Math

Here we are again. Year three with these wonderful beings and welcome to Violet. Students are excited and ready to go. They know what to expect in math class and are excited to engage in new activities such as Place value Logic, Tuesday math challenges, and Everyday Math work journals. Third and fourth grades are wonderful years in which students are feeling more confident in the skills necessary to learn independently as well as excited and enthusiastic about learning.

We began the school year by reading the book, ‘Math Curse’, in which a student finds that everything in his life has become a math problem. Some students are very excited by this book and are working their way through the problems in the book. We revisited rules and procedures and revised the third grade jobs (serve yourself peanut butter this year and new jobs of Leader, Healer, and Reader). These jobs were chosen by the students and the job chart is part of the positive discipline curriculum and the weekly class meetings.

Daxton and Rian working to solve problems from the book ‘Math Curse. They had used liquid measurements for the problems on the previous page.

Every Tuesday, there is a new set of 5 challenges from Marilyn Burn’s problem solving set. These challenges involve literacy, arithmetic, geometry, and symbols. Students can work on them alone or with friends. Students copy the challenges down in their math activity books and can work on them throughout the week. On Mondays and Wednesdays Matt is my aide and helps to provide support for smaller group instruction or one-on-one help for anyone in need. Wednesdays, we also have Michael (Collins) and so we will usually be breaking up and working in smaller groups.

I have been focusing a lot on place value recently and students have solved place value logic mental math activities, have built numbers using base ten blocks, and have added numbers using base ten blocks. During quiet time, they have practiced basic addition and subtraction facts using wrap ups and by playing Addition Top It. We also practice skip counting and math facts when lining up at the math cabin bridge daily.

At home, continue to reinforce the basic addition and subtraction facts in your daily lives as they are the foundation for further understanding. Play games which incorporate math skills in a fun way: card games, backgammon, Quirkle, parcheesi, etc. To reinforce place value, have children read out large numbers 3,451 - make sure they are saying ‘three thousand four hundred fifty-one and not three four five one. Math is everywhere and includes puzzles, nature, symmetry, art, dance and much much more.