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

Floral Goes Green is coming! Classrooms have been busily engaging in science, math, and literacy learning around a wide assortment of environmental topics. Each class will display their findings, along with environmentally positive messages, around the school that we might learn from each other. It’s a great example of school-wide collaboration!

For our part, students have learned what a precious resource potable water is locally and globally. They have explored the many steps involved in getting water to our school and houses, including creating their own aquifers (see pictures below). They have researched potential dangers to our water supply and how people try to solve them. This week they will learn all about water conservation inside and outside our homes and buildings. In addition they will create graphs to show the data they collected at home regarding water use; write Informative Writing pieces based on research of groundwater, aquifers, wells, and more; and advocate for ways we can all use water more wisely.

There are a few things we’re asking you to do to support this learning:

1. If you haven’t sent in the tally sheet titled List #2–Ways I use water at home that went home last week, please do so by Tuesday. We need them to create our graphs!

2. Please send in a 1-liter size bottle, rinsed and with label removed (actually, send a few if you can). Second-graders need them to take part in a planting station available during FGG.

3. Send in pictures of your child finding water tanks around Shrewsbury so we can add them to our display by Wednesday. See our blog from the past two weeks for directions and map.

4. See the Falcon Flyer for ways you can participate before, during, and after school on Thursday and Friday.

Our lessons for water conservation come largely from the US Environmental Protection Agency’s educational pages, Water Sense Kids. Click the photo above for information and games your family can use at home!

This week we wrap up our learning on data and graphing by examining line plots and bar graphs. What’s important for kids to know at the end is that information can be shown visually in a variety of ways; that a “key” holds important information for interpreting graphs; and that there is a difference between reading a graph (just saying what you literally see) and interpreting them (telling what the tallies, bars, numbers, and words mean). This page from the student book illustrates these points well:

Field Day is right around the corner (June 4, 12-3 PM). We still need volunteers! Please sign up at: http://www.signupgenius.com/go/904094faca622a13-field1  A current CORI is needed.

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!

Here’s us building our aquifers and discovering how contaminants (in red) seep all the way down to the deepest layers:

As part of our study on water conservation, students went on a hunt throughout Floral looking for the ways in which water is used in our building every day. Custodian Mr. Poe led us on a guided tour of the hallways, kitchen, and basement, where both kids and teachers were surprised by the amount of potable water needed to keep just one building in operation every day. The intent is to make kids aware of the precious and limited resource that water is in our community and our world. To that end, I’m asking students to go on a similar hunt at home to collect data. Coming home today is a tally sheet titled, “List #2–Ways I Use Water At Home.” After they complete it, please check it for accuracy before returning it anytime this week but no later than Friday. Also this week, students will create their own models of an aquifer and learn how easily contaminates and pollution get into our water supply.

Field Day is coming! This annual event is a BIG favorite among kids, teachers, and parents. It’s an afternoon of outdoor games, sports, and activities where students apply what they’ve learned about personal bests, team goals, and sportsmanship. Our class will take part on Thursday, June 4, 12-3 PM. Parent volunteers are essential to the day’s success. They lead games and keep scores; take charge of equipment and safety; and help students stay engaged and focused. Please see your Falcon Flyer for ways you can help that day!

Our focus on opinion writing wraps up this week in a big way! Students are asked to take a stand and propose an argument on a topic they feel strongly about, for example: Should animals be kept in zoos? Do we do enough to stop bullying at school? What are the most important character traits a teacher/coach/parent should have? Kids will organize their argument; state reasons for their opinion; and craft an introduction and conclusion to their pieces. Smart!

We wrap up our math focus on telling time by developing an understanding of AM/PM and calculating elapsed time (e.g. 1/2 hour before or after a time on the clock). Students should now be able to tell time to any 5-minute interval, such as 6:05. They should also be able to write the time in numbers and in words, and know how many minutes in an hour and hours in a day. Here’s a great video we’ve been singing along to daily, from my favorite learning song company, Readeez. You can watch videos at their website or at their channel on Youtube.com.

Speaking of time…it’s short! After taking the chapter test this week we’ll move right into lessons on graphing. As outlined in the Common Core, students should understand how to collect and organize data. They should be able to  analyze, interpret, and create a variety of graphs including picture graphs, line plots, and bar graphs. As usual, MIF challenges students to go beyond the literal. New for kids is the concept of “key” in graphing. Take a look at this picture from the student book.

Notice how the key provides necessary understanding to interpret the graph correctly. Please check your child’s homework to be sure they are reading the key when answering questions. You can find lots of great information with very helpful picture support at the Think Central site! (Link to it via the Parent Resources section of this blog.) This unit is Chapter 17, found in eBook B of the student book.

How is the hunt for water tanks going? Once you have pictures of all 7 (or as many as you can get to), please print them out.  A few students mentioned not having a working printer. If unable to print out pictures of your child standing near the tanks, just email them to me. Print them if you can though so I can display them! See last week’s blogs for further directions if needed.

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!

