Blog Post
Hello Families -
Since we have this day off, I'll update you on some information from the last couple of weeks of school.
Our days are going well and the 5th graders are living into their new responsibilities. They are very excited about working with their kindergarten buddies. To prepare for reading with their buddies, we have spent our reading time reflecting on, and discussing, the reading strategies we use when reading books. The hope that is by understanding our own strategies and attitudes towards reading, students will be more aware of how to help their kindergarten buddies beyond just "sounding out" (which is often treated as the de-facto thing to say when reading with young readers). Here is a list of just some of the strategies students used when making sense of fiction, nonfiction, and graphic novels:
Since we have this day off, I'll update you on some information from the last couple of weeks of school.
Our days are going well and the 5th graders are living into their new responsibilities. They are very excited about working with their kindergarten buddies. To prepare for reading with their buddies, we have spent our reading time reflecting on, and discussing, the reading strategies we use when reading books. The hope that is by understanding our own strategies and attitudes towards reading, students will be more aware of how to help their kindergarten buddies beyond just "sounding out" (which is often treated as the de-facto thing to say when reading with young readers). Here is a list of just some of the strategies students used when making sense of fiction, nonfiction, and graphic novels:
- Repeating words and paragraphs when they don’t make sense
- When don’t know how to pronounce a person’s name, change it
- Navigating punctuation (ellipse, exclamation, question marks)
- Chunking the word
- Is the word like another word (medic - medicine)
- Graphic novel features (e.g., how speech bubbles are used)
- Non-fiction text features
- Go back to see if there was an explanation
- Look at the pictures ahead to give you and idea of the story
- Books with only pictures - you have to pay more attention to the details of the pictures
- Reading a series give you background knowledge for the other books
Here are some more pictures of our reading buddy time:
We have also jumped straight into all academic areas.
- In math we are expanding our knowledge of place value through multiplying and dividing decimals
- In science we built terrariums so we can study ecosystems and how various biotic and abiotic factors (living and nonliving) affect the ecosystem. This science unit will involve an expert project (more information later)
- In writing we are looking at a DBQ and discussing why freedom of the press is important to a democracy
- In social studies we quickly looked at the Reconstruction period. When we return we will jump into Western Movement and the Industrial Age.
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