Viewing: Class Updates
February 9, 2012
Welcome Ms. Majidy
Please join me in welcoming Ms. Sarah Majidy, a graduate student from the University of Hartford, who will be working in our classroom for the next few weeks as part of a field placement. Ms. Majidy started today and will initially be with us on Thursday afternoons and Friday mornings to observe reading and writing instruction. We’re so lucky to have her involvement, particularly in the busy season leading up to the CMTs!
Posted in Class Updates|By Jon Moss
February 9, 2012
Introducing Room 209 C.A.R.E.S.
Valentine’s Day is coming up (more on that in an upcoming post) and we’re celebrating by kicking off the fourth year of our Room 209 C.A.R.E.S. campaign. C.A.R.E.S. stands for “Community Action Run by Eager Students” and is the element of our class that focuses on community service. Our class has a long-standing partnership with Gifts of Love and works to support their efforts to help families in the Greater Hartford area with food, clothes, and household goods. In 2011, 13,000 people went to Gifts of Love for help. As a school, we support Gifts of Love throughout the year with collections (such as last week’s soup drive) and special activities (such as the gr. 3 community garden project).
As a class, our C.A.R.E.S. program has two main parts to support Gifts of Love. Each week (normally), on Friday afternoon, I pull names from our Chance Box. Kids earn Chance tickets by taking academic risks in class and by being leaders in our class community. When I draw names, those students typically earn prizes, but they also have the opportunity to donate their prize (meaning I donate $1.00, the cost of a typical prize) to Gifts of Love. This is a great way for kids to help others. The other way our class helps Gifts of Love is through our redeemable can and bottle recycling program. We collect soda cans and soda and water bottles and bring them to the supermarket to redeem for $0.05 each. All proceeds go to Gifts of Love. It sounds like it wouldn’t make much of a difference, but it’s amazing to see how quickly the money adds up! This is a great program because kids and families can help Gifts of Love, but it doesn’t involve families sending in any money.
This morning, Diana Goode, the Executive Director of Gifts of Love visited our class to talk with the kids about her organization and how we can help. The kids are very excited to support Gifts of Love, hence C.A.R.E.S. standing for “Community Action Run by EAGER Students.” But here’s the catch… In the past, I took care of recycling the bottles and cans at the supermarket, but I can’t take that on right now. (Isn’t it amazing how quickly spare time disappears when one becomes a parent? Something you all know!) I’m looking for volunteers to work together to coordinate this charitable effort. I would recommend that we start with just our class, and then extend to all of gr. 4, and then the whole school (if appropriate). The more parents we have helping, the more we can open the program up, and the more we can help Gifts of Love. I’m open to different arrangements: In the past, we have had some arrangements where students sorted the cans and bottles during recess (on a VOLUNTARY basis) with parent volunteers and then parents took the bags to the supermarket. Other parents prefer to take the unsorted cans and bottles themselves and to sort them while putting them in the redemption machines. I’m open to any option and appreciate all offers of help. This can be as frequent or as irregular as you want, but I do ask that we try to establish a regular schedule. If you are willing and able to help, please email me. We cannot do this without parent help! Thanks for considering! (Did you know that Gifts of Love is able to use their funds to purchase food at Foodshare for a tenth of what we pay at the supermarket? When $1.00 buys $10.00 of food, it’s easy to see what a big difference 20 soda bottles can make!)
Posted in Class Updates|By Jon Moss
February 8, 2012
Homework: Making Inferences
I’ve gotten such great feedback on the online homework assignments that the kids have had over the past few weeks! They allow the kids to receive immediate feedback – something that doesn’t happen until the next day (or later) when worksheets are assigned. The kids are enjoying the fun games, and tonight’s is my personal favorite!
Rags to Riches is a game that is based on “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” This version, which focuses on making inferences, gives the kids several situations and asks them to choose the correct inference. They have three hints (think: lifelines) that they can use during the game, and the goal is to reach $1,000,000! Kids should get as high of a score as they can and should come to school with their best score written in their planners.
http://www.quia.com/rr/332704.html
Posted in Class Updates|By Jon Moss
February 8, 2012
Math Profiles of Progress
This afternoon, you will find updated math profile sheets coming home. These sheets share with you information about how your child performs on each unit’s assessment. The standards for each unit are graded as having mastered the skill (no mark) or not yet having mastered the skill (checkmark). I think the strength of these profiles is that you can see, specifically, what skills your child excelled in, and what skills are still challenging. However, a checkmark (showing lack of mastery) does not communicate on its own how your child is progressing toward mastery. In the fall conferences, I had the same discussion with several parents: A checkmark may mean that the student has intermediate skills and that they simply are not yet proficient. Then again, the checkmark may mean that the student has to make a significant amount of growth before reaching proficiency.
Teachers clarify this in several ways. Some teachers mark on the score sheet the percentage correct or the total number of correct problems. I do not do this because, as I said at the fall Curriculum Night, I don’t think seeing a simple percentage provides you with valuable data. For example, does a 75% mean that a student correctly answered an average of three out of four problems throughout the assessment, or did he or she perform flawlessly on the whole assessment, except for one section that was completed entirely incorrectly? To me, giving a percentage lumps together too many diverse skills into a single score. I try to write comments next to standards that need explanation (or at the bottom), but I am also trying a new approach.
Starting in unit 4, a checkmark indicates progression toward proficiency, and an X indicates that the student needs more significant support to reach proficiency. This will accomplish several objectives:
- You, as a parent, can more precisely see how your student performs on the assessments.
