Welcome back!

          Room 23 students have had a busy week back from vacation!  We have been reading a lot of non-fiction, discussion text features and text structure in a way that deepens our understanding.  Here is a great link to the five text structures that we have discussed.  Here is another link that explains text features and allows you to practice using them in an interactive manner.  In math we are continuing to practice multplying fractions and mixed numbers.  There will be a test next week on converting between fractions, decimals and percents, converting between improper fractions and mixed numbers, adding, subtracting and multiplying fractions and mixed numbers, and finding equivalent fractions.  All of these skills can be practiced on IXL.

Scholastic book orders

The catalogs for November book orders were sent home today.   It is easy to place your order online, and each time you order on line our class gets $3 to spend on books for our classroom library.  Here is a link to scholastic's website.
As I browsed through the catalogs I noticed several books that are on the list of 25 books that were nominated for the Massachusettts Children's Book Award this year.  If you have lost your list, you can click here to see a copy of it. Even if your child is not participating in the challenge to read all 25 books, this list is a great resource when picking out new and interesting books.  Any child who reads 5 of the books before February 1 will be eligible to vote for their choice for best book.

Reading comprehension strategies

We have been talking about strategies that good readers use all year.  Some of these strategies include activating prior knowledge, making connections (text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to world), asking questions, synthesizing information from various sources, inferring, and creating mental images.  Yesterday we went to the computer lab so that students could try out a reading comprehension strategies activity from this website.  Please talk with your child about what they learned from the activity, and how they use these strategies whenever they read.  There are many activities on the website, and we only got to a few, so I would also encourage students to continue to explore the other strategies.

Helping your child pick books - Part 2

Here is a link to a tool on the scholastic website.   The 'book alike' tool on this page allows you to type in a book that your child enjoyed.  You can suggest that another book should be easier, similar, or harder to the one you input.  It will then suggest several titles that meet your criteria.

Helping your child pick out books

We have been spending a lot of time in class talking about choosing just right books.  One of the questions I hear most often is, "How do I know if my child is in a just right book?"   Click here for a link to a bookmark that breaks this task down into a few simple steps.

The theory is that if the child doesn't make any mistakes the book is like one you might take on vacation.  It is very easy, and fun to read occasionally.  If the child makes two or three mistakes, there is room for growth and new learning.  If a child struggles with more than three words, this could lead to frustration, and therefore
it would be best to save the book for a later date, or have it read aloud.