BANYAN December 18, 2009
Happy Holidays and Best Wishes for the New Year!
Banyan Readers are growing their skills with daily practice.
READING Retelling
We continued to learn how to retell. Banyan readers learned to use
We used our retelling bookmarks with helpful icons that remind us of all
time words when they retell that help
the elements of a good retelling. We
us understand when things happen in the story:
practiced with our reading partners. When we needed to clarify, revise
•First •Next
or check our retelling, we learned to refer back to the text for evidence.
•Then
I still encourage the students to use
•After that •Finally
their own words but to use the text and illustrations to help when they are
They also learned how to retell
confused about a section.
with expression so that the listener is more engaged and to show that we
Banyan Readers: focused and immersed!
really understood the story.
[1]
MATH: COUNTING
MATH AND SCIENCE
Banyan mathematicians traced their footprints and filled them with square tiles, coins and beans. Then we counted and graphed the amounts. We discussed which items were easier and harder to count and why: shape, size etc. We also assessed the students on their ability to accurately count and keep track of a higher set of numbers. The students made counting strips. Each student began by counting by ones and went as high as they could by recording the numbers in order and accurately. We also looked at the Hundred Board. We counted by 2’s, 5’s and 10’s. Counting by 3’s was quite a challenge!
SLIME TRAILS Banyan scientists designed an investigation looking at whether snails produce more slime when moving uphill or downhill. They placed black paper on the plastic tubs and looked at the slime trail going up and going down.
Filling in footprints with pennies
[2]
We played Missing Numbers. We placed pennies on 5 numbers on the hundred board and then our partners had to make a thinking guess about which numbers were missing. We discussed greater than and less than as well as looked for patterns on the board that would help us.