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

I hope you had a fantastic Thanksgiving break, everyone! My trial wrapped up, and then I had time to spend with friends and family and to recharge. I was indeed thankful! Onward into term 2…

Our reading focus is on learning to use nonfiction text features to make sense of informative texts. Think about a magazine article you’ve recently seen. As accomplished readers, we never just dive in and hope we understand by the end of it; yet, that’s often what kids will do. Instead, we read and think about the title, headings and subheadings, pictures, diagrams, captions, maps, and all the other things that make concepts more comprehensible, all while relating them back to the main idea. This week we will learn many of these features, go hunting for them in text, and use them to improve comprehension. This Reading Mama’s blog puts it well (and is a good source for learning many elements of reading): http://thisreadingmama.com/comprehension/non-fiction/non-fiction-text-structure/

And you can practice using nonfiction text features to improve comprehension with your child by using magazines, websites, informational books, and at http://kids.nationalgeographic.com.

In writing, we’ll be applying our knowledge of “choosing the seed” (best small moment), entertaining beginnings, and main events as we write about our individual Thanksgiving holidays.

 

 Our thorough examination of 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. See how helpful a tool bar modeling is?

 In social studies, we are improving our knowledge of map skills by exploring the concept of symbols and map keys. We will then apply this knowledge, along with considerations of orientation, scale, direction, and view, as we create maps of our recess blacktop.

 Our science focus this term is on earth science, specifically weather. Our guiding questions: What is weather, and how does it affect the earth and us? How can weather be measured? How does recognizing patterns in weather help us predict it? How does the sun affect weather and the earth? We will begin by evaluating methods for recording temperature and learning to read a variety of thermometers. 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. 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/

You’re invited! Our class will be performing songs and poems with a Winter Theme in the cafeteria on Friday, December 19, at 9:30 (snow date: Monday, December 22, 9:30). We will remain in the space after, for photo opps and congratulations. <”) Please come: family and friends welcome! This is our Winter Celebration, and takes the place of a class party. Per district recommendations, please do not send in food or drink to share, though you are of course welcome to send in something special, nut free, for your child to enjoy at snack time.