It occurred to me that homework tasks are not always indicative of the depth of our lessons in class. We use our spirals to record many of the skills and strategies we learn in class - and our spirals stay at school. This post is an effort to help explain the particulars of what the children are learning in both math & reading.
MATH
In the course of our math block, children usually participate in three groups. We rotate every 25 minutes. Our rotations include the following groupings:
- Direct instruction (new skill or concept) with Mrs. Carey
- Reteach/review and games with a parent volunteer
- Independent work time (usually Math Journal pages or supplemental practice both written or on the computer)
Here are some of the EVERYDAY MATH things we've been working on:
- Change-to-More number stories (addition)
- Parts-and-Total number stories (addition)
- Change-to-Less number stories (subtraction)
- Estimating costs
- Partial Sums algorithm
- place value (ones/tens/hundreds place repeats itself after each comma (thousands, millions, billions)
- expanded notation (to the thousands)
- rounding to the nearest 10, 100 (as an aid for estimating)
- using expanded notation to solve 2 & 3-digit addition problems mentally
The PARTIAL SUMS algorithm sometimes causes undue stress amonsgt parents - as the children are learning to add multiple-digit numbers differently than we did. (I'm a perfect example that you CAN teach an old dog new tricks!) :) PLEASE KNOW that we'll learn the traditional algorithm during the year - but we're going to focus on Partial Sums for now.
Please review the following link for more details about the Partial Sums algorithm. http://everydaymath.uchicago.edu/parents/faq (You need to scroll down quite a bit to get to the information!)
- 5: 3-D & 4-D Shapes (Geometry)
- 6: Whole Number Operations
MY ALL TIME FAVORITES! Unit 5 is essentially Geometry – We are exploring everything that is 2D &3D. Our superintendent has made a plea for teachers to be mindful of ACADEMIC VOCABULARY. This unit lends itself well to do many projects that will help the children REMEMBER all the vocabulary. We will be creating tetrahedron kites in class that will be a fun activity – as well as serve as an assessment of the children’s understandings.
In Unit 6, we will go back to addition & subtraction, but this time we’ll explore how multiplication is a means of REPEATED ADDITION, and division is the inverse operation of multiplication. I’d like to do the ‘Candy Box’ project with the children (It teaches them multiplication through arrays). If you have empty boxes of candy from the holidays that you can send in…please do!
Cause & Effect Chains
We read the story, 'The Paper Crane' by Molly Bang. The children then created chains that showed the cause & effect relationships within the story.
We use different types of grouping within our Literacy Block. The children usually move around 3 times per day - and they are with an adult for 2 of the 3 rotations. We rotate amongst the following groups:
- Guided Reading
- Open Court Reading
- Volunteers (skill-based and/or fluency practice)
- Literacy Lab
- Independent Work
- differences between summarizing and retelling
- using text features with non-fiction reading
- following WRITTEN directions
- using reading strategies (puzzle, running start, missl) to decode unfamiliar words
- self-assessment stategies when using a rubric
- writing a complete sentence (correct grammar, punctuation, & capitalization) with DETAILS
- how to write a friendly letter (We learned a catchy song to help us remember!)
- cause & effect relationships within a story/passage
- answering the question of "WHY?"
No comments:
Post a Comment