Posted by kavery508 | Posted in Uncategorized | Posted on March 14, 2016
Cool! Students combined their writing skills with the comprehension strategy of Determining Importance as they created “Wordles” to accompany their opinion writing pieces based on character traits of great Americans. Thanks to Media Specialist Christy Minton for her lessons that combined technology with critical thinking skills. The kids’ work will be displayed in our hallway for a time before being sent home. Try a Wordle at home, using any topic! http://www.wordle.net/
We ended last week with a geography head-to-head against students in the Young class! Student partners prepared by creating lists of questions based on the world map that demonstrated understanding of continents, countries, oceans, map keys, directions, and more! It was great to hear evidence of kids thinking and reasoning as they worked to apply their knowledge to solve problems. Kudos to them!
As the second trimester of school comes to an end, students will also be taking reading tests (DRAs) and quizzes/tests to measure students’ progress with map skills, math, and science concepts related to weather. To know if a paper coming home is a test vs. regular in-class work, look for a score at the top (e.g. 7/7).
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. Students will also 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.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. 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!
Singing is a great way to memorize new skills! Readeez has put out a truly fantastic collection of learning songs. Here’s one of our favorites in class. You can find others (dimes, nickels, quarters, and much more) at Youtube.com and at the Readeez site.
