639x82=52 398 (another 5 ways)

639x82=52 398 (five ways)

Controlling those numbers

Last week, I went to a workshop with Ms. Maths.  Wow!

I have brought those ideas back into the classroom.  They are learning to control the numbers instead of the numbers controlling them.  They are the masters of numbers.

Doing this, we go back to using expanded form.  We need to keep those numbers true to their value.  We have spent a couple classes playing with this.  Now to see if they were paying attention.  In class today I have given them 639x82 = 52398.  I have challenged them to prove it 10 ways.  They have started with their table groups.  Now they have to take it home on their own.  We'll see what they come up with.  I will post my 10 ways too.

Book Reviews

We have started writing book reviews in class.  We read several reviews and came up with a formula that our book reviews needed to follow.

Our book reviews need to start with the title of the book and the author.  These should be at the top of the page and underlined.
Next we begin the review with a question to draw the reader in.  We should give a short summary of the book.  Being careful to not give too much away.  In our summary we should include the characters and the problem in the book.  Before we finish, we need to give the reader some questions - things that they will have to read the book to find out!
Finally, we should recommend the book and make a comment about how much we liked it.
Sign our name - and we're done!

Field Trip to Fort Whyte

Today we had a great day at Fort Whyte.  In the morning, our session was on Weather.  We made a cloud in a bottle by pouring hot water into an empty pop bottle, lighting a match and putting it in, then closing the bottle up.  When we squeezed the bottle and then let go, it made a cloud - magic.  We found out that the raindrops needed dust particles to form (Liesl).  We got to use some real weather instruments and take some measurements ourselves.  Michael learned that our atmosphere is becoming filled with greenhouse gasses.  Our Ozone layer is becoming thinner, so more ultraviolet rays are getting in.  After we ate lunch everyone enjoyed the opportunity to touch the animals in the touch museum.  Then we had a session on People of the Prairies.  It was neat to see a house with grass growing out of the roof (Brady).  Tom really liked the coyote poop.  They knew it was coyote/predator because it had hair in it.  We went into a tipi and learned some things about the rituals of tipis such as entering clockwise and that tipi's face the East.  Sadly both groups had trouble counting the 13 poles that are used to construct a tipi.  The thirteen poles represented the thirteen full moons that occur over a year (Michael).  I think everyone's favourite part was the throwing of an atlatl.  Mr German threw it so far that they had to look really far for his spear! (Tom).  We saw a post that showed us just how tall a bison can grow (Matthew).  We learned that sometimes the Aboriginals used a corral to help them catch the bison (Tom).  There was such a lot to see there, we didn't get to see everything.  We had a great adventure.

Multiplication

As we move towards a more conventional method of multiplying; we move from drawing the array, to representing it more simply.

We remove the zeros to make multiplication simpler - don't for get to put them back on the answer!

 Then add up the products

  Ta da! We're done

Theme studies

In room 12 we use Universal Design for Learning for our Science and Social Studies.  Each term has 3 parts to it.  We have finished the first part for this term; my introduction of the topics and things that they need to proceed.  We did activities and watched videos about weather, properties of air, forecasting, history of people coming to North America, legends, the different groups of First Nations People that lived in what is now Canada.  We even migrated for a day.  A chance to experience the difficulties.  Now students are working in groups completing centres that connect to the 9 learning styles.  These centres allow the students to work with the material that was introduced in class.  At the end of each session, the groups present what they have learned.  In a couple of weeks, we will move on to individual projects, their chance to really show me what they know.

These students are building a model that represents the water cycle.  They then explain each part and how the water cycle works.

Brand new school year!

The new school year is underway.  We have been working on multiplication facts and reading large numbers.  We are now moving on to multiplying larger numbers, but we are going to take this very slowly.  We already knew that our basic facts in multiplication make arrays.  This week we learned that arrays are also made by multiplying larger numbers. 

Stay tuned, new strategy next week, less work!

French classes

Both room 12 and 14 have been working on clothing vocabulary in French class.  As the project for our unit, they had to choose five 'models' (cut out from a catalogue) and write sentences about what they were wearing. They did pretty good.

Long Division

Here is an example of long division by one of my students

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZQDm-63roU

Missing Punctuation

After reading "Punctuation Takes a Vacation" by Robin Pulver, the students wrote their own postcards to punctuation.  Coming up with reasons why that punctuation should come back.  Will this inspire punctuation use in our classroom?

January 2014

A new year and a new resolution.  I hope this year, to spend a bit more effort on this blog.  To spend more time reflecting on what we are doing in the classroom.  To give the students the opportunity to share their learning.