October Newsletter

Dear Families,

I hope you are all well.  School is in full swing, and it's hard to believe fall is truly upon us.  We are deep into our studies in room 315.  My purpose here is to to give you a sense of what we've been up to in math and reading.

Math

We finished a unit on multiplication a little over a week ago.  The purpose of the unit was for students to:

• build their understanding of multiplication as involving equal groups (There are six baskets of apples.  Each basket has 8 apples in it.  How many apples are there in all the baskets?).
• understand the array model of multiplication (think Small Array/Big Array), and to use it to relate their understanding about the number of groups (six baskets) and the number in each group (8 apples).
• reason about numbers and their factors.  To do this, we collected the factors of 16 and the factors of 48 and looked for patterns.  The students' observations included ideas such as:

• All the factors of 16 are factors of 48.
• The factors of 16 fit inside 48, because 48 is made up of 3 16s

•  begin gaining fluency with the multiplication combinations
  

Last week, we started a unit on data.  The purpose of this unit is for students to:

• examine and create different representations of data in order to describe a data set
• use a line plot to represent ordered numerical data
• represent two sets of data in order to compare them
• describe the shape of a data set: where the data are spread out or concentrated, what the highest and lowest values are, what the range is, and what the outliers are
• describe what's typical or atypical of a data set
• use medians to describe data and compare groups
• develop arguments and draw conclusions based on data
• associate verbal descriptions of probability with numeric descriptions ("It's almost certainly going to rain tomorrow.  I'd say that there's a nine out of ten chance it will rain."
• use U.S. standard units to measure length

This week, students are working on designing survey questions that yield numerical data (How many siblings do you have? vs. What's your favorite thing to do on the weekend?), gathering data and examining their findings.  Ask your child about his or her survey question, about which two groups he or she will be comparing, and about what predictions he or she has made about the results of the survey.

READING

In reading, we're all about reactions ("What the heck does that mean?" you might wonder...).  Reacting to text means noticing the things your mind says to you while you're reading (like, for example, wondering "What the heck does that mean?").  There are endless ways to react to text, and we're beginning to explore them, to push ourselves to react to text in ways that we haven't before, and to share our reactions in interesting ways.  The next post about reading will dig deeper into reactions, and will include some student work.  Stand by!

I want to reemphasize how lovely it is for millions of reasons for you to read aloud to your children (and your grown up friends!).  Picture books are a great way to read a whole book together.  There are tons and tons of marvelous books that are sure to spark some interesting conversations at home.  Here are some book lists to help you stock your shelves:

http://www.childrenslit.com/childrenslit/th_picbkolder.html

http://www.bankstreet.edu/childrenslibrary/booklists

http://kids.nypl.org/reading/recommended2.cfm?ListID=61

http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/yalsa/booklistsawards/booklistsbook.cfm

HOMEWORK

I check in homework every morning.  When I read math homework, I mark it in two ways.  A check in the top right corner of the paper means I saw it and that I made notes for myself about the student's work.  When I write "TOAN," it means the work was thorough (all questions are answered), organized (readers can follow the student's thinking), accurate (If something is not accurate, I put a dot next to the number that's incorrect) and neat.  If any of those letters are omitted, so was the quality to which the letter corresponds.  Students don't need to redo work unless I've written a note saying so.  You know where to find me with questions!

I'm going to close here in the interest of a quick read and in the interest of getting this posted.  In the next two weeks, I'm aiming to post some photos and student thoughts about our trip to the Central Park Zoo, some more information about reacting to text with student examples, and some information and student thoughts about writing personal narrative.  Please let me know what else you'd like to hear about.

Yours,

Lauren