Posted by kavery508 | Posted in Uncategorized | Posted on November 11, 2019
Steve Baker via Compfight
Happy Veteran’s Day! A big shout out to all the vets who have given us much to be thankful for. In class, kids have been learning about this day via videos and informative texts with a focus on asking and answering questions while reading!
I look forward to our meeting this Tuesday! If you still need an appointment, please contact me. I will share with you your child’s reading assessment, math tests, and writing samples, and I’ll discuss progress being made in those areas along with successes and any learning targets. Admittedly, our time is brief! Think of this as another step in our yearlong discussion of your child’s education, and know that I remain available for further communication.
Rotary Readers are coming! In an effort to promote literacy across the town, Members of the Shrewsbury Rotary Club will visit next Monday and read to second graders using engaging picture books that they donate to each classroom’s library! We are grateful for the organization’s good works.
Our reading focus this week is on the comprehension strategy, Retell a Story. When students can name important characters, setting, problem, events, and ending in a story, it shows they understand what is important to know. At homework time, try asking your child to tell you any or all of the above to see if they were reading purposefully! A helpful meme for this kind of summary is called The 5 Finger Retell. It’s outlined and explained in this blog post from Reading Mentors: 5 Finger Retell.
This week we begin a very important math unit. Chapter 4 focuses on bar models and using them to solve number problems and work algebraically. This way of doing math is extremely useful, and will benefit students greatly in the future when they apply it to multiplication, division, fractions, measurement, and more! As an example, consider the picture below as a way to model this problem: Jim is planning Thanksgiving dinner for 21 people. 15 people will be having turkey, and the rest are vegetarians. How many people will Jim plan a vegetarian meal for?
For students, setting this problem up can be tricky. We’ve learned to use parts and total boxes to model algebraic thinking: bar models are an even more explicit way to show our thinking about problems, one that helps us make sense of the numbers involved. Notice how the bars are drawn to scale in comparison to each other. This skill really requires students to understand the relative size of the numbers involved.
We’ll learn to use a different bar model for Parts-and-Totals, and for Comparison problems. Your Math Homework folder has a full explanation of the different kinds of bar models, to help if kids get stuck!
In science, students are learning to ask questions, use models, and observe changes as part of our study of erosion. Here are some pictures of us studying how canyons are formed:
