Posted by kavery508 | Posted in Uncategorized | Posted on December 3, 2018
This Tuesday marks our first Early Release Day! Teachers will be engaging in Professional Development across the district. I’ll be planning meaningful ways to integrate technology across the curriculum using available hardware and online platforms. Note: There is no lunch period on Early Release Days. However, we will have a snack break at 11:30 since kids are used to eating at that time of day. Of course, it’s up to you whether you’d like your child to eat something then or wait till s/he gets home!
This week I will be starting a snowflake jar (like a marble jar) in class for earning points toward a class celebration before the holidays. I’m looking to encourage habits of mind, especially good cooperation skills and self-regulation. Each day the kids will evaluate themselves with my help, and snowflakes will be added for each accomplishment, helping us reach our goal.
Our celebration will be on Friday, December 21st. Kids will be invited to wear pajamas at school (more on the details to come), and we will spend the day honoring each other’s accomplishments so far. In addition, we’ll have a winter sing-a-long with the whole school; create a working craft to help measure weather at home this winter; write a narrative to accompany Raymond Brigg’s The Snowman; and more!
Winter’s on its way! Our classroom is in need of bottles of hand sanitizer to keep us germ free. This is especially important because there is no sink in our room for students to wash our hands. Please send in a bottle or two, and thank you.
Our CAFE focus this week is on Stop, Think, Paraphrase (STP). This year, students are learning to think about the text before, during, and after reading. This strategy is designed to get them to think about what was important information on each page they read. After reading a page, students should pause to reflect and summarize the important information in a sentence or two. It’s especially helpful when reading nonfiction, to help them understand the main idea and supporting details put forth by the author. Kids can practice at home with articles from Time for Kids and Sports Illustrated Kids! In the case of online articles, STP can be used after paragraphs.
Our next area of study in math is multiplication. The focus for instruction is on recognizing that multiplication means adding equal groups of a set. Students will use objects, pictures, and symbols in order to show this addition. Then they will be taught the algorithm ___ x ___ = ___, in which the first number refers to the number of groups and the second number refers to the amount of objects which get added. For example, in 5 x 2 = 10, students should recognize that this means there are 5 groups of 2 objects which are added together to get 10 (illustrated below). At this time, there is no expectation that kids do this in their heads, only with support of objects and pictures.
