Day 178 - Summer Literacy and Math Activities - Principal Dressler - Memorial School

This post first appeared on Principal Dressler's Blog

Besides visiting the library and reading books, websites, apps, and games are great ways to reinforce literacy skills over the summer!

Websites

The following is a list of websites with interactive literacy and thinking activities
for children of all ages.

https:// www.iready.com (until Aug. 15th)

https://www.abcya.com

https://www.storylineonline.net

https://www.nationalgeographic.com

https://www.starfall.com

https://kahoot.com

Apps

This list of suggested free apps that will have children practicing their reading,
memory, and thinking and reasoning skills…

Trivia Crack MeeGenius

Chicktionary Learn with Homer

Heads Up The Opposites

Tikatok StorySpark Professor Garfield Fact or Opinion

One-minute reader (small fee)

Board Games

Fun for the whole family!

Spot It! (any version) I Have (Play ‘n Learn System) Blurt

Respond! Word Game WordTeasers (Small Fry) Boggle

Hedbandz Memory (any version) Last Word

Morphology Jr. Scrabble (any version) Apples to Apples

Pairs in Pears Guess Who (any version) Hangman

Don’t Say It Rory’s Story Cubes Taboo for Kids BuzzWord Jr. American Trivia Family Edition
Freeze Up

Smart Mouth Wild Guess Chase Guesstures

.

Burlington Summer

MATH FUN!

Children need to develop prerequisite skills* that are non-mathematical which helps develop mathematical concepts. The summertime is the perfect time to develop these skills. When children play with games and toys, they are naturally engaged in learning many of these prerequisite skills and eventually these skills will transfer to academic settings in the area of Mathematics and Science.

So...take some time out this summer and play a game with your child!

*The prerequisite skills are:

 
• sequencing
• spatial orientation/ space organization
• pattern recognition
• visualization
• estimation
• deductive thinking and inductive thinking

General guideline for choosing good games:

1. Games should be based on strategy
2. Games should last 10 to 15 minutes
3. Games should have 1 or more than 1 prerequisite skills

Sample Games

Simon Cribbage Concentration Rummikub Guess Who Blokus Set Mastermind Yahtzee Mancala Legos Battleship Chess

Checkers Othello Chinese Checkers Jigsaw Puzzles Number war Games Card Games Stratego Quarto Qubic Krypto Shut the Box Connect Four Rush Hour

Adapted from Mahesh Sharma: Mathematics for All: Center for Teaching  www.mathematicsforall.org

Day 174 - Memorial 4th Graders Breakout of the Box - Mrs. Myer - Teacher Librarian

This post first appeared on the BPSEdTech Blog

Memorial 4th graders participated in our Lauren Castillo (Author/Illustrator) Breakout Box puzzle this week during Learning Commons.  A Breakout Box puzzle is a way for students to use teamwork and critical thinking to solve a set of challenges in order to open a locked box. Think escape room but in a box. In this challenge, students had to solve 5 different clues to open 5 different locks.  All the clues were based on Lauren Castillo’s books. The students really enjoyed working together, solving the puzzles with black light flashlights, finding a lock key during a scavenger hunt, describing a trip around the world, alphabetizing synonyms, and answering questions.  

Day 173 - Categorizing in Grade 2 - Mrs. Mondello - Memorial School Reading Specialist

This post first appeared on the Burlington Keys to Literacy Blog

Students sort and categorize pictures words and objects across the curriculum and from the very start of Kindergarten. This year’s KTL training gave me a deeper understanding of how learning to organizing words and discussing the connections between and among a group of words is the beginning of implied main idea. When a child can articulate the connection within a group of details they begin the process of finding the main idea. 

In this activity, we asked a second-grade group of students with experience in categorizing words into previously labeled buckets, (labels) to sort then identify the labels for the buckets. The discussion groups got right to work sorting and determining how to organize the words. At first glance kids impulsively sorted into two clear categories, winter and summer then hit a roadblock with nouns that were places, like TD Garden and Fenway Park. 

Eventually, paired groups brought their category labels to the rug where our larger debate happened. The final two labels given were Bruins hockey essentials and Red Sox Baseball essentials. This was engaging and only took about 15 minutes. 

           

Day 166 - Protect the Popsicle - Mrs. Duncan - Memorial School Kindergarten

This post first appeared on Mrs. Duncan's Blog

We enjoyed a special engineering project with Mr. Musselman from the Burlington Science Center today.  The students built shade structures to try to protect their popsicles from melting in the sun!  The project involved working in a small group to make a plan, build a structure, and test it out!  The students were very successful!  All four groups designed and built structures that kept their popsicles from melting as fast as the one left in the sun.  Please ask your child to describe the project and what he/she did to help protect the popsicle!