Yasmin blew us away yesterday, when she used an open number line to solve the following problem:
452 = n + 323
Her strategy was awesome and she was able to show and explain her work! Good mathematicians can always defend where they got their answer!
Nancy, Francisco, and Alaina did a great job showing their work on the following word problems. I like how they used numbers and words to explain their thinking! Can you aspire to make your work like theirs? What strategies can you borrow from these learners?
Cloze reading activities challenge you to think deeply as a reader. By picking the correct word to fit into the sentence, you are showing that you understand how to construct and read sentences.
As we continue studying current events this week we are going to look deeper into the text features that help us understand what we’re reading. Like we’ve learned before, text features are anything other than the main paragraphs of the text, that help us better understand the author’s intended message. Today, we are going to read a Newsela.com article on the Bighorn sheep in California. These sheep had almost become extinct and only 105 were left. Now there are 500 sheep! Read the article to discover how scientists helped save the Bighorn sheep!
The article comes with a great map to help you understand where these sheep are located. Study the map and see what you notice. Is there a key or legend to help you out? Do the different colors and shadings mean anything? Is it important to read the text on the map as well?
Today, as you read from a Scholastic News magazine of your choice, notice how the text features help you better understand the text!
We took our whole class math block to a whole new level this week! We played “Agree, Argue, Aspire”, worked in teams and independently, took our fraction knowledge deeper, and capped it all off with multiplication Jeopardy! Our class was focused and engaged all week long, and you have made me so proud!
We studied Karmyn’s work on her practice EOG test. Check out how she tried three different strategies before getting an answer with which she was confident! Karmyn’s work showed us that she can truly persevere when things get tough. Her example gave us a lot to aspire to!
Don’t be afraid to try more than one strategy!
Never be afraid to start all over!
Here we are studying Karmyn’s work and deciding what we agreed with, what we wanted to argue with, and what we could aspire to do in our own work!
If you’d like to try out multiplication Jeopardy at home click on the picture below. Get your family involved! See if you can beat your siblings and parents! Remember your good sportsmanship. Even though the girls were our big winner our boys acted like true gentlemen!
We have gone current events crazy in room B11! This week we have read several news articles on topics currently happening around the world. There is so much going on out there! Here are two more articles for you to read.
Check out these headlines about children around the world:
Thank you very much for my new blue frisbee! I absolutely love it! I like to put it in my bed and push it around the house. I accidentally pushed it under the bookcase and my mom had to get it back out for me. It was very thoughtful of you to think of me!
We know that our actions can hurt other people. If I hit or pinch someone I can immediately see the hurt on their face. But what about our words? Can our words hurt others? Can our words really cause any true problems? NBA Clippers owner, Donald Sterling, learned a lesson about using kind words this week. He lost his job and can never be a part of NBA basketball for the rest of his life because of things he said. You can read more on this topic here.
So what do you think, can words hurt as much as a punch or pinch?
Today we played a new game to help us think deeper about our math strategies. We worked on our 3 A’s:
Agree!
Argue!
Aspire!
To play this game we looked at a math problem that had already been solved. We picked one thing that we agreed with. For example, “Oh, this student used the correct numbers.” or “I can see that they chose the right operation because this is a multiplication problem!”
Next, we had to find something to argue with like, “I would have drawn out based ten blocks instead of using the algorithm,” or “They chose the correct numbers but the wrong operation, they should have divided.”
Finally, we chose something that student did that we could aspire to! For example, “I like how they drew pictures to visualize their math,” or “I like how they wrote their answer out in words so that they could check if they really answered what the questions was asking.”
We are going to continue using the 3 A’s strategy to learn from our peers and aspire to their greatness!
On my favorite nonfiction reading for kids website, Newsela.com, there is an interesting article on children in Afghanistan who can’t afford to go to school. Read the article and let me know what you think. Can you imagine not being able to go to school? How would that change your life?
Shukriya, 8, sells toilet paper in downtown Kabul, Afghanistan. Although child labor is illegal in the country, it is still around today, due to a lack of enforcement and the need of many families to have as many members earning income as possible.
We have been looking at different methods of representing fractions so that we can picture them in our minds. Two strategies we have tried are, representing fractions on a number line and drawing out fraction models . Both strategies help us visualize the fractions we’re working with and make it very easy to see if two fractions are equivalent.
So, which method helps you visualize the fraction better, fractions on a number line or fraction models?
The “Fraction Cake” lesson the students are working on in the photos can be found here!
Nancy, Francisco, and Alaina did a great job showing their work on the following word problems. I like how they used numbers and words to explain their thinking! Can you aspire to make your work like theirs? What strategies can you borrow from these learners?