 Our reading focus for the next few weeks is on Determining Importance in nonfiction texts. Whether you are a college student reading and writing analyses, a professional researching and applying best practice, or a busy parent catching up on events in newspapers and magazines, all good readers rely on critical thinking skills to get to the heart of the information being presented. For kids, it’s necessary they learn how to figure out what the author was trying to teach, instead of what information they thought was interesting or exciting. We’ve learned to separate important information from interesting details in parts of texts, and how to use nonfiction text features to support that understanding. Now we’re trying to go beyond that and see a text as a whole that includes a  main idea (title, subtitle) and supporting details (headings, chapters, subheadings) which explains what the author wants us to take away. The Stoneville Elementary School’s site has a nice summary with some great links. I recommend you check it out when reading nonfiction with your child this year and over the summer! Stoneville Elementary Comprehension

Another big idea, and one emphasized in the Common Core, is for students to use evidence from texts when presenting an argument (which gets at the heart of writing for college and career readiness in the 21st century). This week, students will write opinion pieces about a favorite story that require them to make an argument in the form of a book recommendation. They will analyze the book in light of its characters, setting, and/or plot elements, and use evidence from it to support their reasons for recommending the book.

Our blogs are up and running! As promised, I will send home a link to view them. For added privacy, I will not post it here; rather, it will come home in paper form on Monday. Students have asked if they can log in to their own blogs at home in order to comment on peer’s work or reply to comments. This seems reasonable since our time and technology are limited at school. I have said they may if they remember the guidelines about collaboration and netiquette: 1) Use friendly letter format to greet the blogger, write a closing and sign your name. 2) In a positive way, comment on what the blogger wrote instead of chatting with him/her. 3) When replying to a comment, thank the commenter and write a sentence about the topic, including answers to any questions posed by the commenter. 4) English matters! Check for upper/lowercases, punctuation, grammar, and spelling before submitting. Bear in mind if perusing other student blogs that this is a new endeavor and the quality of our comments is a work in progress!

As the year winds down, our math work with MIF focuses on specific skills like money, time, graphing, and fractions. We have ended our money unit, and students should be able to identify coins/bills and their values; calculate and compare combinations of the same; write money amounts with words; and use money to solve real world problems. This week we begin Chapter 14, which teaches kids to tell time to the 5 minutes on an analog clock; write the time in numbers or words; correctly identify AM and PM; and solve problems involving elapsed time (minutes or hours later/before). Please check in with your child at homework time to see if they are retaining the skillwork taught in class, and prompting them to fix errors. As always, the MIF Student Book (eBook B) from the Think Central site offers you an easy to follow look at how the concepts are being taught, and they can be used to clear up confusions with students at home as well! Here is a link to a great online clock from ABCya.com that kids can manipulate to read the time in analog and digital format, and to use it to play games. Try it out! http://www.abcya.com/telling_time.htm

Our science focus over the next few weeks is all about water. This week, students will learn how precious a commodity it is on earth (just 1% of ALL water on earth is potable). They will also learn how it used inside and outside our school and begin to understand its importance in our daily lives. In addition, we will learn how Shrewsbury gets its water, from aquifers to wells. Check out the map below, taken from the Town of Shrewsbury.gov website. It reveals the location of 6 water tanks throughout town. Think of it as a treasure map, and drive/hike to find them all with your child! For bonus points, take pictures standing in front of each one, print them out, and send them in to school, where we will display them! For a larger version of the map, see the original at: http://www.shrewsbury-ma.gov/egov/docs/1406295054_794006.pdf

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!

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!

This week’s blogging project incorporates elements of technology instruction, reading, and writing. Students will select a poem from the many examples we’ve studied this year. They will compose an opinion writing piece with introduction, opinion, reasons, and a conclusion. The composition will require students to analyze poetry by using evidence from the text to report on speaker, tone, imagery, etc. Students will also produce an audio recording of themselves reciting the poem, and learn how to upload it to their blogs along with the text of their opinion writing. Finally, they will read and comment on each other’s work! After this week I’ll send home a link so you can view your child’s work in our online community. I am proud of how seriously they have treated issues of privacy and respect so far, and impressed by their technical abilities!

Our work with money and math continues this week. Students will continue to practice adding and writing amounts of bills and coins, and will 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. 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!

Handling money is a great example of the practical real-word application of math in our world. This week we will use money word problems to help us apply skills of computation, modeling, and logic. Consider the example in the picture above. Notice how it gives you several pieces of information and then requires you to think deeply about what the problem is asking and use modeling as a way to think through the problem. Students still struggle with these problems where there isn’t a clear solution write away. I’ve been teaching them to read and think about the whole problem for a minute, then 1) Re-read the first sentence. Are you able to draw a model of that information? 2) Do the same for the second sentence. Should you add to the first model? Start a second model? 3) Continue through the problem in this fashion. And always, always check that you have labels, correct math, and an answer sentence for each model.

I’m seeing a high error rate on most kids’ homework when it involves problem solving. This week’s homework includes problems where modeling is called for.  Please help your child by making sure s/he follows the process and writes all that is needed. Homework is a time for practice and application, and in order to learn and remember these skills correctly, they’ve got to practice them correctly too. Thank you!

Our work with timelines and history has yielded great things! After analyzing various effective formats for showing information on timelines and using online mind-mapping software from bubbl.us to create new designs, students applied their learning by collaborating with peers to create timelines of past events that are important to them. Very smart!