Friday, October 21, 2016

Families working together

Our essential question this week was, "What happens when families work together?"  We read several pieces of expository text, text that gives us information, about families and how they work together.  We read about the Gelder family who own and run a farm.  Each member of the family has jobs or chores that have to been done for the farm to be successful.  Even the young children have jobs like feeding the chickens and helping sell their fruits and vegetables at the farmers market.  We talked a lot about how they can at home.  In our reading we looking for key details and used those details to write a response about the reading.  In the little groups we worked on the same skills but really focused on restating the question when writing a response.


In writing this week we started a unit on writing personal narratives.  We read an example of one called "The Leaving Morning".  We are asking students to write about a small period of time, this story was a great example of that.  After sharing some stories we might like to write about we focused on thinking about experiences that made us happy, sad, or scared.  In another lesson I modeled taking our idea and just brainstorming the beginning, middle and end.  Our other mini lessons this week included writing a interesting beginning and using time word and phrases.  So students are currently drafting a personal narrative and we will continue with more mini lessons next week.



In math we are working on addition strategies.  Remember we will learn many different strategies.  If your child finds one strategy difficult or challenging it is ok, the hope is that we will find the strategy that works best for them. We are learning a lot strategies about breaking down numbers in order to teach them how to add mentally.  With this being the first year of this math program we will all have a few growing pains.  I have noticed a few students are having a hard time counting by 10's.  Practise by starting at a number like 32, ask them to count by 10's. (32, 42, 52,etc...)  That would be very helpful.

Have a wonderful weekend!