Posted by kavery508 | Posted in Uncategorized | Posted on December 9, 2019
This week I will be starting a snowflake jar (like a marble jar) in class for earning points toward a class celebration the Friday before vacation. I’m looking to encourage habits of mind, especially good cooperation 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 20. 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 winter crafts; write a narrative to accompany Raymond Brigg’s The Snowman; and more!
Report 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/or can do it some of the time, or with help. A “4” is rare: it means students are working one 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 correctly writing opinion and informative pieces; 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.
Our next area of study in math is multiplication. The focus for instruction is on recognizing that multiplication means adding equal groups of a set. Students will use objects, pictures, and symbols in order to show this addition. Then they will be taught the algorithm ___ x ___ = ___, in which the first number refers to the number of groups and the second number refers to the amount of objects which get added. For example, in 5 x 2 = 10, students should recognize that this means there are 5 groups of 2 objects which are added together to get 10 (illustrated below). At this time, there is no expectation that kids do this in their heads, only with support of objects and pictures.
In Writing this week, kids will state opinions and support them with reasons followed by explanations. Our topic is “The Perfect Pet” and is based on the book of the same name by Margie Palatini. Here it is being read aloud:
