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

This week and next, students will be experience the joy of poetry by reciting a piece of their own choosing! They will assume the role of speaker, creating tone based on lines and imagery given by the poet. Your child’s poem was sent home before vacation. Ask your child to practice by speaking loudly, slowly, and clearly with expression that shows what s/he feels and thinks about the poem’s subject. Poems should be memorized (with a few exceptions): recitations are performances! Students will also receive prizes for successful completion.

You’re invited! Our End-of-Year Celebration will be held Friday, June 12, 9:30-10:15 in our Cafeteria. Similar to our Winter bash, we will be performing on the stage for family and friends, and we will remain after for photo opportunities and congratulations!

Last Friday were treated to an outstanding presentation by fourth-graders as part of their Physical Education. Kudos to them for their collaboration and sportsmanship, and to our class for their respectful audience behavior!

With just 7 weeks to go, students will learn to use technology to communicate and evidence their thinking through the use of blogs. The will learn to navigate online environments, including posting, commenting, and replying; to create, find, and upload media such as images and audio files; and to collaborate with peers through reading and writing. This week, we will learn what it means to be part of an online community and how blogs are used. Then we will learn what a digital footprint means and how to create a safe one, as well as how to stay safe online. Next, we will learn the format and netiquette specific to online communication. Finally, kids will learn to craft an introductory piece; comment on postings from peers in our class and Mrs. Richard’s class (who will be collaborating with us); and reply to comments received. A note on safety and privacy: Student blogs are created via Kidblog.org. They are only open to invited peers and teachers. Once up and running parents will be invited to view them as well with a private password. For more information, please visit their site. Lessons on privacy and more are taken from Common Sense Media.

We continue developing our narrative writing skills this week by stretching out moments with details that put the reader in the picture. Check out this Main Event video about a homerun from Barry Lane at Youtube! A writer could just say: I hit the ball and got a homerun…boring! How much better would it sound if we stretched it out: I choked up on the bat and planted my feet on the hard, packed dirt. The pitcher turned and faced me, squinting under his faded blue cap. This is it, I thought: either I make this hit or we go home defeated…Try finishing it at home with your child! Let us know what you come up with!

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:

Notice 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. 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. And as always, see the student e-book (Student Book B) from the Think Central site. This unit is Chapter 11.

This week is our last School Meeting All School Read. All year, students in in every grade learned to make a difference as members of their school, local, and world communities. Our focus now and for the next month is on “Being Green.” Using the text What does it mean to be green? (Rana DiOrio), kids will become aware of the importance of ecological stewardship and make commitments for taking action. We will continue this theme next month as we learn about where Shrewsbury gets its water from; what dangers/concerns relate to it; and steps we can take to ensure it is there for those who come after us.

In science we have been learning to apply our understanding of the physical properties of liquids. Up to now we’ve examined liquids whose color, opacity, and viscosity were different. But how can we tell 2 liquids apart if they look exactly alike? By observing differences in how they behave. Using a variety of tools and reference sheets, students identified alcohol and water by how each one interacted with different surfaces.

   

What a blast! Literacy Night was an engaging, noisy, joyful celebration. Kudos to our class authors who read their work to an audience. And thank you to volunteers who made the night a success!

 This week we explore 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 Scholastic has 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

Our personal narrative writing continues to grow as we focus on stretching out one moment in time with details, including red flags, observations, and actions. Take a look at the video below (from sparkbag at Youtube.com). Notice how the ride is made up of moment-to-moment actions and observations. A good narrative would sound something like this: We slowly inched our way up the hill. It was impossible to miss the CLANK CLANK CLANK of the heavy metal chain as we neared the top of the track. Looking down I noticed the people and cars, no bigger than toys. Suddenly, we jerked to the left, and… Try finishing the story yourselves at home! Youtube abounds with such thrill ride videos–try them out!

The 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. For a detailed and illustrated explanation, see the MIF Student Book 2B, pp. 28-35 (follow the link in the Parent Resources section of this blog and enter your PowerSchool credentials).

At first, students just need to learn and practice the basic skill of rounding to the nearest 10. Next comes the smart stuff. To check that a sum/difference is reasonable, they will learn to use estimates (sometimes called Ballpark 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 (less than a difference of 5). 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. This week’s homework is all about estimating; contact me if I can clarify!

