3B Blog News from Mrs. Kerian: August 2012

Thursday, August 30, 2012

Fun at the 3rd grade Olympics

Monday, August 27, 2012

Everyone Reads....Even LeBron James!

This is an excellent video about LeBron James, currently the best NBA basketball player there is! He is a great example of the power of reading! What do you think his message to kids, and everyone, is?

Great Start to the Year!

We are off to a wonderful start to a new school year! I am very excited! The students have tried many new things in the past few days that they are approaching with confidence. We have had some frustrations, as there always is some, when you are dealing with technology. We have also had a lot of fun learning.

If your 3B child has not mentioned it, they have started their blog pages. We made our first attempt at accessing them and making a very short post last Friday. Some did it successfully while others will review it today. They are very, very excited to have their own blog pages and were excited to know their audience is the world! We will be sharing writing, thoughts, pictures, etc. throughout the year via our blog pages. Students would love to have their parents check the blogs and comment!!! You do not need to sign in to comment. Just read the blog post and comment at the bottom, but be sure to sign your name. :) They are waiting for some comments to be made. Encourage grandparents and relatives to comment as well! Thanks!

Slowly but surely, we attempted to access email as well (for those given parental permission). I think most are getting the hang of it now.... it will get easier with practice. The computers weren't cooperating at first, but after some tweaking, everything went super! I wanted to let parents know that email for school is used only for students to email within the school at this time. That is just for monitoring purposes. So, while it would be nice for your child to email you outside the school, that is not allowed at the current time. You may send them emails but don't expect a response back as we are just working out the "bumps" and becoming familiar with it for the students. Thanks for your understanding.

Today we jumped into our schedule a little as we had a few things to finish up from Friday. I do have great pictures to share from our Olympics that I will be posting tonight as well. Although it was very hot, I think the students had a super time! Look for those pictures soon! Everyone turned out to be a winner!

Please remember to return all papers that were sent home to be signed. I am sending one today asking for parent emails as well as if you would mind checking my blog page via internet instead of me sending paper copies home. Read through the letter and return it tomorrow.

We are off to a great start! I am loving all the smiles every day. One of the 3B students stated, "The day is just flying by, and that was because we were having fun learning!" That is what school is all about!

Have a great week!

Friday, August 24, 2012

3B Student Wordle About First Few Days

Here is our Wordle about the first two days of school. The bigger the words are (except 3B), the more often the students said that particular word. Great start to the year. (Click on the Wordle to see it enlarged). Have a great weekend!

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Welcome to the Future!

Wow! I had a super night tonight at Open House meeting all my 3B family! I am so pumped for this year and know it is going to be fantastic!!! I will post photos from the Open House tomorrow with all the smiling faces of the students!

It is an exciting time to be a student at Howard-Winn as we have a new superintendent who has passion and motivation to make our school district stronger than ever! Yesterday, at our teacher's meetings, he shared this video by Brad Paisley called "Welcome to the Future"! Funny thing is that I posted this video on my blog a year ago, thinking, "Wow. This really is a fitting song for our schools." His showing of the video yesterday reaffirmed that. And it is worth showing again.

Your child in our 3B family is the future! The sky is the limit!

Thanks for a great Open House and I am looking forward to teaming up with all of you throughout the year!

Welcome to 3B!

Reading Comprehension Strategies

Inferencing: Experienced readers make inferences as they read. Readers use what they already know and think about what they have read to construct meaning. The reader should ask themselves, "What I already know in my brain" and "What did I just read or see?" to make an inferences that is not stated by the author of person.

Determining Important Information: Determining important information is a strategy that helps us pick out the most important ideas we read. The first line of a paragraph may say the main idea of the page, but a reader should read through the details to decide what is the important information. The reader should ask themselves, "What is the author trying to teach me?"

Summarize: A summary is a paragraph or a statement in your own words that gives the most important ideas from what you have read. Readers determine important information, make inferences, and visualize when summarizing. We use the graphic organizer of "Somebody....Wanted....But....So.....Then....". "Somebody" is the character. "Wanted" would be the what the character wanted. "But" would be the problem. "So" would be how the problem was solved, and "Then" would be the resolution or end.

Predicting:When a reader predicts, they use information from the text along with their own knowledge and experiences to make thoughtful or informed guesses about what will happen in the text. When your child is reading at home, encourage them to stop and share predictions he/she may have as they are reading.

Identifying Text Structure: Recognizing how a piece of writing is organized can help readers understand what is happening. There can be different ways a text is structured.

* Sequential - in order

* Cause and Effect

* Question / Answer

* Steps in a Process

When reading at home, discuss how the text is organized and structure.

Ask and Answer Questions: Experienced readers ask questions about the text in order to understand what they are reading. Asking questions helps readers visualize, monitor comprehension and determine important information. Answers to these questions may be found in the text, or put together from the reader's own experience. At home, parents can encourage students to stop and ask questions while they read and recognize when answers are within the text or needed to be answered by own experience.

Paraphrasing: When readers paraphrase, they tell main ideas using their own words. This helps them check their understanding of what they have read. At home, parents can encourage their student to read a selection, flip the book over, and tell them main ideas from their reading in their own words. Flip the book back over and read another section or page before flipping it over again and paraphrasing his/her reading.

3B Blog News from Mrs. Kerian