Dear Parents,
Another jam-packed week full of learning has flown right by. As you know, conferences are next week. Everyone who requested a conference should have received a confirmation note with the date and time listed. If you did not get it check your child’s backpack or get in touch with me right away.
Math: In math this week we began our unit on fractions. The best day was Thursday when we practiced making fractions of a collection of M&Ms! The kids did an amazing job! They had a bit of trouble connecting to the lesson on Friday, which was more of the same, but it is something we will work on more and more in the future. Ask your child to show you how to do it. Use chocolate chips, M&Ms, cheese-its or anything that can be put into a set of items. Remind the child that the denominator (bottom number) tells how many groups to make and the numerator tells them the number of groups that are being used.
Earlier in the week, students worked on identifying fractions of a shape. They were amazing at this! It took very little time for them to understand how this worked. Great job!
Reading: This week work continued on learning the differences between fiction and informational/non-fiction texts. In small groups we identified some features that are commonly found in non-fiction reading such as a table of contents, photographs, captions and index. Each reading group has been tasked wih independently collecting several important facts from the informational text they have been given. They have been doing pretty well with it, especially considering it is the first time they have had to do something like this.
Next week we will continue with the informational texts. We also will meet a buddy class from Buxton. Carey Johnson, a 2nd grade teacher in Buxton, and I will be introducing our classes to each other on Monday via a skype connection. This is a computer program that allows video conference calls anywhere in the world! We are planning to use this as a way to get the students excited about reading. Among our plans are book talks between reading groups, reader’s theatre presentations, and video book reviews. If this works well, we also hope to broaden the scope to other towns, states and, perhaps even other countries!
Social Studies: We are continuing our study of maps by making a book that shows students how maps “zoom” in on specific areas as the scale changes. This is often a hard concept, but one they need to understand because many do not comprehend the differences between towns, cities, states and countries.
Miscellaneous: The class is in desperate need of those little erasers that go on the top of pencils. I am not sure why we seem to be going through them so quickly, but we are. Any donations of that sort are much appreciated.
Finally, I have been seeing a lot of water bottles filled with Gatorade, Poweraid, Kool-aidand the like being used throughout the day. I am completely fine with students having a water bottle at their desks, but it needs to be plain water. The bottles frequently are spilled and the beverages with coloring and/or sugar make a VERY big mess to clean up, while water is relatively simple. Thank you for you help in this matter.
Blog: Some of you may have noticed that we have not had a blog entry for quite some time. Due to regular technical problems logging in to the blog site I am going to have to abandon that project, at least for now. The students really enjoyed doing it, but every time we tried to get onto the site and work it took 20 minutes or so to actually log in. It became very frustrating for both the students and myself, not to mention a waste of precious time. Teachers at other schools have been using the same blogsite without issue, so I am not sure what is causing the problem. With some help from another teacher we have narrowed it down to a connection issue (the district has had on-going server issues) or a setting on either the site or our computers. Unfortunately, I don’t have the time to research it any
further and figure it all out, so I have decided to abandon the project for now. I am looking at other ways to use technology as a way to have students become excited about writing.
Have a great weekend,
Mrs.Cryer
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Base 10 Blocks to help with math Below is a link to a website that will help your child with subtraction problems that require trading (borrowing). Have your child build the equation using the blocks. When a trade is needed simply drag a long (10 block) to the ones column. It will automatically break into ones after which your child can then do the math!
Photos
I finally have figure out the best way to show pictures of our class. Click here to see our class albums. Now that I have done this I hope to post more photos of your children at work. If you find one you would like to have you can just right click on it then save it to your won computer.
Vocabulary is an essential part of your child's education social confidence and success later on in life!
Encourage your child to build his/her vocabulary by finding a new word each day. Tell your child the word, show your child the word and ask him or her to use it in a sentence. You may even use the word in a story about something that you experienced at some point in your life.
You may be surprised at how quickly your child picks up words.
Specials Schedule Monday: none Tuesday: Library Wednesday: Art Thursday: Computer, Gym (remember sneakers) Friday: Music |
