Week 24 February 25

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Posted by kavery508 | Posted in Uncategorized | Posted on February 25, 2019

RAA_Cat_n_Hat_Logo_Feb_2014lowresRead Across America Day is coming! This annual nationwide event is held the first week of March in honor of local author Dr. Suess’s birthday. School across the country will welcome community readers into classrooms to read aloud and share the importance of reading in their lives! This year’s theme book is Dr. Seuss’ Happy Birthday to You! which you can watch and read along to here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwnvgrJVSFw (source: Kids Play and Learn at Youtube.com).

As we continue our work with finding the main idea in nonfiction texts, students are taking ever more responsibility for finding keywords and creating statements that relate back to the heading and title. As an example, the picture below is from an online text (from Epican excellent source for student eBooks though not free). The words that are most important are owner, Mt. Vernon, and Martha. By stringing them together, we get the main idea of the page, e.g. “Washington became the owner of Mt. Vernon and lived there with his wife, Martha.” Helping kids focus in on the big idea is great to do whenever they read at home, too.

Our next area of study in math involves understanding and using money. Besides identifying coins/bills and their amounts, students should be able to combine various amounts of both. Consider this example:

money 2Notice how students can best solve this by starting with the larger amounts and using counting on/adding on. Students will also learn to write in dollars-and-cents notation ($1.25) and with words: one dollar twenty five cents. Students will also learn to compare 2 or more amounts of money. This can get tricky if students are still learning coin values and totaling. For example, 7 coins does not make an amount greater than 2 coins if we’re comparing 7 pennies and 2 quarters.

For help with homework, see the resources section of your child’s math homework folder where you will find a variety of pages on everything from coins and counting to vocabulary. If you’re following in the eBook, this is Chapter 11. Although many of us pay for things with cards instead of cash, be on the lookout for opportunities to teach your child to total amounts of coins and bills and to estimate 1) if there is enough to buy something and 2) about how much change is due!

Singing is a great way to memorize new skills! Readeez has put out a truly fantastic collection of learning songs. Here’s one of our favorites in class. You can find others (dimes, nickels, quarters, and much more) at Youtube.com and at the Readeez site.

weather graphWe have become experts at observing and identifying weather, clouds, and temperature these past two months to help us answer the question, How does weather change day to day and over time? As part of data collection and analysis, students will be evaluating graphs (pie chart, bar graph, area graph) to select the best format for presenting their data collected on daily temperature. They will then enter data and create their graphs using online software at http://nces.ed.gov/nceskids/createagraph/. Finally, they will analyze the data using graphs to look for trends and anomalies, and to draw conclusions. Try the graphing software yourself using any data from home (homework minutes each night; minutes spent getting ready for bed; etc.). The results are really cool!

Week 23 February 11

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Posted by kavery508 | Posted in Uncategorized | Posted on February 11, 2019

Our 100th day was filled with fun and learning! Thank you for helping your child create (and remember) a project to share–they were awesome and led to rich math conversations among partners all around the room.

Valentine’s Day is upon us! The 22 students will be exchanging valentines in class on Thursday. What a great way to celebrate our classroom community! Please no food attached to valentines–though a special snack from home for your child is always welcome.

 

Our writing focus this week is on Main Events in narrative. To write a good main event, the writer has to choose a small moment in time (1/2 hour tops) and elaborate by stretching out the action with details. Consider this event about winning a basketball game: I threw the ball. It went in the net. We won the game. A better narrative stretches it out: I grabbed the hard, orange ball with both hands. I was sweating from head to toe. Please go in, I thought to myself. I slammed the ball down twice and bent my knees… See how the second version puts you in the picture? Students will be writing this week using real events (videos of us at the Fall Hoedown; roller coaster POV vids) and fictional ones. Check out this ride below with your child. How can the action be stretched out, moment by moment?

MIF workbookThe focus of this week’s math is estimating by rounding up/down and using estimation as a way to check the reasonableness of sums/differences. These are VERY important skills that require students to develop and apply number sense as they think critically about math.

At first, students just need to learn and practice the basic skill of rounding to the nearest 10. Next, to check that a sum/difference is reasonable, they will learn to use estimates. Take this example: When solving 67 + 44, I can estimate the sum as 110 (67 rounds up to 70, plus 44 which rounds down to 40). My actual answer therefore needs to be close to 110 (no more than 10 away from the actual answer). If I get an answer of 111, my estimate shows that my answer is reasonable and I likely have it correct. However if my answer is, say, 121 then I better check my work because that answer is too large to be correct. The beauty of using estimates is that they push kids to think of the numbers involved by rounding them into 10s and 100s, which they can ‘hold in their heads’ much easier than numbers like 67 and 44.

Week 22 February 4

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Posted by kavery508 | Posted in Uncategorized | Posted on February 4, 2019

100 Day is almost here! The day is Wednesday, February 6 (apologies for incorrect date on earlier post). Students should plan to create some model of 100 and bring it in any day up to Wednesday. They will be sharing their projects and the related math to classmates on that day.

Our reading focus this week is on finding the Main Idea in nonfiction. To do this critical thinking, students are taught to read and think about the heading in a text. Then they look for a key sentence–one that contains the most important information in a paragraph. This is where the main idea lies, and it is the information they should remember. Try it with your child using this page (and any other) from the Time for Kids site: Famous FirstsThe 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.”

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.

A great way to practice mental math is to use the Greg Tang Math game Break Apart. Select addition or subtraction, hard or easy to play. Highly recommended!


At Friday’s School Meeting, students focused on mindfulness and mindful practices. Here’s a video we presented to the school on how to make it an everyday habit! 

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