Our final race...Force and Motion unit

We finished up our Force and Motion Unit with students designing and building a carts. The challenge was to make a cart that would go the farthest given the supplies: sticks, 2 size disks, index cards, magnets, straws, popsicle sticks, tongue depressors, and tape. They rose to the challenge and designed fabulous cars. They learned a lot in this unit and it shows in their designs.

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 ...