TEACHING PLACE VALUE

Place value can be a difficult concept for young children to master. Knowing that numbers vary in value according to where they fall on the place value chart is a critical skill that students must master before they move onto more advanced calculations. In these pictures students are practicing building numbers with manipulatives. Each one of those orange pieces has a specific value. One single cube is called a Unit and represent 1. The Rod is made up of 10 units and has a value of 10. The Flats are made of 10 rows of rods and have a value of 100. Finally, the large cubes are made up of 10 flats and have a value of 1000. Students are given a number that they need to represent with manipulatives and then show that number on a place value chart. I would encourage you to work on place value at home. Write out a large number, for grade 3 up to 999 and grade 4 up to 9999. Have them show you where the ones column, tens column and hundred columns are. Point to a digit in side a large number and have them tell you what it's worth. For example, the digit 9 in the number 290 represents 90 because it is in the tens column. Please call or send me a note if you have any questions regarding Place Value, or any other math concept you would like to review with your child.

MORNING SNACKS SUSPENDED TILL FURTHER NOTICE

Unfortunately the St.John morning snack program will have to be suspended for the next little while. We are encouraging students whenever possible to add one or two additional snacks in their lunches. I will notify you as soon as we are able to begin the morning snack program.
Thank you

Success in Retell!!

Successfully learning how to retell important details from any text is a critical skill that students need to master. We have to explicitly teach them the process to be able to be successful at this task. For most tasks this looks like this:
"I do, We do , You do". This is a gradual release model where we, as the instructor, Model the behaviours and skills we are trying to teach. The next step is doing it together in a shared lesson with either a whole class or small group. Finally, we give them an alternate task where they can demonstrate their learning. There is no 'magic bullet', this process is methodical and time consuming.
In these pictures you can see the anchor charts that we use to support the skills we are trying to teach. The Learning Goals chart lays out exactly the skills from the curriculum and then the Success Criteria explicitly state what the students need to do to be successful in this assignment. Today we are working in partners to make it a little less intimidating for the students. We will then share our work and give our friends feedback on their work. Later next week, after we review several more examples of retelling, then students  will be asked to independently perform the tasks.

Building Stamina for Independence

The writing process for primary students takes a very long time to develop. We have to be patient and take them from where they are to where we need them to be. This starts by building sustained stamina for writing. It's critical that students build independence in order for them to write for longer periods of time. The chart below shows the students that we are slowly improving how long we can stay on task during our language block. The R stands for Reading, the RS stands for Read to Someone and the W stands for writing. Today on September 16, the class was able to work EFFECTIVELY  on Reading for 16 minutes, RS reading to someone for 11 minutes and Writing for 8 minutes.  I have sent home a very brief writing assignment home for the students to complete. Please have your child read you the instructions and then just sit back and see how they do. You are encouraged to help them with talking through the assignment but please leave the writing UNcorrected. More posts will follow in the following days to help explain more about our language program.

Learning and Fun Too!!

Children need to know what the learning expectations and the criteria for success are. Today we started introducing the students to Learning Goals and Success criteria with a fun gym activity. The pictures below show the chart we discussed before the activity and pictures of the students actively participating. The Learning Goals are actually curriculum expectations. The Success Criteria let students know what they need to do to be successful. Many more posts to come--subscribe to the blog and be alerted by email.

Diagnostic Assessment

As teachers we are constantly trying to figure out where kids 'are' in any particular subject area. We do this several ways, but today we are working with a 100 chart. We had the students follow a set of instructions, both verbal and visual to complete a 100 chart independently. After that, the students work in small groups looking for number patterns in the 100 chart. Take a look at some pictures below. 

First day of School!!

Just having some fun with a class scavenger hunt to get to know each other a little better.