Sharing our Expert Books

We invited Mr. George's class to come and listen to our expert books this past week. The students worked so hard on these and they turned out fantastic. It was great to hear them sharing their writing and seeing the kindergarteners so excited to learn. Enjoy some photos ..

Fractions, Fractions, and More Fractions!

Fractions are such an important part of math. Nurturing the understanding of fractions takes time and practice. This is a concept that will help for future math and without deep understanding, students are left feeling confused. We are taking time to explore, manipulate, draw, develop theories and ideas, and understand how fractions work in a variety of styles. The number line is an important tool for understanding fractions. Learning about benchmarks and how they help us have an understanding of the location of a fraction is explored a lot in 3rd grade.

Here is an article that talks about Fraction Sense. It is a helpful tool to understanding the importance of fractions.

Here are some photos of students working hard to learn about fractions! It is so great to see lightbulbs going on!

Personal Passion Project

A passion project is something we work on, outside of our regular school curriculum, that gives us satisfaction, happiness and puts us into a state of flow. We learn about something that excites us and from that we wonder and grow our thinking. Students present their learning in a variety of formats: a presentation with poster, slide show, or notecards, a puppet show, having an expert come in, are some of the ways the students have chosen to deliver their passion projects. We have learned so much from each other! I am excited to share some of the photos from our passion projects. Ask your child what their passion project(s) are about. 

Trevor - What were Babe Ruth's accomplishments?

Quinn - How do bearded dragons survive? 

Chloe - What are some secret tombs of the Egyptians?

CJ - What is the history of Spanish culture?

Mr. Saez comes to talk with the class about Cuba and his family

Ellison ~ Puppet Show - King George III - How was he as a King?

Jett - Mordecai Brown - How did he become a baseball player?

Billy ~ How do you know when a tornado is forming?

Long Division~ It looks different

We have worked hard this month to develop an understanding of what division means in math. We made the connection between division and multiplication: "division is multiplication in disguise" is a phrase the kids will say. For example 24 divided by 8 = ____ can be thought of as 8 times ____=24 (how many groups of 8 can we make with 24?)  We took the next step and began dividing numbers that had remainders in the quotient. Understanding remainders as the amount that cannot be divided equally by the divisor. Students came up with a list of Notices about division:

• all even numbers are divisible by 2
• all numbers that have a 0 or 5 in the ones place are divisible by 5
• the remainder can never be larger than the divisor
• check division problems with multiplication:  
•  quotient X the divisor = the dividend
• If quotient has a remainder then: the quotient X the divisor + remainder = the dividend

We will continue to add to this list as we notice more! 

We began long division at the end of the week. This is a process where we are teaching the process with a understanding of place value. This is very different than how I was taught. It took years for me to really understand math through the lens of "understanding" and not just "doing" math with rules.

This takes time and patience for everyone. We are working with 2 digit dividends and 1 digit divisors using base 10 blocks to represent the problem and divide the number in parts for understanding.

Here is a good video I found that explains how we teach division with understanding! Hope this helps...I know this style of math has helped me truly understand math and not just the rules of math.

Understanding division Video

Valentine's Day Fun!

Thank you to the room mom's for organizing and running the Valentine's Day party last week. A special thank you to Mrs. Wyatt for her personal art touch she put on the party! Here are some pictures to give you a little glimpse ...

Random Acts Of Kindness

This Sunday kicks off the Random Acts of Kindness (RAK)Week! Although this is a social media idea, I think it is important to think about what can we do to help others even when we don't know them or when they do not expect it. What are the effects from RAK? How do we feel when we do this? How does the other person(s) feel.
Today we talked about RAK and what it can do for others, ourselves, and the world. I shared a story about my family. My parents decided a few years ago that for the holidays they would give my 3 daughters money but it wasn't for them. It came with instructions. The instructions said to find 10 situations where you could give this money. They did not say how much each time or where to look or how when they needed to finish this by. WOW! What a life changing experience it was for our whole family. We paid attention more to what was happening around us, noticing life and people and situations. We changed how we thought about helping. We had great conversations about people. Sometimes we saw the reactions, while other times we did not and just tried to guess how they responded. We have also taken this idea and learned that it is not about money, it is about service and helping others as well. My kids notice more than they did before.
Here is a link to some great ideas for Random Act of Kindness week.

Let's spread kindness around like it is confetti!

RAK Week Ideas

An amazing journey of hope, perseverance, courage and strength

Today Hough was fortunate to have 4 time Paralympian medalist, Tucker Dupree, join us to share his journey and story. He talked to all of us about courage, hope, adaptability, passion and persevering through what seemed like something that would "ruin" his life. He told us that he had 2 options when he found out that he would be blind, 1~ to take the easy way or 2 ~ take the right way. He explained that the easy way would have been to give up, be sad, and think of all the things he couldn't do. He showed us that by choosing to take the right way he gained more than he ever thought possible.
Here is a link to his story:
Tucker Dupree story

From this story, I shared another story about a man who has no arms and no legs who continues to overcome so much everyday. Our overall theme with these two stories is about positive perspective (finding the silver lining), appreciating and focusing on what you have not on what you don't have or want,  never giving up (Dream Big) and giving grace (not judging others~you never know their situation)  We have had such great conversations that I encourage you to continue these at home. Ask your child about these experiences and share these videos to help facilitate more conversations!

Nick Vujicic story