Reading Plus News
Six Week Update for Parents & Students
Classroom Happenings...
We completed our study of poetry and drama recently. Though it will be a little bit before we look at either genre again, it is important that your child does not lose the skills they learned. The best remedy is to have them READ, read, ReAd!!! Reading increases their comprehension, vocabulary and reasoning, no matter the genre!
When we return from our "long winter's nap", we will begin an in-depth study of inferring. This is a skill that is on 75% or more of the STAAR test, so it is vital that we not only look at how to infer, but we begin to think like writers and decide why the writer does certain things. Kids don't typically realize that this is a skill we use ALL DAY LONG--like "reading" people or "reading" a situation. For example if it has been snowing outside and many of the cars have snow on top, but the one outside of the opened garage does not, we would infer that the car without snow must have been parked inside the garage. Inferring is not only about reading expressions, tones, and body language, it's about "reading between the lines" of a text where the answers are not explicitly stated.
So as we begin our inferring journey there will be many opportunities for you to support what's going on in our classroom. Quite simply, questioning your child on a daily basis helps their ability to make inferences. Check out other ideas below on how you can help out!
How Can I Help?
- As you ride down the road, pay attention to billboards and ask your child questions. These are full of inferred messages.
- Play charades and have your child use their schema + the clues you act out to make an inference.
- List things that characters in a book say and do. Then come up with what those actions show about the character.
- Cover up one of the panes in a comic strip and have your child infer what may have happened and justify why.
- Poems of any kind are full of things to infer! Have a discussion about what you think an author meant by using a piece of figurative language.
READING PLUS CHALLENGE
Did you know YOU will be out of school for 10 (TEN) days, not including weekends?? I don’t want you to lose the valuable reading tools we’ve been using at school so here’s a little challenge for you…
- When you complete only 4 SeeReaders at 80% or better and 2 ReadArounds beginning December 21, 2015—January 3, 2016, I will have a special surprise just for you!
- Log onto https://login.readingplus.com/ (CLICK HERE TO CONNECT)
- Site Code = rpcreekviewms
- Your username and password is the same that you use at school.
Mrs. Brownlee
Email: jbrownlee@ems-isd.net
Website: http://www.emsisd.com/Domain/4371
Location: Creekview Middle School, Bob Hanger Street, Fort Worth, TX, United States
Phone: (817) 237-4261
Twitter: @BrownleeJodi