Have a good three day weekend.
This week we will be having our Benchmark Math Assessment. This assessment is sort of like a semester exam. It tells us what our students have retained since the beginning of the year and what are they still struggling with. It will be a two part assessment, half on Thursday and half on Friday. Things to watch out for on this assessment: bar models, adding/ subtracting with regrouping, word problems, multiplication/ division, and ordering numbers. Extra practice is still up on my homework site, as well as, through ST Math. If you are looking for even more online practice IXL.com is a great place to practice math facts and word problems. The site only allows you so many practice questions a day, but if you are looking to invest in an online program that does higher and lower level math work, it's pretty ideal.
PBL Update: Our water presentations are up on the PBL site, as well as, pictures from our STEM challenge from this past Friday. This is a new activity that I am hoping to incorporate weekly. STEM challenges are great for creative and out of the box thinking, as well as, developing teamwork and critical thinking skills. If you like to volunteer to help out with these challenges (since they do get quite messy) please let me know. Thanks! I have become kind of a hoarder of pictures. In these photos you will see a few things. Back before break, we participated in the Hour of Code, which went extremely well. The kids loved building basic code and many even completed the first game, Frozen, and moved on to harder games. Something else pictured below are our brand new iPads. We are finally one-to-one! The kids are so pleased and have already personalized them during free choice time. Finally, the attached video is of what we call our "brain break." Many volunteers have seen this in action, but it happens in the morning between Word Study and PBL or Writing. We take about five minutes to do something fun and to wake up our brains a little bit, such as follow along to a Just Dance video on Youtube. Book Bag Announcement:
I will be ending the official book bag program. The reason for this is that very few students are participating in the program. Students are still allowed to borrow books from the classroom library anytime and use their book bags, but I will not be requiring students to trade out books to take home. If you have any classroom books at home that your child is not reading, please return them when you can, so that other students may read those texts. Thank you! Just FYI we have a math test on basic multiplication and division strategies this coming Friday. This assessment is not about knowing your quick facts, but how to solve the problem in different ways. I have videos here with basic strategies that have been taught, as well as resources on the homework page. Thanks!
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AuthorMs. Martin's blog showing how we work together, how we learn together, and how we are inspired in Second Grade. Archives
June 2015
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