Somehow we have completed the first semester of the 2014-2015 school year. Amazing how time flies when you are having fun! Speaking of fun, I got some great news this week that I had the opportunity to share: I filled out an application for a grant to attend educator's Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama, at NASA's Space & Rocket Center and found out this week that they selected me!! I'll get to spend a week in June (all expenses paid even!) learning to be an astronaut and finding better ways to bring science and math learning to life for kids. Great early Christmas gift! On to news from the classroom...Math Olympiad number two is complete. Fourth and fifth graders seemed to find this month's problem solving questions more challenging than last month, but everyone persevered to get an answer down for as many questions as they could in the limited time. I am finding that even when they don't come up with the exact answer, the kids are using their strategies and looking for shortcuts. With practice, their precision will also improve. Because these tests are copyrighted material, you will not see copies of these come home, but if you are interested in what your child is challenged with each month, stop by and I'll give you a peak at the type of problems. As for other math news in each grade... 3rd grade has been exploring our base-ten number system through comparison activities. We have played games in a base-three system to see how challenging it is to subtract when you have to trade three and not ten. We have explored writing numbers in ancient Egyptian symbols (and how LONG that takes) and also looked at writing numbers in Chinese and how similar it is to our expanded form. While it has been a very short unit, I think the kids have enjoyed exploring the origins of our Hindu-Arabic number symbols. 4th grade students have completed a unit on multi-digit multiplication. After exploring different strategies, everyone picked their favorite and mastered it. We'll review this briefly after break and move on to long division. Lastly, 5th grade has been working knowledge of fractions. By working with math manipulatives and creating visual representations, the kids have been reinforcing their conceptual understanding of equivalent fractions and addition and subtraction of fractions. After making sure they have this background knowledge reviewed, we have then been practicing the procedures (the algorithms) needed to perform problems with + and - of fractions and mixed numbers. Not an easy concept for fifth graders. We'll continue after break with multiplication and division of fractions before moving to converting fractions to decimals. As for language arts/creativity groups, 5th grade language arts wrapped up our poetry writing/reading unit this week. Ask your student their thoughts on "Love that Dog" and "Hate that Cat" (two read-alouds we enjoyed over the last few weeks.) Here is an example of one of the poems that an "anonymous" student wrote that I thought beautifully captured the holiday season: I hear Christmas singing, the varied carols I hear, Third grade completed the second semester with me and will return to my classroom after Spring Break now. This week we completed creative projects based on The Green Book. Students got to choose, complete and share their projects. Some wrote an article for the newspaper about the events of the book, others created a map of what they visualized as we read, and still others imagined what would go on in the sequel. Here are a couple of examples of student work: Have a safe and joyous holiday break and see you all in the new year!!
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Tracey BeanWerner Elementary Archives
May 2018
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