Math

The students have worked really hard on mastering their addition, subtraction and multiplication facts and last Thursday we achieved our class goal! The third and fourth grade students managed to cut the class average time in half and now we will celebrate by having a party in the coming weeks. Please continue to practice fact fluency at home as practice makes better and a good grasp of the facts makes all subsequent math activities much easier.

It has been a long time since I wrote and I apologize for that. Here is a brief summary of what we have been doing. Students have continued to practice finding differences and time by finding the hours and minutes between sunrise and sunset. All students have continued to practice concepts such as division, geometry, algebra, addition, logic, and real world problems with task cards, flip overs, games such as Name That Number, whole group activities, and math challenges.

Some students have explored division through discussion, playing the game of leftovers, and practicing the standard algorithm. The whole class practiced division through an exploration called Explorations with raisins, in which they estimated how many raisins were in a box, counted them, then divided them equally amongst the members of their group. Students who have completed the multiplication unit have been working independently or with friends on algebra or geometry workbooks.

For the 100th day, we revisited brownie math. Students were asked to find the perimeter and area of the large pan of brownies I had baked. They then added up the number of students from each of the classes I teach and divided the brownie into fractions. We further explored fractions by creating fraction kits, playing fractions games, finding equivalent fractions, reading books about fractions and eating and recording fraction waffles.

One highlight of February was attending the symphony at the Melo Center. Prior to that, we learned about each of the pieces of music, the composers, history, significance, and use in modern day situations. We were also lucky enough to attend another event at the Melo Center which blended rhythm, dance and math. We have also enjoyed reading stories such as One Grain of Rice, in which one grain of rice grows exponentially into billions of grains, thus emptying the king’s storehouses.