Week 21 January 29

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Posted by kavery508 | Posted in Uncategorized | Posted on January 29, 2018

halfWe’re halfway to the end of the year! This is a good time to reflect on our journey, and to thank you for your efforts as partners in your child’s education. It’s remarkable how much growth the kids have shown, from learning skills and critical thinking to their growth as caring members of our learning community. To foster self-reflection, try asking your child to compare how s/he is different now from the start of the year. What things can s/he do now that s/he couldn’t before? What things does s/he still want to learn (goals) and how do they think they can they get there?

The winter doldrums are upon us! In an effort to boost student morale and improve their rate of homework completion, I’m offering students the reward of Lunch and a Movie on Fridays in February. Students will buy or bring lunch as usual, and we will watch a video until recess time. Students must bring back their completed reading homework logs on Friday morning, including parent signature, to participate. If your child has had a low return rate, this indicates they are going to need your help to get this important habit fully into their “muscle memory.”

Of course, this means the 100th day of school is two weeks away (at this time, Friday, Feb. 9)!  I will set up a “100 Day Museum” to show off student projects and learning. I encourage children to create a poster/collection/display/etc. that somehow represents 100. Instead of simply collecting 100 things in a bag, I’m challenging students to think more deeply about number. They could bring/show something that displays an understanding of number, patterns, and/or the math we’ve done so far, such as:

  • grouping objects (stickers/pennies/etc.)  on a poster that shows counting (and/or multiplying) by 5s, 10s, 2s, etc., with accompanying multiplication or repeated addition sentences
  • bar models using the number 100
  • create real-world problems with 100

Click here and scroll down for a look at the creative ways that one class took on this challenge. There is also a plethora of projects and ideas on Google and Pinterest and across the web!

heartsValentine’s Day is coming! We will exchange valentines in class on Wednesday, 2/14. If your child brings valentines in for classmates, please be sure there is one for everyone. There are currently 23 students in our class. Refer to our class list sent home if your child wishes to personalize valentines with names. Of course, hand-made ones are welcome as well as store-bought! Please be sure no food (including candy) is attached per our district policy, and thanks!

Our work with Opinion writing is paying off! Students are being taught to state reasons for opinions and follow up with explanations. This is the foundation for paragraph organization. Check out these examples on the topic “Why kids should not have homework on the weekend”  from 1) Brady, 2) Matthew, and 3) Berlin: 1) One reason is, kids sometimes have sport play dates like basketball. You need to get your gear and go to practice so you don’t have time to do homework. 2) Plus, if you have somewhere to go, you can’t go. Like if they have to play sports they can’t do them because they have homework. 3) Finally, it may be a holiday. Kids shouldn’t have homework on a day you spend time with your family. Fantastic!

The next chapter we will take on in Math In Focus is Chapter 10. If you are following along in the eBook, this is the first chapter in Book B.  This chapter sees a return to mental math strategies. The goal here is to make students ever more fluent with numbers by using their understanding of numbers and patterns to compute in their heads. This is where our hard work with place value, number sense, and math facts pays off! Here is the addition strategies we will focus on this week:

1. Add multiples of 1s, 10s, or 100s when you can:

a. 354 + 3    Just add the ones; nothing else needs to change.

b. 354 + 30   Just count up by 10s…364, 374, 384  or  Use math facts: 5 + 3 is 8, so 50 + 30 is 80–nothing else changes but the 10s place.

c. 354 + 300   Just count by 100 three times…454, 554, 654.  or   Use math facts: 3 + 3 = 6 so 300 + 300 = 600.

 

Week 20 January 22

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Posted by kavery508 | Posted in Uncategorized | Posted on January 22, 2018

The Great Kindness Challenge is on! In a joint effort with schools around the country, Floral St. is encouraging students to participate in this event by completing as many acts of kindness as they can using a recommended checklist as a guide. The checklist will come on Monday. Students are encouraged to check off items they have completed each day until this Friday. I will explain how they can complete the items recommended for school, and I will leave time during each day for them to check them off. Please return the checklist each morning so I can help students manage the list. I’m looking forward to an awesome week!

The Olympics are coming! I love everything about the games–not least because they offer kids the opportunity to research local athletes who will represent our country in Pyeongchang; explore maps from participating countries; learn about the Olympics from a historical perspective; and collect and analyze data related to medals awarded. We’ll  be doing all this and more! You can share the learning with your child by visiting the Team USA website, where you will find info on the athletes–Massachusetts is particularly well-represented, especially in hockey! Additional info, including photos and videos can be found at the official Olympics website.

This week we will use scientific investigation to answer these questions: Do all liquids evaporate like water? If not, can water evaporate out? What then is left behind? We will use water as a baseline and compare it to solutions of salt water and water with food coloring. Here’s a link showing how to do one such investigation at home: http://www.shirleys-preschool-activities.com/salt-solution-experiment.html. I encourage you to try other solutions (e.g. water and ???) and send us your results!

Week 19 January 15

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Posted by kavery508 | Posted in Uncategorized | Posted on January 15, 2018

Shrewsbury firefighters were present throughout our school last week, leading lessons on fire safety and prevention! Their commitment to our town and its kids was evident in their presentation and interaction during a special school meeting our class attended on Friday. Many thanks for all they do!

cafeboard This week’s new comprehension strategy is predicting. Always, the #1 thing we want students to do when they read for meaning is to think about the text. When we do that, we can’t help but make predictions–predictions about where a story is going next; predictions about what language or vocabulary we will likely encounter next; predictions about answers to our questions that arise when we read. Equally important is to check our predictions, or guesses, as we read on, and adjust our thinking accordingly. It’s what helps us learn new things and it makes us engage with text, building our lifelong learning skills. Here’s a short article on predicting with ideas for making connections to science at home: http://www.readingrockets.org/article/making-predictions

This week’s math introduces students to a new concept in measurement: the broken ruler. Check out the example above. Here, students are being taught to develop an understanding of length that goes beyond lining up a ruler at “0” and reading the number at the end. You will see examples of it on this week’s homework. Students need to count the centimeters when measuring and comparing in order to understand what the numbers involved mean in terms of length. We will also be learning to represent lengths using bar models. For a reminder, see the bar modeling section of the homework packet from chapter 4.

