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

Thanks to so many of you who offered to volunteer on Field Day! Our classroom is well-represented! There’s still room for a few more if interested: http://www.signupgenius.com/index.cfm?go=s.signupform

And thanks to Marlena’s and Nishta’s mom who offered to come paint t shirts. We’re all set!

Please send in a clear, plastic 1 liter (-ish) with label removed anytime in the next week and a half. Floral Goes Green is on its way! One of the many activities scheduled for Friday the 27th is a planting station in the gym. Students will learn the importance of ‘going greener’ and are invited to make a planter in a bottle. Extra bottles for students who are without are always appreciated!

Our class has learned about where our water comes from; the precious resource that it is, and threats to it, including point and nonpoint source pollution. This week lessons will hit close to home as students look for ways that water can be wasted in our houses and apartments as well as ways we can all take steps, large and small, to conserve water. They will be analyzing texts, creating and analyzing bar graphs with the data they collected on water sources at home and in school, researching topics of interest, and playing games designed to heighten awareness. Here’s a great site with kid-appropriate info and a smart Pac-Man-like game to test their knowledge! I’m a little rusty at the controls as the kids will tell you, but I bet you can do better at home:

The next step in our learning is to create a product that showcases what we know and think now about the water supply. Students will choose to create a board game, informative writing piece, or water-sense coloring book for display. They will be involved with the design process, including purpose, audience, steps, division of tasks, and product presentation. Cool!

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);  and that graphs can be used to solve real world problems. This page from the student book illustrates these points well:

Our final challenge with opinion writing is to support our arguments using evidence from a text. Students have analyzed a poem of their choice and commented on why they believe it conveys thoughts & feelings well via its use of tone, speaker, metaphor, etc. Here are some from 1) Saanvi, on Queen Nefertiti (Anonymous); 2) Sanjay on Umbrellas (Kumin); and 3) Alex, on Wolf (Esbensen): 1. One reason I think so it the tone. For example, when she wrote ‘crumble your bones’ it was very creepy. 2. Finally, the poet uses imagery. For example, the umbrellas look like they are dragging and tangling. 3. I think repetition is important in this poem because it repeats ‘wolf’ 3 times in a dark and growl of a voice, so it also tells you the speaker. Super!