October 5th Students will be presenting projects about the hydrosphere, lithosphere, geosphere, atmosphere, and biosphere, this week, in class. Students have been designing a scoring rubric for these projects to show best work and detailed design. We are also working on public speaking and high interest displays.

Place Value

September 27, 2015 Students are practicing place value with the understanding of how it relates to fractions and decimals. Multiplication and division facts are practiced daily. Many students are doing challenges on a regular schedule. If students are not bringing them home, I will begin doing some activities that will lead into regular homework. I have told students this. So a group will continue with academic choice on challenges and another group will begin some regular homework. I will have the students log it in the planners, if they are required to do the homework.

Color Change in Leaves

Why do leaves change color?

We had a very nice start to this school year, especially in math.  Each student worked hard to her or his personal best. The enthusiasm is strong. Remember that Sprints are not designed for students to always complete the whole activity.   Each student learns differently.  The pacing is not always the same.  If you see an incomplete page, you are welcome to do more with your child.  The motivation to do more should come from your child.

Math: The First Week of School

 In math, students worked on long division, math facts, place value, problem solving and new vocabulary
 ( inverse operations: using multiplication to check division, periods (345,789,890 )<--one grouping of three numbers is a period, quotient ( the answer to a division problem ), divisor ( the number an equation is divided by), dividend ( the number being divided ), sum, product and evaluate.

Many students handed in Challenges to me this week.  Challenges are designed with Responsive Classroom ideology. If your child was not working on a Challenge, you may ask them to bring a few Challenges home next week. 

I did receive an email saying that students were getting emails from me about school work.  This is just a notification from Khan Academy that is allowing your child to work with me, as their teacher, in the program.   It asks for your child's school email to log on to our class.  I was adding all the emails this morning when the students had guidance class.  I was unaware that other devises at home would start saying that I had emailed your child, but of course this will happen as students have more devises.  I did not mean to leave parents out of what I was doing.  I was just working on student access to Khan Academy and Prodigy for next week. 

Learning the math facts is very important this year.  A few minutes during the evening helps so much with your student's math fluency during class.

Students worked on Sprints.  These will be sent home.  These Sprints are usually not completed in full. They are designed this way by Eureka Math.  Sheet A is completed, students discuss math patterns and then Sheet B is completed.  Students monitor how much they improved from one sheet to the second.  This activity is about your child's personal best, not about completion of the page.

Dear Parents,

I have presented Challenges this year to your children, in mathematics.  Each week, I will give students two to three challenges.  I will tell them when they are due.  You can see this on the first page of the website.  These Challenges are for your child to decide to do.  I will encourage all students to do at least one.  You are welcome to encourage your child to do them. It works best if your child makes the decision. Giving students options will let them figure out how much to do.  If your week is very busy, they may only do one.  If it is a routine week, students may do all three.  All children will be required to work hard during the class time to understand the math.  The challenges just make them stronger in the subject, however they need the freedom to have control over what they are choosing to do.  If I feel that your child is falling behind, then I will begin meeting with them.  I have time before school, at snack, recess, lunch and after school.  My goal is to help your child do their best and work hard to understand all the math concepts that are being presented.

The Challenges will start off easy and then one will remain easy and the two other ones will progressively get harder.  If your child is struggling and wants to complete one that is too hard, they are very welcome to have me help them.