Pennies for Patients

Save your change!  We are collecting spare change (or donations) in support of leukemia and lymphoma studies and patients. Please send any change back to school in the box provided to you last week.

There is also a contest through the school...the class that raises the most money gets a pasta party sponsored by Olive Garden.

Here's to hoping we can be the winning class!

For more information, please visit the link below.

Pennies for Patients Link

Middle of the Year READING Benchmark

This Thursday is our Reading benchmark.  This benchmark will have three different stories.  One fictional, one non-fiction, and one folktale.  I will NOT be able to read any of the content on the test to the students.  On the Beginning of the year, I read the whole story to them before they answered the questions.  This will be totally different, because they will have to read it themselves and comprehend what they have read.

There will be twenty questions total on this test. About 6-7 questions per story.  Having 20 questions definitely does not leave lots of room for error.  

We have been working all last week on our strategies, and HOW to implement our strategies when answering questions. Somethings i have let the kids know that they should do when answering any questions pertaining to a passage are:

1. Read the passage once through.  

2. Look at, but don't answer the questions

3. Read the passage once more with the stories questions sin mind.

4. Answer the questions, by LOOKING BACK INTO THE STORY

****this is a step that they skip because it takes a little longer...but I do notice that when they use this strategy, they do much better!

5. Prove your answer by highlighting or underlining the answers within the text.

6. Always pick the very BEST answer.

7. CHECK YOUR WORK.

We also have lots of anchor charts in our room to help with some of the content topics that will be tested.  These are the topics:

• Describing main characters
• Using context clues to know what a word means, or the synonym or antonym of a word/ Vocabulary
• Establishing the authors purpose for writing the story
• Retelling the story
• Inferencing
• Order of events
• Non-fiction features
• Finding facts
• Finding the moral or theme

Math Benchmark

The math benchmark will be this Wednesday.  Because the test come from the district, we are not aware of the actual questions on the benchmark.  I do know that there will be 38 questions on the test, and the content they will cover.  All the content on the benchmark has been taught in class and contains the following:


PLACE VALUE
Concrete and pictorial models for place value up to 1,200
standard form expanded form and word form

GREATER THAN/LESS THAN
Generating numbers that are greater than or less than up to 1.200
know the signs <, >, =
order numbers from greatest to lease, or vise versa up to 1,200

NUMBERLINES
Plotting points on a open and closed number line.
Knowing which point is a specific number on a number line
Represent whole numbers as distances on a number line

ADDING/SUBTRACTING
Basic Facts up to 20
Adding up to 4 two digit numbers and subtracting 2 digit numbers
Solving a number sentence with an unknown part

WORD PROBLEMS
One step, and multistep word problems
Create your own word problems from a given number sentence.
Generate and solve situations for a math sentence involving adding and subtracting within 1,000

MONEY
Determine the value of coins up to $1
Use the cent symbol, dollar sign and decimal point to name the value of a collection of coins.

HUNDREDS CHART
adding or subtracting 10 to a number
adding or subtracting 100 to a number

GRAPHING
What do bars and pictures in graphs represent
Organize information onto a graph with intervals of 1 or more
Solve one/multi step problems in a graph
Draw conclusions from a graph
Make questions that pertain to a graph

We will review a bit on Monday and Tuesday in class.  If i notice something your child is struggling with as we are reviewing, I will send a not home with some examples of the things they are having a hard time with.

Newsletter!

Other important information:

1. Next week we will be having a math and reading benchmark.  Look on this blog for information to know, in order for your child to be more prepared.

2. We will have our Valentine's party on Friday... don't forget to bring Valentine's cards and address them "to: my friend" this makes them easier to pass out.

3. Progress reports went home Monday.  Please sign and return these.  I will give you your signed copy by the end of the week.

Money!

I'm excited on how well the kids are doing with counting up money. The only problem they are having is with identifying the coins. When they have to identify coins on a black and white print out, they don't take the time to really look at the pictures on the coins. Here is the strategy we have been using in class. 

We have also talked about the four ways to write money: with a cent sign, with a decimal and dollar sign, using a zero dollar sign and decimal, and also in words.