*We had such a great time last week with our Autumn theme, which was not planned but sometimes you just have to go with what nature presents to you. The kids did some amazing art, which can be seen in the hall foyer, wrote some gorgeous poems and carried out some very clever statistical maths investigations. We had a lot of fun playing with leaves too.
*Maths - this week we will be looking at addition and subtraction through problem solving. It is expected after 2 years at school, that the kids will be able to hold a number and count on and back to solve addition and subtraction problems.
For example
There are 23 kids in Room 13. On Thursday, 6 kids were away. How many kids were in Room 13 on Thursday?
The children might say...
23 - 6 = hold 23 in their head and count back 22, 21, 20, 19, 18, 17
or if they have that consolidated they might.....
23 - 3 = 20 and 20 - 3 = 17 this is the beginning of breaking numbers and is the first step towards working towards "after 3 years at school".
Now that some of our kids are working towards 3 years at school, the expectation is that they will be able to use other strategies such as separating tens and ones and adding in tens.
For example:
There are two paddocks on Mrs Russells farm. In one paddock she has 34 calves and in the other 23. How many calves does Mrs Russell have altogether?
If the children are working towards 3 years at school they might say....
34 + 10 +10 + 3 = 57 They break the 23 into 10 + 10 + 3
or they might say....
30 + 20 = 50 and 4 + 3 =7 so 50 + 7 = 57
Some of our mathematicians are already working at Stage 5 "after 3 years at school" and are able to work into the thousands. We need to have a really good understanding of numbers to 1000 and place value to be able to do this.
*Writing - we are assessing writing this week. We will be looking at explanation writing which we have made a good start on. The assessment task will be in the kids portfolio at the end of the term.
If you have not sent back your child's portfolio back to school, please do so that I can put this terms assessment tasks into it."
*R.E - we are continuing our strand study on God. We are looking at the creation story and deciding what God created and what man has made.
*Reading - wow, some of our readers have reached Silver which is awesome! While testing over the last few weeks I identified these areas of need...
-reading punctuation - if the children do not read commas and full stops their phrasing is off and the story does not make sense. Please ensure they are pausing at a comma and completely stopping at a full stop.
- comprehension - lots of our kids can read anything they pick up now which is marvelous. We do need to make sure they understand what they have read and that they are taking something from the story. It is helpful if you ask them a couple of little questions after they read such as...
why did ___________ do that in the story?
where did they go in the story?
why do you think that happened?
What made ____________ say/think that?
If you take a bit of time to check in, you will see the bits they have not understood and then perhaps they could have another go at those parts the next night. The reason for only giving them two books a week is so they can reread stories and get a really good understanding of them.
-rereading - I encourage the kids to reread the sentence if they get stuck or if it just doesn't sound right to them. Rereading helps them with fluency and comprehension so just give them a little reminder before they start reading.
Golden Time: this week we will attempt again to complete our recycled art. Please send anything shiny to school this week - nuts, bolts, old jewellery, cutlery - anything shiny at all.
Thank you for your ongoing support of our class and your kids learning. We are having such a great time in Room 13, they are an amazing bunch of kids and it is super cool spending my days with them.
Have a great week
Annie
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