After we finished time we moved on to our Geometry unit. The first part of the unit is Shapes and their Attributes. Students have learned about angles, vertices, and how the number of sides tells you what type of shape it is: 3 sides-triangle, 4 sides-quadrilateral, 5 sides-pentagon, 6 sides-hexagon. Students also learned that a closed shapes with straight sides that meet at an angle are polygons. All the above shapes are polygons. A star is also a polygon. Circles and hearts are not because of not having straight sides. We will then start talking about how to evenly divide the shapes into equal shares. This introduces fractions. Students learn that each piece of the shape must be the same size and shape in order for it to be an equal share. Students will practice dividing things into halves, thirds, and fourths. We will continue to work on these in the next couple weeks before moving on to arrays.
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We have finished up our unit on money. The students have done a great job learning how to count mixed change and solve story problems dealing with change (which is the learning standard they have to master). Continue to have your child practice with real coins at home to help with this so they don't forget since they are out of practice. We will continue to practice in our Daily Math Boxes as well. Right now students are counting mixed change and then they have to come up with another way to make the same amount.
Now that we've finished money, we are moving on to Time. This also has just started being introduced in our Daily Math Boxes this month. It started with time to the hour and half-hour and has now gotten to the 5-minute interval. Students were pre-tested on how much they know about time and will be put into math groups with other students who need help with the same skills. It's really great to get your child an analog watch (watch with hour hand and minute hand) so that they can practice this skill as well. The standard we need to get them to is knowing time to the 5-minute interval so any extra practice they can get with this at home, will help greatly. :) Through our Daily Math Boxes, students have been exposed to money since the start of the school year. It started with just helping them to identify the coins and how much they were worth. After a couple weeks of that, it moved on to counting a group of a specific coin. Then it moved on to counting mixed change.
Then we finally moved onto our lessons about money during Math Time. Students were pre-tested and put into groups with other students who need to work on the same skills dealing with money. It's a good idea to keep change around in the house to pull out and have your child practice with it. We will be continuing to work on identifying the coins (usually distinguishing between the nickel and the quarter is the trickiest thing for students) and counting mixed changed. We will also work on word problems where students have to figure out amounts and add or subtract them. We have started our math unit on measurement. Students learned about inches, feet, yards, and centimeters. They were able to go around with different measurement tools to measure various things throughout the room. They learned how to estimate the length using the end of their thumb for inches, their forearm for a foot, and the width of their pinky nail for centimeters. They also learned what to do if they are measuring something and their measurement tools isn't long enough and how to measure a path that zigs and zags. We will continue on with these skills once we come back from break. Have your child measure things at home for extra practice if you can.
Also please make sure that your child continues working on their math facts and double and triple-digit addition and subtraction. We will review these thins as well. As we come back from break we will review all of the math skills we worked on prior to break: place value, double-digit addition, and double-digit subtraction. Our next topic is then word problems. We have been working on word problems this whole year as well. There is one on every page of our Daily Math Boxes. We also work on them during Target Time once a week. We read the problem and circle what the problem is telling us. Then we underline the question to know what it's asking us to find out. We also highlight the clues in the question that let us know if it's addition or subtraction. At the end of each topic we've done so far they've also had one-step and two-step word problems. Two-Step word problems are obviously more tricky as there are 2 questions students need to answer and they have to use the answer to the first question to help them figure out the answer to the 2nd question. This is still a work in progress as students will many times do the first part and then say they are done, completely ignoring that they have a second part to figure out. This will also be a great way to continue to review and work on double-digit addition and subtraction.
