This word study chunk will be a bit longer study than in the past. Many words kids see, hear, read and write involve these chunks. They can get confusing (as the class noticed last week) because many of those words have the same sound but different spellings and meanings!! (homophones) So we will discuss homophones, meanings and use many activities involving writing and reading to help this stick in our brain. We will create a little poster which the kids will be able to see and use for reading AND writing. If you see these patterns in real life, try to create a game or just point it out! Real life experiences help to teach these concepts too!
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The last trimester we will really dig into nonfiction or informational text. There are a lot of common core standards that go along with this so we will start small and continue to build on the knowledge we will learn. We are going to look at informational text and learn to ask questions. Then using informational text, either in book or article form, we will find the answers to those questions and talk about how informational books provide that for us. Sometimes we need more than one resource to find our answers. We will also identify the main topic in an informational text and key details. We have done letters to family members, restaurants and companies letting them know our thoughts on various thing (what we like etc) and now we are going to brainstorm some ideas of things we care about. What do we care about? Why? And how can we use that opinion to influence someone's thinking. We will read some books about the Earth and the world (making it a better place) and see if we can get some ideas going from that. Then each student will decide who they would like to write a letter to and we will send it out from school. We didn't quite that far last week with some various interruptions to our schedule and what not :) so we will work hard on that this week. I will grade one letter or the letter they want to send out and that will be their opinion grade. I'm sure some of you will be getting some very interesting letters from your child about things they want and why they think so :)..my advice..grain of salt :) ha ha! At least they have an opinion and a reason..we just might not agree!
We are continuing to subtract within 100 and 2-digit numbers. They will use manipulatives (green sticks of 10 and ones) as well as a 100 chart to help assist them in their math. We will continue to practice moving up (adding 10) and down (subtracting 10) on the 100's chart. As I teach, we talk a lot about how important it is to double check our work and go back through and check using either the sticks or the 100's chart. We talk about how tools like that are there to help us and that's what smart people do :) Again, this is hard but the more they know their basic facts and easier this will get! Try letting them be involved in math that you encounter in your life, grocery lists/costs, receipts, practice/play house or something to keep them working with two digit numbers. Since the lovely and talented Eric Litwin is coming to Scottish Corners next Thursday, why not study up on a character we all know and love: Pete the Cat!! We are going to review re-telling using key words again like character, setting, problem and solution. This is review but we still need some work on our oral re-tellings (missing some details and using character names) that I thought a review of Pete the Cat would be the best! They will get their own graphic organizer to write independently a retelling of any Pete the Cat!
In topic 11, we will be doing almost identically as we did in Topic 10 but with subtraction. I am very impressed with how hard they worked in Topic 10. We learned how to regroup and how to check our answers with our 100's chart. In Topic 11 they will be learning how to use the green sticks to help them subtract by taking them away. We will use them physically as well as using lines to cross off visually to help them. This topic also will have us jumping around on the 100's chart again but this time going backwards. We talked A LOT about how jumping down meant adding and now we will talk about how jumping back means subtracting. They will always have access to sticks and ones, 100's charts and other manipulatives to help them with this challenging topic. I recently reread this and wanted to "re-share" this with you. If you look under Articles and Resources tab on the weebly, you'll see a the blurb. I wanted to throw in my reflections about it. With the new release this year of Common Core standards, myself as I am sure many of you, have noticed the rigor has changed. After re-reading this it helped refocus my thoughts, efforts and anxieties as an educator. Kids live lives that allow for many of these skills to naturally happen. They ask questions often because they are curious and encouraging those questions with answers or mini studies or just looking something up to show or explain! Google is sometimes my best friend! It's easy for me to immediately try to solve any problems going on in class, whether socially or working through a problem because you want them to be successful, but I've started to step back and let them work on solving their own problems. They will learn to approach various situations with a freedom that they can figure this out because they have been successful at doing it in the past! The last three are some of the toughest to "teach" as children grow up. I center my classroom around compassion and tolerance. Having these two life skills we create a child that will be a smart, kind and hire-able adult. At a young age, showing and talking about these types of behaviors is very important to help guide them to becoming compassionate and tolerant. Dealing with change is the hardest for me, as it always has been. Change is hard for many people. We like routine, we like things the way they are. But being able to be flexible and flow with change only helps you grow into a better you. I just waned to pass it along because I enjoyed reading it and I know that these are skills our future students will need to learn, grow and become successful members of the community and workplace. We talked a lot about them and how to change our teaching, leadership styles to reflect these in my adminstration pr
This upcoming week in science we will be talking about where we get our energy from (food) and how to make healthy and smart choices about our energy. On Monday we will do some reading and discussion and Tuesday have them make their own healthy plate of food! If anyone wants to send in some healthy snacks (veggies/fruits) for them to snack on while they work that'd be great! We are going to talk about how we feel when we have healthy food and how we feel when we choose junk food. We will assess our Energy unit on Thursday. Hopefully with continued practice using the 100's chart to help us add 10's, we will be off to a good start for next week. Mental math adding 10's is up next. We've gone A LOT of work with the 100's charts to help us understand that moving straight down on the 100's chart is adding by 10's. We have done some jumping with our bodies to visualize as well. They have done pretty well with this concept. We will assess Topic 10 the Thursday before the four day weekend. My fault last time :) I will attach the pre-assessment to the back of their post-assessment (the one I take for a grade). We've been working and focusing on things that each student needs with group work, small group instruction and one on one. The workshop model is going well! |
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