Posted by kavery508 | Posted in Uncategorized | Posted on March 5, 2018
Read Across America Day was a blast! We were fortunate to host Charolette Winder, a teacher herself, as our Community Reader. She shared Dr. Seuss favorites with us, and the kids had a great time acting out The Sneetches to her narration. Thank you to her, and to the volunteers that helped make the day a success!
Our journey into informative writing wraps up this week, and the kids have made excellent progress! Here are some samples from 1) Berlin, on Softball 2) Brady, on The Earth, and 3) Sophie, on Puppies: 1) One important thing about softball is how you get out. You get out when you are running to a base and the other player on the base has the ball and touches the base with their foot before you get there. 2) Another important thing about Earth is the coastlines. Coastlines are all around your continent where the water and the beaches meet. 3) One last thing about puppies is how to wash them. First you run the shower, then put the puppy in the tub and get the puppy’s body wash. Then you start scrubbing and then rinse it out. Awesome!
As the second trimester of school comes to an end, this week and next students will be taking reading tests (DRAs) and a district-wide writing assessment that tests students’ abilities with focus, organization, details and English conventions (punctuation, spelling) while producing a piece of informative writing. Quizzes and tests will also be given to measure students’ progress with math problem solving; map skills (oceans and continents) and science concepts related to weather.
Our work with money wraps up by challenging students to solve real world problems involving computation and reasoning. Consider this problem from their workbooks: Devon spends 2 dimes at the store. Then he spends 3 nickels more. If he pays with $1.00, how much change should he get? Notice how it requires that students apply their understanding of money amounts and thinking skills in order to calculate change? Here is an awesome online game that helps kids practice these useful skills:
We have become experts at observing and identifying weather, clouds, and temperature these past two months to help us answer the question, How does weather change day to day and over time? As part of data collection and analysis, students will be evaluating graphs (pie chart, bar graph, area graph) to select the best format for presenting their data collected on daily temperature. They will then enter data and create their graphs using online software at http://nces.ed.gov/nceskids/createagraph/. Finally, they will analyze the data using graphs to look for trends and anomalies, and to draw conclusions. Try the graphing software yourself using any data from home (homework minutes each night; minutes spent getting ready for bed; etc.). The results are really cool!