Since we mastered double-digit addition, it's time to move on to double-digit subtraction. Subtraction is ALWAYS much harder for students than addition, especially when re-grouping (or borrowing) is involved. Just like with learning double-digit addition, we first learned so basic strategies to understand the idea of going backwards. Students worked on hopping back tens and ones on a hundred chart, hopping back tens and ones on an open number line, and counting back tens and ones mentally. We then moved on to the traditional method of subtracting with borrowing (re-grouping). Many students have a hard time not just subtracting right away. For instance, if a student sees 52 - 38, they automatically just want to say that 2-8=6. I then ask students if you have 2, can you take away 6? Or I have them draw it out. Students were introduced to some poems to try to help them remember when they need to borrow and when they can just subtract straight away: "More on top? No need to stop!" Students can just subtract straight away, as they like. "More on the floor? Go next door to get 10 more." I also pretend to knock on the tens place value like it's an apartment next door and say, "Oh Mr. 10, may I borrow one of you to come over please?" That has helped in some instances. "Numbers the same? 0s the game." Again students know that if they have 3 and we're taking away 3, they have 0. This helped many students, but some were still struggling so we used connecting blocks to build place value blocks of tens and ones. Then students could physically see they didn't have enough and have to take one of the tens and break it apart into 10 ones to see that now they have 1 less ten and 10 more ones. Majority of the students have it now, but this will have to be something we continue as with break coming up, it will be easy to forget if they weren't strong in it yet.
We had been working on place value for the last few weeks. Students worked on understanding the value of each number in a place value. For instance, in 325 the 2 means 20 or 2 tens. They also continued learning about standard form, expanded form, word form, and drawing out the place value blocks. We also used place value to help us count patterns. We counted by 10s and 100s from any number: 67, 77, 87, 97, 107....
We are now using what we learned about place value to add double-digit numbers. The way that we have practiced so far is using the partial-sums way. In that way, students take what they learned about place value to help them add the numbers without assistance from their number grid. Partial-sums is basically the breaking apart numbers method we learned. It does a great job of having students understand place value and exactly what they are doing when they regroup and carry the 1. We had them start with the ones place since that is what they will do when they learn the algorithm way (traditional method). Partial-Sums: 45 +37 12 ---> First you add the ones 5 + 7 = 12 +70 --->Then you add the tens: 4 tens (40) + 3 tens (30) = 7 tens, which is 70. 82 ---> Finally you add the tens and ones together. This shows the students what exactly each number means when they are adding. We moved on from learning the partial-sums method of adding double-digit numbers to adding using the traditional algorithm of regrouping. There are quite a few students who are forgetting to add the 1 that we've carried over to the tens place. We've been working on this by writing the answer to the ones place on the side of the ones place (so if it's 36 + 27 then we add 6 +7 and write a 13 on the side) and drawing an arrow from the 1 to the top of the tens place and another arrow from the 3 to the ones place. Then we add the tens together. The more we practice, the better it's getting but it's still a work in progress. We started out the year with Topic 1. Topic 1 is all about fluently adding and subtracting within 20. Lesson one was Addition Fact Strategies. Students learned about turn around facts and how the addends can be added in any order and they will get the same sum.
Example: 3+4=7, 4+3=7 Lesson two was Doubles and Near Doubles. Students learned that if they know the doubles fact they can quickly figure out the newer doubles fact. Example: 5+5=10 so 5+6=11. 6 is one more than 5 so the sum is one more. 6+6=12 so 6+8=14. 8 is two more than 6 so the sum is two more. The remaining lessons for the topic were all to aid students in adding and subtracting basic facts quickly: Make a 10 to Add, Addition Fact Patterns, Count on and Count back to Subtract, Think Addition to Subtract, Make a 10 to Subtract, Practice Addition and Subtraction Facts, and Solve Addition and Subtraction Word Problems, The math homework card games are a fun way to help student fluently add and subtract and get those math facts memorized. We then moved on to Place Value, Topic 9. Students worked on understanding the value of each number in a place value. For instance, in 325 the 2 means 20 or 2 tens. They also continued learning about standard form, expanded form, word form, and drawing out the place value blocks. We also used place value to help us count patterns. We counted by 10s and 100s from any number: 67, 77, 87, 97, 107.... We will finish up our place value unit this week and then will move on to our next unit which is Double-Digit Addition in Topics 3 & 4. We will use what we learned about place value to add double-digit numbers. Students will start off learning some different methods to help them understand that when adding double-digit numbers they are just adding tens and ones and that place value matters when adding. Once they understand what you are actually doing (what carrying over to the tens place means) when you're adding double-digit numbers, they will learn the traditional way of adding. These other lessons (that might seem confusing to you) are actually great stepping stones to help them understand the relationship between place value and addition. |