November, 2013
Ahoy Parents,
The students seem to be very excited to share the lighthouses they have created with the rest of the Canterbury community.
Thank you once again for all you do to support us as we grow to learn, to love, to serve: to live.
Peace,
Elaine Hoover
The Bee Line: A Honey of A Newsletter
September 24, 2013
7 Keys to Great Reading
Reading plays a key role in the academic success of your child.
Researchers have identified seven specific strategies used by proficient readers. In class, we focus on these strategies as we read orally together from the textbook. I also model the use of each strategy as I read from the “read aloud” book we share as a class. We will focus on a new strategy with each story we encounter. In that manner, students will build their knowledge and use of the strategies. The words “strategy focus” will become part of their vocabulary.
According to Susan Zimmermann in Seven Keys to Comprehension, the seven reading strategies are:
Create mental images:
Good readers create a wide range of visual, auditory, and other sensory images as they read.
Use background knowledge:
Good readers use their relevant prior knowledge before, during, and after reading to enhance their understanding of what they are reading.
Ask questions:
Good readers generate questions before, during, and after reading to clarify meaning, make predictions, and focus their attention on what’s important.
Make inferences:
Good readers use prior knowledge and information from what they read to make predictions, seek answers to questions, draw conclusions, and create interpretations that deepen their understanding of the text.
Determine the most important ideas or themes:
Good readers identify key ideas or themes as they read, and they can distinguish between important and unimportant information.
Synthesize information: Good readers keep track of their thinking as it evolves during reading to get overall meaning.
Solve Problems
Good readers are aware of when they understand and when they don’t. When having trouble understanding the words, phrases, or passages being read, they use a wide range of problem-solving strategies to gain a better understanding. The strategies may include: skipping ahead, rereading, asking questions, using a dictionary, and reading out loud.
The great thing about learning the seven key strategies to good reading is that they may be applied whether a student is reading a book for pleasure, reading an article online, or a science textbook.
Language Arts
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In our reading series during the next few weeks, we will be exploring the theme JOURNEYS. The stories we read will take us on a dogsled race in Alaska, on an ocean voyage, and back in time. You may want to share with your child about a time you took a journey. Describe to your child some of the things you experienced along the way. Did your journey require you to be courageous or persevere during a difficult time? Children love to hear stories about the people that they love. Enjoy your time together.
Students will be required to read and pass tests on at least two Accelerated Reader book per month through out the school year. The AR tests should be taken at school. We have a computer set up in the classroom for AR tests.
English
In English, we will be working on identifying and using declarative, interrogative, command, and exclamatory sentences to keep our writing interesting. We will identify subjects and predicates. We will learn to combine subjects and predicates to improve our writing.
Writing
During our “Writing Workshop”, the students will be guided through the writing process to write a narrative about a personal experience. The steps in the writing process are pre-writing, drafting, revising, proofreading, and publishing.
Mathematics
In mathematics, we have completed a unit on naming and constructing geometric figures using a compass and straight edge. The students learned to identify and understand the properties of polygons, identify and describe right angles, parallel lines, and classify quadrangles. We are also practicing quick recall of multiplication facts.
In the next unit, the students will practice place value skills with numbers up to the millions place;:organize and display data using median, mean, range, maximum, and minimum; and solve multidigit addition and subtraction problems.
It would be helpful for your child if you were to review math homework together. Ask your child to explain to you their reasoning for the answers they have given to the questions or problems on the assignment. If you note a mistake, guide your child in correcting it without “giving” the answer away. You may want to indicate problems that required your assistance by circling the number by the problem. I will note those problems and review them in class.
Each student has taken home a mathematics reference to assist them with homework assignments. One reference book will be kept in their desk at school.
Weekly Report
As a way of keeping parents informed about the work their child has done in class, I will be sending home a Weekly Report. Your child’s test grades for the prior week, along with class work and homework grades will be included in the report. The report will come to you in your child’s binder and will be followed by the test papers and class work your child completed during the week. Please sign the report and your child will return it to school the next school day. Please leave the papers in the binder. The papers will be placed in the binder under the appropriate subject area by your child in class the next day.
Check out our class website:
http://www.quia.com/pages/hoover4.html
Fourth Grade Service Learning Project-Fall
The Fourth Grade students at Canterbury School will host the
Mini Crop Hunger Walk- Sponsored by Urban Ministry on October 25. The walk takes place on campus beginning at 2:30 in front of Fry Hall.
The funds raised will benefit Greensboro Urban Ministry and Church World Services
Thank you for all you are doing to support your child as we continue this journey together.
Peace,
Ms Hoover
On April 1, 2009 Canterbury School welcomed Nobel Peace Prize nominee, Greg Mortenson to our campus. Following is an article that appeared in the Greensboro News and Record.
