Nonfiction Reading and Writing
Reader’s Workshop: Informational Text
This week we launched our new reading unit. In this unit students will be exploring non-fiction and how they work. Non-fiction books are different in that they have many different features (headings, table of contents, maps, bold words, diagrams etc) and use graphic aids to help the reader. Also, these books tend to have unfamiliar and multisyllabic words that can be difficult to pronounce. In this unit, students will learn reading strategies to help them navigate these types of books.
We started the unit by having students explore a variety of informational text and notice how they differ from fictional text. When reading with your child you can ask:
What informational text features do you notice?
How do they help you as a reader?
What do informational readers do?
What can you do when you come to a word you don’t know?
What do you think that means? Why?
What are you learning?
We also learned informational readers get their minds ready to read by looking at the cover, flipping through the pages and thinking about what they might learn before they even begin to read.
Writers Workshop
In writing we have been writing letters in preparation for the post office, which opened this week. The students have been very eager and excited to receive and send mail. We are also in the beginning stages of non-fiction writing. To help your child, remind them of all the things they are experts on! This will help them when generating ideas/topics for their writing.
Math
Here is a fun game you can play at home to practice addition. When we played at school we were able to make a total of more than 20. In the attached version the total cannot be more than 20. You can play either way.
http://mathjourneys.com/documents/Close_to_20.pdf