Cedar News: November 29, 2010

Teacher: "Now class, whatever I ask, I want you to all answer at once. How much is six plus 4 ?"
Class: "At once !"

This week, we begin a unit focusing on addition, subtraction and probability.  This unit will support fluency of basic operations and standard notation.  We will develop strategies for solving facts, from counting on and counting backwards to using known facts to solve the unknown.  This unit helps students develop strategies by presenting certain collections of facts in relation to one another rather than random bits of information to be memorized.
This week we will construct a class chart of addition and subtraction facts.  Whole group games will introduce fact families and strategies.   These games will resurface in our first round of Work Places (independent practice).

Cedar News: November 15, 2010

 This week we will explore growing patterns and work to identify the "rule" or operation creating the pattern.  We will also explore our base ten system and "trading up" with a Race to 1.00.

Fluency with math, like reading,  takes practice, practice, practice.  

Your mathematician will be bringing a "toolkit" home this week.  This packet contains some information about supporting your mathematician at home and some ideas for practice in everyday home activities.  This packet also contains practice pages and some games for your Swallow to play with you.   

Your Swallow will return his or her Toolkit to me on Thursday with completed work.  Please keep unfinished games/pages for over-the-weekend practice.    I will return the toolkit on Monday with new practice pages and/or games to take home.

November 8, 2010

This week we will explore forming 3-digit "house numbers" to meet specific requirements. Students will experiment with numbers to find all possible ways to add three different digits to obtain a given sum.  Careful reading of information and understanding of mathematical language are important to finding appropriate solutions. Using the problem-solving strategies of looking for patterns and establishing an organized list will aid students in finding all the possible solution sets.
  We will visit the computer lab for First In Math where I will introduce a new game focused on skip counting by 1s, 2s, 3s and 5s to add and subtract.


The Cedars received a homework sheet exploring creating the smallest and largest numbers from a given set.