Math
I want to start off with social dynamics. I am seeing new connections every day and I feel so happy for the students. Bear and Riley connecting in class and after school; Gabe playing soccer on the field with Jack, Leif, Solomon, Ezra, Julien, and Riley; Betlehem and Sadie enjoying each other’s company; and more.
In terms of learning atmosphere, this group can be challenging for their teachers. There are many, many strong, expressive personalities and what helps is consistency, kindness and firmness, valuing student input in creating a respectful learning environment, and adapting discipline strategies to the individual. Please partner with us by encouraging students to communicate respectfully, while still expressing their feelings and viewpoints, and to contribute to the learning by following class procedures and school rules (you can review in the Community Spirit Agreement and Parent Handbook).
Some changes this new 2020 year: David Dvorak is a parent helper on Thursday mornings and we have incorporated brain breaks into our daily practice. We are also calculating the number of hours and minutes between sunrise and sunset every Thursday.
The 2nd graders embarked upon the 4 Toothpick Investigation and it was really fun because they joined with their friends in the 1/2 to share their findings. We learned about equivalent names for numbers and how to show a number in as many ways possible using addition, subtraction, drawings, tally marks, words, multiplication, etc. This was followed by broken calculator problems in which a student must find ways to create a number such as 20, if the 2 key is broken. Students practiced subtraction by playing a game called Tic Tac Subtract and went over relation symbols: =, greater than, less than. Each second grader continues to work on a number scroll and a set of task cards.
Together, the 2nd and 3rd graders continue to solve weekly challenges. We have sharing circles and shared a mistake and how we repaired it. Students brought in toys to share and graphed their toys using Venn diagrams and t graphs.
3rd graders have begun the multiplication unit as you may have noticed from the homework. Students began by writing what they knew about multiplication in their math journals and then shared whole group. They solved the problem of how many chopsticks we would need if ten of us were using chopsticks and showed how they solved the problem. Then, we began finding Things That Come In Groups, from 2 through 12. We are currently using this list to write out times tables and find patterns on a 0-99 chart. I taught the students the game of Circles and Stars and am asking them to begin memorizing multiplication facts at home. Even those students who know their facts or can figure them out, benefit from these lessons that help to make multiplication more understandable and encourage them to practice the facts that are less readily accessible.