Teach Your Children Well: Writer Preaches Peace
by Jeri Rowe
Elaine Hoover’s fourth-graders know him as Greg.
They saw him a few days ago at their school, looking like a Rotary Club member in his blue blazer as he lumbered from lunchroom to classroom to an outdoor recreation spot by a lake.
But they knew he was special. He had been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. Two weeks ago , he journeyed to Pakistan to receive the country’s highest civil award for building schools where danger and violence reign.
And last week, he spent two days at their school, Greensboro’s Canterbury School.
He spoke to students at Canterbury — as well as five other private schools — and packed the Carolina Theatre on Thursday night for his talk about peace, the power of children and the importance of education in our war-on-terror world.
He’s Greg Mortenson, and he’s a big deal. He’s a mountaineer turned humanitarian who has helped build 78 schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan, educated 33,000 students and raised at least $8 million .
But to Hoover’s fourth-graders, like Anna Theall , he’s just Greg.
“He’s opened my heart,” she says.
Anna and her classmates had read “Three Cups of Tea,” Mortensen’s 2006 book about why he started building schools 16 years ago on the other side of the world after nearly dying climbing one of the world’s tallest peaks.
That’s the way Mortenson, a big man with a soft voice, has affected the world view of students at a private Episcopal school where tuition costs $12,500 a year.
They realize they have been given much, they say, and they believe much should be given back to the world they live in.
It’s like one of Mortenson’s favorite quotes. It’s from Mother Teresa: “What we are trying to do may be just a drop in the ocean, but the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.”
Fourth-grader Graham Morphis believes he can be that missing drop.
“My teacher, Ms. Hoover, says children are the same the world over, and everyone should have the opportunity to learn,” Graham says. “And Greg says children can do anything, and a lot of little people coming together can make a big change in the world.”
In their little world, our city of Greensboro, they have.
Fourth-graders like Graham spent months collecting the most ignored piece of currency in America — the penny — and continued a novel fundraising idea called “Pennies For Peace.”
They collected pennies in buckets, jars, coffee cans and clay swans. They collected pennies in their homes, restaurants, offices and an antique store run by a student’s grandmother known as Ninny .
They collected pennies in parking lots and even scoured their rooms, purses, pockets and couch cushions for pennies to give to Mortenson’s charity, Central Asia Institute .
And anytime someone came to their house, they often asked, “Do you have any pennies in your pocket?”
Meanwhile, they sold spin art door to door. They sold homemade cookies and brownies and lemonade they squeezed from tables parked at the end of their driveway.
They created a hallway mural, made tea cups out of clay and wrote a skit, a commercial, even a song as they got their entire school reading the book and collecting money.
The final tally: $10,114.07, a figure the fourth-graders can rattle off like the date of their birth.
The donation was matched by two other donations. So, during Friday’s chapel service, students heard their school gave Central Asia Institute $30,000 — enough to build and support one school for five years somewhere in Afghanistan or Pakistan.
“We can do more,” one student said Friday.
But will they? Here’s fourth-grader Sun Ho Chung.
“Before we started ‘Pennies For Peace,’ I didn’t know about Pakistan or Afghanistan, but after reading the book, I felt I had to help,” he said.
“A lot of people get in danger just because they want an education, and they’re scared of land mines, and girls get beaten by just going to school, and in my mind, I should be doing more.
“Not just raising money,” Sun Ho says. “I should start my own charity to help other people. Look what Greg did.”
Mortenson received $10,000 for his two-day visit from Canterbury’s community service fund. Security guards hovered around campus to keep away overzealous fans who called the school saying, “I’ve got to see him! He’s my life!” He stayed under an anonymous name at a local hotel because of the hysteria his book has caused.
Some people see him as America’s Mother Teresa. He simply sees himself as a 51-year-old father from Montana , a man who travels the world and gives 300 speeches a year about how children can change our world.
“I think kids can really do anything,” Mortenson says.
There’s a cynic in all of us who wonders if Mortenson’s lessons about peace and community service will resonate next year — or even next week.
But visit Elaine Hoover’s room. There, on a board, you’ll see a litany of ideas generated by her fourth-graders — all from reading the book written by Greg.
You can still communicate with others even though they speak a different language.
If you don’t make it to the top try to find another mountain.
It doesn’t matter what you look like.
Have hope.
And on and on and on.
“There will be a time in their life where they will be called to be a peacemaker,” said Hoover, a teacher for 32 years . “And I want them to have practice. If we can’t get this right, what else really matters?”
(c) News & Record 2009
http://www.news-record.com/content/2009/04/04/article/teach_your_children_well_writer_preaches_peace
