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

Thanksgiving Week Changes: There will be no math and reading homework next week, and this blog will take a holiday break too. There will be 2 optional challenge pages as usual, for kids wanting to keep exploring math skills. I hope you and your family have much to be thankful for this year, and I wish you the happiest of holidays!

Our CAFE focus this week is on summarizing by analyzing a character’s feelings. Reading is comprehending, and understanding the feelings of a main character helps us identify his/her motivation and reactions. We look to these as clues to determining the important parts in the story. Students will learn to summarize with familiar read-alouds and to apply it in their independent reading.

Our work with 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.

The same can be said of using modeling to make sense of “less than” problems:

Students who set up the problem correctly can immediately see that Susan’s amount is smaller than Rosa’s, and that subtraction is called for to solve it. Like a parts-and-total frame, we subtract the part (157) from the total (824) to get the remaining part. See how helpful a tool bar modeling is?

 

Steve Baker via Compfight

Happy Veteran’s Day! A big shout out to all the vets who have given us much to be thankful for. In class, kids have been learning about this day via videos and informative texts with a focus on asking and answering questions while reading!

I look forward to our meeting this Tuesday! If you still need an appointment, please contact me. I will share with you your child’s reading assessment, math tests, and writing samples, and I’ll discuss progress being made in those areas along with successes and any learning targets. Admittedly, our time is brief! Think of this as another step in our yearlong discussion of your child’s education, and know that I remain available for further communication.

Rotary Readers are coming! In an effort to promote literacy across the town, Members of the Shrewsbury Rotary Club will visit next Monday and read to second graders using engaging picture books that they donate to each classroom’s library! We are grateful for the organization’s good works.

Our reading focus this week is on the comprehension strategy, Retell a Story. When students can name important characters, setting, problem, events, and ending in a story, it shows they understand what is important to know. At homework time, try asking your child to tell you any or all of the above to see if they were reading purposefully! A helpful meme for this kind of summary is called The 5 Finger Retell. It’s outlined and explained in this blog post from Reading Mentors: 5 Finger Retell. 

This week we begin a very important math unit. Chapter 4 focuses on bar models and using them to solve number problems and work algebraically. This way of doing math is extremely useful, and will benefit students greatly in the future when they apply it to multiplication, division,  fractions, measurement, and more!  As an example, consider the picture below as a way to model this problem: Jim is planning Thanksgiving dinner for 21 people. 15 people will be having turkey, and the rest are vegetarians. How many people will Jim plan a vegetarian meal for?

For students, setting this problem up can be tricky. We’ve learned to use parts and total boxes to model algebraic thinking: bar models are an even more explicit way to show our thinking about problems, one that helps us make sense of the numbers involved. Notice how the bars are drawn to scale in comparison to each other. This skill really requires students to understand the relative size of the numbers involved.

We’ll learn to use a different bar model for Parts-and-Totals, and for Comparison problems. Your Math Homework folder has a full explanation of the different kinds of bar models, to help if kids get stuck!

In science, students are learning to ask questions, use models, and observe changes as part of our study of erosion. Here are some pictures of us studying how canyons are formed:

The Floral Family Fun Fair needs YOU! Please consider signing up to lend a hand. Games Masters and Mistresses are especially needed: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/70a0e4fa9a82daaff2-20192Fall Festival was a big hit! The kids had a blast making crafts, hearing stories, and learning about our state history via the Salem witches. Thanks to Leann Rotolo for joining me in keeping the kids engaged and successful!

Detail and elaboration are what make good writing come to life! As part of our work with writing narratives, students went on a sensory walk outside the school. Then they learned to describe their experiences with carefully chosen words, which they used to create a description of setting–part 2 of our Narrative Writing Diamond. Here are some gems from: 1) Aadhya, 2) Anish, 3) Ishawn, and 4) Mason: 1) It was hard to miss the smell of coffee-smelling branches. 2) I was surprised to see round, emerald green plants! 3) I enjoyed the feel of fuzzy, soft branches. 4) Looking carefully, I noticed white foam on the water top. Awesome!

To complete our study of writing genres, students will be introduced this week to Opinion Writing. This genre is at the heart of most collegiate and professional writing as we know it, in which an author presents arguments backed up with evidence. To begin with, students will be taught the difference between fact and opinion; how to craft an introduction and opinion; how to use an outline to scaffold their writing; and how to write in complete sentences with correct punctuation and capitalization.

This Friday’s School Meeting offers all grades the opportunity to explore a common theme: perseverance. The book After the Fall (How Humpty Dumpty Got Back Up Again), by Dan Santat, illustrates how failure can make us risk averse but if we keep the goal in sight we can reach it one step at a time. Here’s a real-aloud version you can enjoy at home: