Posted by kavery508 | Posted in Uncategorized | Posted on March 5, 2019
Read Across America Day was a big hit! Students in our class were treated to stories read aloud by Shrewsbury Librarian Sonja Drotar. Ms. Drotar also answered questions from the crowd, promoted the awesome services available at SPL, and shared with us her lifelong love of reading and learning. Big thanks to her and to our volunteers who helped create a special morning for us!
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.
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:
What an amazing job students have done in science! After collecting temperature data from the past month that is valid and reliable, they organized it in tables and created bar graphs (try it yourself with any data you like–it’s really cool!http://nces.ed.gov/nceskids/createagraph/). This week they will analyze the data to look for trends and anomalies; aggregate the data to answer specific questions; and draw conclusions about temperature in winter, 2019. Wow!
