Updates

Greetings Owl Families!

A few updates for this longer post and first full week back!

Language Arts/Daily 5:  We will be talking about visualizing the next couple of weeks.  The comprehension strategy of visualization is also known as making mental images or creating mind movies.  Visualization is the creation of images in the mind as a student reads, process and recalls what has been read.  Visualizing a picture or scene with words and phrases allows the reader to organize ideas, see relationships among ideas and make meaningful connections with them.  Using visualization and discussing the pictures to check for understanding and discrepancies helps a reader increase comprehension.

Opportunities for students to discuss and share their visualizations of text will be our focus.  Visualization helps students to:
*realize personal prior knowledge,
*check their mental images against text for discrepancies and detail to gain a more complete understanding,
*match language to the images and improve processing of ideas, and
*connect in meaningful  ways to reading. 

It is important that students continue to activate prior knowledge well into this strategy of making mental images.  I want all children to learn that everyone's mental images are different because everyone's schema for text is different!

Math:  We are finishing up unit 4 this month.  Unit 4 involves "seeing" the tens and ones in 2-digit numbers.  We use special drawings of 10 sticks to show tens, and circles to show ones.  These images help children learn place value.  10 sticks and circles will also be used later to help children solve addition problems that require regrouping.  When there are enough circles to make a new ten, they are circled and then added like a 10 stick.  The problem below shows 38 + 5.

Social Studies:  During this unit of social studies, we will be focusing on the questions of: how families satisfy their needs and wants, what is scarcity and what does it force families to do, and why and how do families trade?  After this, we will be focusing on the questions of: how do we locate places, how do we describe what places look like, and how do people adapt to and modify the environment of places?

Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns about your child!

Promoting learning for life,
Mrs. Vos