Posted by kavery508 | Posted in Uncategorized | Posted on February 12, 2018
This month’s School Meeting centered around the book One, by Kathryn Otoshi. The theme of this book is “being an upstander” instead of a bystander when you see someone being put down or bullied. Students read the book together and brainstormed strategies for helping others and themselves in these tricky situations. We were also treated to a dramatic reading of the text by the Ross and Beall classrooms! You can view the book online here.
Our reading focus this week is on finding the main idea in fiction. It’s important that students learn to identify big ideas in texts and separate them from details. To do this, students will learn to ask: What did the main character do? What did the main character want? What did the main character achieve? The answers to these questions lead the reader to understand what the page, or chapter, or book is about, thus improving their comprehension. You can practice during homework time by guiding your child through these questions during or after reading.
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.
At first, students just need to learn and practice the basic skill of rounding to the nearest 10. Next, to check that a sum/difference is reasonable, they will learn to use 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 (no more than 10 away from the actual answer). 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.
Reminder: Students will exchange valentines this Wednesday. There are students in our classroom.
The kids did a great job researching and teaching others about Olympic symbols such as the torch, oath, and rings. Here’s a snapshot, along with the fourth graders’ presentation at our School Meeting:
