Math

Students have come back from the summer full of energy and happy to see their classmates.  It is exciting to see concepts learned last year that have been sinking in and becoming knowledge.  

We began the school year by going over ground rules and procedures and decorating our math folders.  We kept some of our weekly jobs from last year and added some new ones.  Students will continue to graph circle attendance and graph inside and outside temperature.  We will have a class timer and class assistants.  New, is the job of creating a logic pattern for the class to solve and occasionally creating a survey and gathering data.  

Also new is a day of solving math challenges, usually on Wednesday.  Students copy challenges in their math activity books and work independently or collaboratively to solve the challenges.  These include geometry, logic, arithmetic and more.

During the first full week of school, third and fourth graders all worked on a problem solving investigation called Billy and the Pencils.  In groups of three, students created questions that could be solved using the information:  Billy has $1, pencils cost two for 25 cents, erasers cost one for 10 cents.  The questions they wrote were varied and creative.  Students then had to solve their own problems, no easy task when a student has written a problem in which someone has given Billy a million dollars.  They rose to the occasion.  It is nice to begin the year with a collaborative activity so that students re-connect and help each other.

Third graders have been re-familiarizing themselves with the number grid with a variety of activities.  They reviewed Number Grid patterns and played Roll to 100.  Students solved math clues to create patterns on the 100s chart.  They were introduced to Skillboard math, a partner activity in which students use two sets of number tiles 0-9 to solve.  Marcy Cook (creator) says “these activities provide opportunities for students to see numbers represented in many ways, to listen to directions using math vocabulary and concepts, and to keep skills alive.”

Fourth graders have begun the geometry unit from the Everyday Math curriculum and we have been talking about lines, line segments, rays, points, and angles.  Today, we spoke about right angles, acute and obtuse angles.  We used our bodies to spin 360 degrees, a full circle; and then practiced half circles, 180 degrees; and right angles, or quarter circles 90 degrees.  
On Thursdays, we will be calculating the length of the day (sunrise to sunset) and taking a facts quiz.  We have begun with addition and subtraction facts, students will transition to multiplication facts later in the school year.  It is for them to gauge their individual accomplishment and to work on their speed and retention of facts.    

Matt is with us on Tuesdays and Thursdays and Liz Murphy is helping on Mondays.  Thank you so much!