As we continue our exploration of weather, students will conduct daily observations of temperature, clouds, and weather type over the next month. We will then analyze the data, look for trends, evaluate methods for presenting data (e.g. bar graphs vs. pie charts for example), and draw conclusions of winter weather in Shrewsbury. In addition, this week we will conduct a further investigation into evaporation designed to test the idea that all liquids evaporate the same way that water does. We will also learn to identify cloud types and use that to predict the weather. Weather Wiz Kids  is a fantastic site for learning more about and all things weather. And here’s a  favorite, Bill Nye the Science Guy, teaching about how clouds are formed.

Week 18 January 8

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Posted by kavery508 | Posted in Uncategorized | Posted on January 8, 2018

Well that was a short week! I hope you’re faring well in this cold and snowy winter. Monday we will take our math fact quiz from last week, and we’ll take another this Friday.

 This week we revisit Author’s Message with the purpose of developing critical thinking skills at a deeper level. We will learn common Themes from children’s literature (lessons like Believe in yourself; Always tell the truth; etc.) and apply them using fiction texts. Then we will learn to read closely and find evidence from the text to support our claims, and compare themes within and among texts. When your child uses a piece of fiction for reading homework, ask him/her to think about the themes that emerge over several pages or chapters of a book. And Scholastichas some great ideas on finding themes in books, movies, and songs at home:http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/top_teaching/2011/02/helping-students-grasp-themes-in-literature  

fact and opinionOur writing focus switches back to opinion writing. The eventual goal on the road to college and career readiness is for students to synthesize knowledge and present arguments that are supported with evidence. At this time, our kids are learning to write an introductory sentence on a topic; state an opinion; list 3 reasons that support it; write 1 or more explanations for each reason; and write a concluding sentence. Students will begin by writing opinions on any topic, then research and write opinion pieces on famous Americans. Speaking of which…

Our Term 2 Social Studies focus is on learning character traits and applying that knowledge to understand famous U.S. and world figures and their contributions. What makes these historical leaders worth remembering? How did Lincoln’s honesty, Cesar Chavez’ determination, Harriet Tubman’s bravery, and Susan B. Anthony’s patriotism affect the lives of others and forever change our understanding of America? These are the kinds of questions we will attempt to answer by analyzing biographical texts and media.

This week, we will analyze the life and achievements of Martin Luther King, Jr. (MLK) and learn to assign character traits to him based on evidence from biographical texts and video. Check out this great video from Brainpop (an awesome and highly engaging resource that I use a lot!) and keep the learning going at home: https://www.brainpop.com/socialstudies/ushistory/martinlutherkingjr/. Then consider these traits: determined; hardworking; patriotic; creative; honest; responsible; brave. Which words best apply to MLK? What is your evidence?

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This week we begin chapter 7 of Math in Focus, the goal of which is to make students proficient with linear measurement (especially meters and centimeters). To begin, students will learn the importance of standard units of measurement and be introduced to content-specific vocabulary (width; height; length; meter; etc.). They will next develop a sense of how big meters and centimeters are. Then they will learn correct methods for estimating and accurately measuring and talking about measurement (more than, less than, about, exactly). And as always, they will be asked to solve real-world problems that require analysis and application of skills learned. Consider the following problem from this week’s lessons. Notice how it requires students to think about space, length, multiplication/repeated addition, and subtraction to solve it:

Week 17 January 2

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Posted by kavery508 | Posted in Uncategorized | Posted on January 1, 2018

New Year's FireworksCreative Commons License James Mann via Compfight

Happy New Year! I hope your holidays were filled with joy (and warmth!). I spent mine visiting with family members from far away, catching up with friends, and yes, whittling away at the old work pile. Onward into the 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

Having learned strategies for multiplying 2s and 5s (skip counting; finger counting; dot paper), we now apply them to multiplying 10s. In addition, we will review the commutative property (e.g. 10 x 2 = 2 x 10) while stressing the need to model these correctly when solving problems. We will then learn to use multiplication of 2s (repeated addition of groups of 2) to learn odd and even numbers. Students will be taught to group objects by 2s and if there is none left  over then it is even; otherwise it is odd. Likewise, if you can split a group cleanly in half with no leftovers, that also means it is an even number. Learning it like this helps students to understand the nature of odd and even as opposed to only applying tricks (e.g. it’s even if it ends with 0, 2, 4, etc.).

As we continue our exploration of weather, students will conduct daily observations of temperature, clouds, and weather type over the next month. We will then analyze the data, look for trends, evaluate methods for presenting data (e.g. bar graphs vs. pie charts for example), and draw conclusions of winter weather in Shrewsbury. In addition, this week we will conduct an investigation around evaporation to answer the question “Where does the water go?”. We will also learn to identify cloud types and use that to predict the weather. Weather Wiz Kids  is a fantastic site for learning more about and all things weather. And here’s a  favorite, Bill Nye the Science Guy, teaching about how clouds are formed.

Here’s our superintendent, Dr. Sawyer, and representatives of the Shrewsbury Education Foundation informing us of my award–I was surprised and honored!

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