Somehow the holiday season is upon us again. Time flies when you are having fun! I'll take a minute this week to catch you up on what we have been up to in math classes lately. Please also watch your email for the latest Sign-up Genius to help with our next engineering challenge which will be December 15 & 16 during regular math classes. 3rd Grade Math - Multiplication and division have been our focus all semester and will continue to be for one more unit. Before we break for Christmas, we'll also be covering a unit on perimeter and area. I have been so amazed with the growth these kids have made this year in their ability to explain their thinking and justify their reasoning. 4th Grade Math - Fourth graders have been working learning to multiply multi-digit numbers. If you did not have a chance, read over last week's post about the "crazy" methods that your child has learned and how we try to build understanding as well as computational knowledge. We just took our test over this work this week. We'll move onto long division after Thanksgiving which will probably take us to Christmas. This is another challenging concept for 4th graders to understand so please be patient as I work with them to build background knowledge before we learn the traditional/standard algorithm. 5th Grade Math - After beginning the year with challenging algebra equations and inequalities units, we have moved onto a unit on integers and rational numbers. Otherwise known as the positive and negative numbers work. Students have learned a lot of new vocab (absolute value, irrational numbers, rational numbers, and more.) We just took our test on this unit this week. When we return from the short break, we'll be working coordinate grids and beginning to learn how to graph formulas/algebra equations. Last week I shared a project that the 5th grade language arts/creativity students worked on. This week 4th grade language arts/creativity students completed projects too. These students have been reading books about courageous children that defied the odds. One group was reading Hatchet while the other group was reading Bud, Not Buddy. Below are some examples of students projects to share what they learned while reading and to showcase their creative abilities through writing, art and more. Students had lots of choices from creating a timeline for their character's story, creating a flyer for the jazz band in Bud, creating a new cover for Hatchet, writing their character's rules for life, drawing characters or scenes, comparing yourself to the main character, and more as you can see here. Fun presentations today! One final note wishing all of you a restful, happy Thanksgiving this year. May it be filled with family, friends, and plenty of good food!
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To begin a couple of quick reminders... Our first Math Olympiad contest with 4th and 5th grade is on Tuesday, November 15. Report cards will be coming home this week. If your child is in my math class, their math grade comes from me. Reading and writing grades are determined by work in homeroom. The time they spend with me is considered enrichment so the work we do is not graded. Let me know if you have questions. This week I would like to help parents understand why math learning may look different from when we were in school. I feel like this information is most timely for the 4th grade parents who have been watching their students learn to perform long multiplication (and soon long division too!) You may remember how when you were in school, there was one method taught by your teacher, you memorized the steps, and did the tasks assigned. I heard a lot of the 4th graders come to school and say, "My mom/dad tried to show me this other way, and it didn't make any sense." We do ultimate want students to learn the standard algorithm mainly because it is, in most cases, the most efficient. However, we want to make sure students understand how and why math works now. Let me see if I can share rationale behind what some term "new math." Let me share some images from the 4th grade math curriculum, and show you how we try to build a full understanding of math and concepts instead of just teaching a procedure. But also how ultimately, they will learn the standard algorithm with understanding intact... I found another teacher blog that I think makes the rationale clear why we don't begin with the standard/traditional algorithm anymore like the "olden days." I will summarize the points and attach the link here for the details: https://medium.com/i-math/common-core-math-is-not-the-enemy-c05b68f46b3e#.1vtlxy5if Why don't we teach only standard algorithms anymore? 1. Students forget. Learning steps and memorizing them with no "why" doesn't make for good long-term memory. 2. Students aren't machines. We are preparing students for jobs that will require problem solving and that requires them to understand "why" not just perform tasks. 3. Students have number sense. We need to build on their prior understanding and scaffold their learning. While the traditional algorithm seems so logical to us as adults, the standard procedure to a 4th grader begins to defy what they know about numbers and place value and math and is not inherently logical to them. One more update this week...5th Grade language arts and creativity students got the chance to share a creative writing project that we had started in honor of Halloween. The students were working on slowing down a story to write about the setting by showing and not telling. They were writing descriptive paragraphs that could fit into a larger story later if they chose. I like to do this project around Halloween because we watch a video on YouTube of the most beautiful abandoned places on earth. Most of these pictures, although beautiful, are a little creepy too. The kids pick one of the locations and pretend they are in this location, using all of their senses to describe what their character is experiencing while there. It is interesting to think about what might have really happened there, but the kids have just as much fun creating a completely fictional account of an experience there. Below is the video you can watch. Then read a couple of the examples and see if you can pick out their location from the video. |
Tracey BeanWerner Elementary Archives
May 2018
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