 2) Vinnie 3) Teagan and 4) Destiny: 1) It was impossible to miss its spiky nose with a hole in the middle. I enjoyed the feel of its orange soft pompoms with pink and purple flowers. 2) When I ran my hands along its sides, they felt soft and smooth. I couldn’t help but notice its big, bald head! 3) Gazing closely, I saw brown and gld freckles on the pumpkin’s cheeks. I felt the smooth, pink button nose. 4) Its mouth was green and small and shaped like a spider! I enjoyed the feel of its purple and yellow fluffy boots.  Fantastic!

dot paper
Chapter 6 of MIF focuses on learning multiplication facts of 2s, 5s, and 10s by teaching the connection between skip-counting and multiplication, and using that understanding to solve problems. To solve 8 x 2, for example, we want students to count by 2 eight times. It is a way of learning the meaning behind the numbers involved in multiplication instead of just memorizing facts (which has value, too, just not on its own). One way we teach this is to have students count pairs of objects. Next is counting on fingers while counting aloud by 2 (1 finger up gives you 2, or 1 x 2; etc.). Students will then be introduced to dot paper, which for this chapter shows arrays of 2s, 5s, or 10s. The example below shows 4 x 2. On homework, students should use dot paper by counting down the rows by 2s, then naming how many rows they counted. In this example, they should say “2, 4, 6, 8; I counted 4 times; 4 times 2 is 8.”

dot paper2See the homework resource folder for examples of each kind of dot paper that can be used at homework time!

 

 

Week 14 December 5

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Posted by kavery508 | Posted in Uncategorized | Posted on December 5, 2016

This Tuesday marks our first Early Release Day! Teachers will be engaging in Professional Development across the district. I’ll be meeting in consultation with school psychologists to plan and personalize a “Regulation Station” in our classroom to empower students to center, calm, and focus their attention. Note: There is no lunch period on Early Release Days. However, we will have a snack break at 11:30 since kids are used to eating at that time of day. Of course, it’s up to you whether you’d like your child to eat something then or wait till s/he gets home!
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I have started a snowflake jar (like a marble jar) in class for earning points toward a celebration before the holidays. I’m looking to encourage habits of mind, especially good collaboration skills and self-regulation. Each day the kids will evaluate themselves with my help, and snowflakes will be added for each accomplishment, helping us reach our goal.

Our celebration will be on Friday, December 23rd. Kids 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 with the whole school; create a working craft to help measure weather at home this winter; write a narrative to accompany Raymond Brigg’s The Snowman; and more!

MIF workbookIn math this week, 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:

division1
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.). Like with multiplication, there is no expectation that kids work without objects or pictures to perform operations.

NarrativeDiamondOur narrative writing is progressing nicely! Notice the great sense of author’s voice and detail in these recent pieces from 1) Martin; 2) Oliver; 3) Prisha; and 4) Naomi: 1) Me and my friends ran outside at night trick-or-treating. We dashed out of the house. Whoosh! I jumped in the air and…boom! I landed on the patio. Ding dong! I rang the doorbell. 2) I grabbed my poles in one hand and jumped off the ski lift car. I was at the top of Sugarloaf Mountain about to fly down it. My mom said “Go ahead!” I took a deep breath and…ZOOM! 3) I rushed to put on my coat and went outside the door. I saw colorful leaves on trees and I heard the cool breeze. A lovely autumn day was coming up. So I dashed toward Dad as he was finishing his leaf pile. I decided to sneak up on him and surprise him! 4)  I clapped hands with my partner as I stepped forward with my brown boots, then stepped back and clapped my own hands together three times. Then the person in front of me glided down the floor with her partner. Awesome!

We will spend the first part of this trimester learning the elements of narrative writing in greater depth than before. This week we will review 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.

weather 1 Our science focus this term is on research design! In lots of hands-on lessons, students will learn to: ask questions and make claims; design investigations to test them; collect and analyze data; and draw conclusions. As a central theme, we will focus on earth science, specifically weather. This week, students will engage in observations and investigations designed to get them thinking and wondering about air and water. 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. And 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/

Here’s us in action, working with equal groups and writing multiplication sentences:

multip5 multip6 multip7 multip8 multip9 multip10

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