- I can be more precise in my scoring and can translate that precision into the report card grades.
- I can be more responsive to student performance and can more immediately provide support to students who are significantly struggling with a skill. If your son or daughter has an X next to a standard, I will (or at this point, may have already) work(ed) with him or her individually, in a small group, or as part of a whole-class reteaching lesson. If your son or daughter has a check, don’t think that I’m ignoring him or her – I may provide the same reteaching, or, if the checkmark is for a skill that we are continuing to work on, I may wait to see how his or her performance improves with continued teaching.
I hope that you find this new scoring method to be helpful for you! Please understand that this is a trial in our classroom, and that I may continue to adjust the approach as time goes on. If there are ongoing changes, I will, of course, let you know!
Posted in Class Updates|By Jon Moss
February 7, 2012
Long Division Game (Homework)
We have another e-homework assignment this evening! Play “Snork’s Long Division” to help the cartoon character complete some long division problems. On the first page, it will ask you to set the highest number that you want to work with. Here’s my suggestion:
- If you feel “thumbs up” about long division, pick a number between 11 and 20.
- If you feel “thumbs sideways” about long division, pick a number between 7 and 11.
- If you feel “thumbs down” about long division, this activity will walk you through the steps! Pick a number between 6 and 10.
Each student is asked to complete five problems. If you decide that the number you entered on the main screen is too easy or too hard, reload the page to restart the game, and enter a new number.
We’re on the honor system again, since that worked so well last time (you honest kids!) No need to print anything to bring in a note!
Here’s the site:
http://www.kidsnumbers.com/long-division.php
Posted in Class Updates|By Jon Moss
February 2, 2012
Reminder: Super Bowl Spirit Day and collection TOMORROW
Just a reminder that our school is collecting non-perishable canned goods tomorrow. Kids can vote for their favored Super Bowl team by placing their canned goods in the appropriate bin. All donations will go to Gifts of Love! Kids are invited to wear their favorite sports jersey/shirt (of any sport) to show their pride! They can also wear red for Healthy Heart Day! Have a good evening!
Posted in Class Updates|By Jon Moss
February 1, 2012
February 1, 2012
Homework: Pronoun Clubhouse
Tonight’s homework (2/1/12) is an online game called Pronoun Clubhouse that will give students some practice for a lesson tomorrow. Students are asked to play the game at least once. We’re using the honor system to mark homework as complete or incomplete – nobody needs to print anything or bring in any note. Here’s the website:
http://www.harcourtschool.com/activity/pronoun_clubhouse/index_pre.html
Posted in Class Updates|By Jon Moss
January 25, 2012
Recent Reading Work in Room 209
We have spent a lot of time on reading in room 209 in recent weeks! Beyond our usual day-to-day activities that reinforce comprehension and analytical skills, we have focused on several special topics.
We use the word theme to describe the overall topic of a book. It encompasses the life lesson which is based on the plot of the text. (Imagine a rainbow in which theme is the outer layer, life lesson comes next, then plot, and finally the narrative elements of setting, characters, events, problems, and solutions are in the inner-most layer. I’m working on a graphic.) Consider the familiar story The Boy Who Cried Wolf. The individual narrative elements, when combined, give us the plot of the story: the boy keeps falsely screaming that a wolf is coming, and people stop believing him. Then, when a wolf really does come, nobody believes him. The life lesson could be (there are many possible answers) that you should always tell the truth so that people believe you. The overarching theme is honesty. Alternatively, it could be trustworthiness. (Again, a story could have several themes, as long as they fit the life lessons.) In class, we have discussed how all these pieces fit together. I shared some short stories with the class, and the students classified them under different possible themes and had to cite reasons (with textual support, of course) of why they felt that those themes were appropriate. This is an ongoing area of study.
The students have worked very hard on learning how to best compare and contrast characters in a book. After reading As Good As Anybody, a book about the lives of Dr. Martin Luther King and Rabbi Abraham Heschel, we agreed that it can be difficult to move straight to a Venn Diagram while reading, because we may not initially know what is a shared detail (belonging in the center section) or what is a unique detail that belongs in either of the side sections. So, we began by making a list of VIPs – very important points – pertaining to the two characters we were comparing. Next, we listed them in Venn Diagrams. (This is what you saw at home for homework.) The following day, we made a class Venn Diagram that matched up paired facts, such as where the men came from, how and when they died, etc. This allowed us to craft a thorough short answer response comparing the two men in written form. The kids are now finishing up an activity in which they are comparing and contrasting Amelia Earhart and Eleanor Roosevelt.
In the course of reading As Good As Anybody, we discussed the differences between being an active reader and a passive reader. A passive reader just absorbs what they read or hear. The information comes in, may make it into the reader’s memory, but nothing really happens to the information during reading. Active readers, on the other hand, think about what they’re reading as they read. An active reader makes connections to the text and thinks of questions he has. She may identify a key part of the text or deduce the meaning of an unfamiliar word. He may make predictions or draw conclusions about the elements within the story. All of these behaviors lead toward the same goal: improved comprehension. Being an active reader will help you to both better understand the story and to enjoy it more. We’re working on helping these behaviors to become routine as we read.
Posted in Class Updates|By Jon Moss
January 9, 2012
Different Methods of Multiplication
For help with traditional multiplication…
…or, if you want to review Partial Products…
Posted in Class Updates|By Jon Moss