Students in 2nd through 5th grade will be able to visit the Skills Lab as part of the Related Arts rotation. The goal in the Skills Lab is to support the academic development of students through a variety of activities. The focus is on reading and math, although science is integrated into many of the activities.
Reading
Research has shown that good readers use similar strategies to comprehend text. Students receive instruction on these strategies at school. However, since children’s skills develop as they grow, you are your child’s first teacher. Listed below are some strategies good readers use and what you can do at home to support your child’s literacy development.
*Making Connections
Good readers use their background knowledge to understand text.
What Can Parents Do?
Ask your child the following questions about his/her reading:
What does this book remind you of?
What do you know about this book’s topic?
Does this book remind you of another book?
*Asking Questions
Good readers ask themselves questions as they read. Questioning allows students to wonder about a concept before, during, and after reading. This helps them to construct meaning, enhance meaning, find answers, problem solve, find specific information, discover new information, clarify confusion, and propel research (Strategies That Work, 2000).
What Can Parents Do?
Model questioning when you are reading a book, newspaper, magazine, etc.
Ask open-ended “I wonder” questions
Challenge your child to come up with questions before reading and see if the answer is in the text
Keep track of questions on a question log and find the answers together
Predict what will happen next in a story, film, TV show
*Visualizing
Good readers create a “movie in the mind” when reading. Visualizing personalizes reading and helps keep the reader engaged (Strategies That Work, 2000)
What Can Parents Do?
When students share what they have read, encourage them to describe his/her visualization
Share your own visualizations after reading
Have your child draw what he/she sees after reading
If a book is made into a movie, watch the movie and compare how your visions differed from the movie
*Making Inferences
Good readers use clues from the story to interpret meaning and deepen understanding by drawing from personal experiences, prior knowledge, visualizations, and predictions. This helps them to determine the “big idea”.
What Can Parents Do?
When selecting books, or before reading a book, encourage your child to make predictions
Discuss the plot and theme
Ask the following questions about the story:
How did you know that?
Why did you think that would happen?
What do you think this story was about?
How do you think the character feels?
Does this story remind you of anything?
*Determining Importance
When reading non-fiction, good readers can identify the most important information. This is extremely important because children use background knowledge to acquire new knowledge. Identifying essential ideas is a prerequisite to developing insight that can be used to deepen understanding of more complex concepts. (Strategies That Work, 2000).
What Can Parents Do?
Before reading, ask your child what he/she knows about a topic and what he/she would like to learn
During reading, help your child look for clues to determine importance in the text. Pay attention to:
First and last lines of a paragraph
Titles and headings
Pictures and captions
Highlighted/italicized words
Framed text
After reading, ask your child what he/she has learned
*Synthesizing
Good readers “weave” together their own ideas with what they have read to develop complete thoughts. Comprehension improves when readers make sense of information and act upon it by making judgments or evaluations of the author’s purpose to form their own ideas, opinions or perspectives. This is the most complex form of comprehension.What Can Parents Do?
Discuss age appropriate current events with an emphasis on judgments and opinions
Ask questions with no clear answers
Ask “How has your thinking changed from reading that piece?”
Becoming literate is one of the most important journeys that your child will ever take, and you are the person who shares most of this journey with your child. You can start him on the right course by providing language, reading, and writing experiences from the earliest years of life all the way through high school and beyond.
----------- from the International Reading Association’s What is Family Literacy? pamphlet
Math
The State Board of Education approved the Next Generation Sunshine State Standards (NGSSS) for mathematics in September of 2007. As schools transition to the new standards, each grade level will be focusing on three Big Ideas for each grade level. Instruction and activities in the Skills Lab are centered on supporting these Big Ideas . The Big Ideas for grades 2 through 5 are listed below.
2nd Grade
BIG IDEA 1 - Develop an understanding of base-ten numerations system and place-value concepts.
BIG IDEA 2 - Develop quick recall of addition facts and related subtraction facts and fluency with multi- digit addition and subtraction.
BIG IDEA 3 - Develop an understanding of linear measurement and facility in measuring lengths.
3rd Grade
BIG IDEA 1 - Develop understandings of multiplication and division and strategies for basic multiplication facts and related division facts.
BIG IDEA 2 - Develop an understanding of fractions and fraction equivalence.
BIG IDEA 3 - Describe and analyze properties of two-dimensional shapes.
4th Grade
BIG IDEA 1 - Develop quick recall of multiplication facts and related division facts and fluency with whole number multiplication.
BIG IDEA 2 - Develop an understanding of decimals, including the connection between fractions and decimals.
BIG IDEA 3 - Develop an understanding of area and determine the area of two-dimensional shapes.
5th Grade
BIG IDEA 1 - Develop an understanding of and fluency with division of whole numbers.
BIG IDEA 2 - Develop an understanding of and fluency with addition and subtraction of fractions and decimals.
BIG IDEA 3 - Describe three-dimensional shapes and analyze their properties, including volume and surface area.
***For more information about the NGSSS, visit the Florida Department of Education website at http://www.fldoe.org/default.asp?flsh=false .