Interviews, Reports and Visualization books

On Monday, Progress Report cards will be coming home. This is an indicator of how your child is progressing both academically and socially. During the interview, your child will be sharing their 'Learning Skills' booklet which is a very important aspect. A student may not always be able to control their marks (e.g., if your child is a struggling reader then getting an 'A' may not be attainable in the first term), however understanding their role as a learner is imperative to success. The interviews will be 20 minutes in length and will be run for the first 10 minutes by your child so it is important that they accompany you. The last 10 minutes will be with all of us, and we will need to discuss goals as per the bottom portion of the report. Please consider in advance what is a realistic goal for your child. Here is a link to the post I created last year if you would like to read more information.
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Visualization
We have been using the reading strategy 'Visualization' for creating mental images. Why is this important?...well according to Debbie Miller (Reading with Meaning) "evoking vivid mental images helps readers create vivid images in their writing". As children develop schema and understanding through both personal experiences and shared experience (reading, conversation, doing) they will be able to increase both their reading comprehension and writing abilities.  Here are 3 great books to use for visualization. We read 'Tough Boris' with Mrs Homewood this week. Students had to listen to the story without benefit of pictures (we put the book inside another book when reading). Then students were challenged to draw what they think 'Tough Boris' looked like based on the descriptors the writer provided. When the pictures were revealed, students were amazed how accurately they visualized how the main character would look. This naturally led to a discussion on adjectives and how important it is to provide them in our own writing.

Here is a sneak peak at some art we are working on. Each student has created a different piece based on the letter of their first name. It is also really helpful for us to understand the math concepts of 'flips, slides and turns'. Hopefully we can get them ready for when you visit us this week for interviews.

Aren't the finished art pieces amazing! Can you see the first letters of their names used as the template?