4th quarter has begun!! Can you believe it? The school year is almost over, and soon enough the students will be headed to *sniff* MIDDLE SCHOOL!!! Time sure has flown by.
We had a pretty fantastic first day back. The students were well rested (some so much so that they didn’t even want to wake up!) and ready to tackle some review.
This morning we started going over our big tests from last quarter. We talked about some test taking strategies like eliminating answers that simply have incorrect information, and going back and re-reading sections to ensure we find evidence to support our answer choice.
We also started talking today about text structures. Text structures (as the name would imply) describe how a text is put together; how it is structured. Some examples include:
Chronological: a text that is structured in chronological order. Almost all stories are this way. Another good non-fiction example is a biography.
Sequence: Very similar to chronological, but usually refers to things like recipes and instructions.
Cause and Effect: A way to structure a text that describes an effect, and its causes.
Problem and Solution: Similar to cause and effect, but includes a solution to a problem. Oftentimes this includes opinions.
Compare and Contrast: Compares (finds similarities) and contrasts (finds differences) of two or more things.
Tonight students have some short passages to look at, and some graphical organizers to fill out. They should identify which text structure was utilized in each passage, and fill out the appropriate graphical organizer.
In math we went over fractions and equivalent fractions, and took some notes (examples) of solving word problems involving fractions.
Tonight students have some fraction word problems to solve. I expect to see bar models or pictures, as well as each problem to be solved with a sentence. I don’t want to see just 2/4. I want to see something like “Mr. Potter ate 2/4 more of a brownie than Jon”.
Today we also did a little bit of a team building exercise called the Marshmallow Challenge. Make sure you ask your student about it, as it was quite interesting. We’re going to give it another go tomorrow.
so, tl;dr
Text structures are neat:
Fraction word problems are also neat:
Reading is also neat!!
Have a good one,
-Mr. Potter