Our Social Studies focus this term is on understanding information that timelines present. We have been evaluating timelines and analyzing various formats to understand how history is presented graphically. Having created personal lists of events at school this year, students will explore how to best show their information for the engagement and ease of the reader. Softschools.com has some good examples of online and interactive timelines, and there are many others you can find with a simple Web search: http://www.softschools.com/timelines/rosa_parks/timeline_7/

We continue to learn science content and inquiry skills by seeking to understand liquids and their properties. Having learned to identify several liquids in bottles by their observable properties, we will experiment with liquids this week and how they behave when applied to various surfaces such as plastic and paper in order to differentiate and identify them based on their interactions.

 

Less than 10 weeks to go! We’ve come so far and grown so much. The race to the finish begins!

At Friday’s School Meeting, we learned about the diversity of races, languages, and countries represented at Floral St. We were proud to represent our community as we lead Grades 1 & 2 in song and in sign language.

 Now that we’ve learned so much, our CAFE focus involves ‘putting it all together’. As we read narratives and nonfiction text together, in small groups, and individually, we are applying word skills learned in combination with comprehension strategies taught: Activating Schema and Making Connections, Predicting, Asking Questions and Reading to Find Answers, Inferring, Visualizing, Determining Important Parts of Text and Inferring the Messages, and Summarizing. Students should be able to do this at any reading level now. Try asking questions about any of the above strategies during reading homework!

We will spend the next three weeks revisiting Narrative Writing. Students should be able now to choose topics from their lives to write about; select the “seed” (best small moment to stretch out over several paragraphs; and write with detail and description to put the reader in the picture. This week we will learn how to add Red Flags to our writing. These are transitional phrases that keep the reader’s interest: Without warning; Suddenly; A second later; Finally; etc. We will  also learn what makes a good ending. Initially, many kids want to end their stories with “Then I went home and went to bed,” thinking the end of a day should equal the end of a story. Instead, students should end by reflecting on what was written using a combination of feelings, memories, and/or hopes/decisions for the future: I’ll never forget that trip to Old Sturbridge Village and how funny it seemed when I fell into the pond. I still laugh thinking about it. Next time, I’ll stay on the path for sure!

Our poetry lessons have yielded a fruitful bounty (how’s that for a metaphor?)! Students made great progress writing about a topic important to them with images, feelings, careful word choice, and an understanding of lines. Below are a few pictures of students reciting their poetry after working on expression and volume. I have published all of the students’ poems in a bound collection that I will send home Monday. Be on the lookout! Here are 2 selections. Notice their amazing metaphors, imagery, and careful word choice:

My Baby Brother

Tiny nose

Two small sparkling eyes

His cute little face

as soft as a cloud

Puny lips red as strawberries

Handsome thin hands curl up inside

Miniature toes on smooth feet

His hands grab my heart.

by Luana DeMoura

Cheetahs

Their spots like dark moons

their legs dash like lightning

their paws and claws scratching

the ground.

Their fur is a blanket

of African grass.

Exhausted, walking to their lair.

The orange hot sun rising

on the hot savannah.

by Arjun Singh

 

This week’s math focuses on relating difference to subtraction, and learning mental math strategies to subtract. Since subtraction is the inverse operation of addition, we make a connection to last week’s strategies. To find the difference when only the ones place changes, we simply subtract and don’t mess with the tens and hundreds: 267 -5 is the same as 7 -5–just remember to put back the 260. To subtract in your head when only the tens place changes, just count back by tens: 267 – 50 should sound like 257, 247, 237, 227, 217. And the same applies when only the 100s place changes: 267 – 100 = 167.

To quickly subtract 7, 8, or 9 in our heads, we can subtract 10 instead and count up 3, 2, or 1. For example: 432 – 7 is the same as 432 – 10 (422) + 3 (425) since -10 +3 = 7. And 432 – 8  is the same as 432 – 10 (422) + 2 (424), and 432 – 9 is the same as 432 – 10 + 1. There will be illustrated examples in the math homework resources folder this week to keep these straight. These tricks can really work, and show a real fluency with numbers. It is important, therefore, that students try them out repeatedly if they are ever to own them or use them when it suits them to do so.

Hope you can make it to Literacy Night this Friday, 6-9 PM. There are many great activities planned to help us celebrate as a community of readers!