Tag Archives: mentalmathmonday

In Like a Lion?!

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Can you believe that it will be March 1st this upcoming week? They say that March comes in like a lion and out like a lamb…well let’s see!

Last week felt like it zoomed by! It’s nice to start the week off with a holiday, but then it seems like we never have enough time to do everything we want to do! I don’t know how many students asked me about having school tomorrow (which was actually today-which is Saturday…I double checked that it really is Saturday right now lol). So I guess that they felt like the week went by quickly too!

Last Week At A Glance:

Math/Ask Me Question- This week we worked through some 2,3,4 digit addition and subtraction questions as well as some multiplication. The Ask Me.. question was meant for you to see how your child is doing with multi digit addition and subtraction questions. There were 10 questions to be copied off the board. We talked about how it is so important to copy the question accurately and neatly. How the place value columns need to line up so you are adding or subtracting the ones from the ones, the tens from the tens, etc. We talked about how I could have given a photocopy of the questions to answer, but writing things down from the board is a skill that we need to learn too.

This is a picture of the questions (slightly blurry-my apologies). I thought I would post in case you needed to see them while you were working through the problems at home 🙂

Students are working on checking to see when they need to regroup (for addition and subtraction) as well as checking to see if the question is asking them to add or subtract (so many of us are not looking closely at the question before starting to answer). BONUS 1 was asking them to take the problem 321-123 and not answer it, but show what it would look like once they have regrouped the question. Let’s take a look through pictures 🙂

This is what the question will look like once everything has been regrouped.

Unsure of where these numbers came from? See picture below!

It’s all about the place value!

We talk about Standard and Non Standard a lot. This is what that means. Standard is the ‘easiest’ way to represent numbers. It’s how we would normally write a number down. Non Standard are all the other ways to represent a number. In this example we are using 2 (hundreds), 11 (tens), 11 (ones) because that is what we would use when we are regrouping during subtraction.

This is how we would use the regrouped “321” to answer the question 321-123.

You can check your subtraction question by changing it into an addition question! This is where the idea of fact families comes back! We check our work to make sure that we did it correctly! This was Bonus 2 (to go back and check your work by changing it to either an addition question or a subtraction question and making sure you still have the same 3 numbers from the original fact families!

Three numbers, one fact family and four number sentences!

How did we get 4 sentences?! Think of the 3 numbers in the fact family as been 1) the Whole 2) one Part 3) another Part

I hope that helps fill you in with how we are working through these problems at school.

Instagram-Thanks for your continued interest with our classroom Instagram account. It’s been fun sharing parts of our day with you! If you have yet to follow us…please do! Find as.easy.as.123 on Instagram and request to follow us. Then I’ll hook you up 😉 If you do not have an Instagram account, but would like to follow us, you can sign up for a free account. Need help or have questions? Let me know!

What’s Up This Week?!?

-Scholastic Book orders SHOULD be here soon. NO idea why it has bee so slow. I’ve rechecked and our order has been shipped. I know everyone is excited to get their books…they are coming…I promise!

-Music Festival is on Wednesday

-We are having a Folklorama performance on Thursday

-MTYP is coming to do a performance on Friday!

-#MentalMathMonday will look a little different this week. I will prepare some more addition and subtraction questions, some place value questions (I’ll give the standard way and students will show me non standard ways to represent the same number), and some skip counting (to help with multiplication-a focus on 3,4,5 this week)

-We should also finish reading Harry Potter! This is so bittersweet! We’ve really enjoyed the book so far (even the students who thought they wouldn’t!!). I’m so glad that I finally have been able to read this book to a class. It really is magical 😉

Should be another great week!

Until Next Time,

Danielle

This Week At School…and Beyond!

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As we approach the long weekend I’d like to reflect on the past week and just keep you in the loop of what will be happening next week!

Yogis– the art day was fabulous (as you’ve seen from the pictures) and after talking to Cathy we’ve decided we will wait until the other two classes are done plastering their Yogis to paint them!

Instagram-thanks so much for the support! We’ve had 18 notes returned already!!! If you have decided not to give permission to have your child’s photograph posted and have any questions please let me know. Also-if you change your mind at any point let me know! So far we have 6 followers!! Remember to give us a follow so you can see all of our pictures! (as.easy.as.123 is our user name). If you have sent a request and I’m not sure who it is I might send a note home to check,  or you can send me an email if you have a user name that I wouldn’t recognize and a closed profile where I wouldn’t be able to tell who it is!

Heritage/Family Tree projects-these are great! The students are so excited to learn more about each other and the kids are also learning more about themselves! I love that they are all looking different! Good job!!!! You have until Spring Break to hand in your project!

Travel pictures and sharing-the bulletin board outside of the room looks awesome! There is still time to add photos if you’d like to send some in. Just let me know where the photo is taken and maybe add the year too! We had our first parent presenter in today! The class loved hearing about Australia and seeing photos…let’s not forget the didgeridoo!!! If you want to come in and tell us about where you’re from or where you’ve traveled… please let me know, we’d love to have you share with us!

Bridge Building-next week we are building famous bridges!!! If anyone would like to volunteer we could use an extra set of hands (especially with the adult run hot glue station!). We are building all morning on Wednesday (Feb 22). Let me know!!!!

Math-we’ve finished up our extra practice with subtraction and are fully into multiplication! I’ve written up some strategies and explanations for the math we’ve done so far this year. Have a look…this is meant to support you with helping your child at home (in case you were looking for the terminology we are using and examples of what students have been doing). Your child may need to work on one or two areas, all areas or maybe none at all. This is not homework, but a tool for doing math at home. I’ll let each o f you know which areas I’ve noticed that could benefit from practice. Hopefully that will go home tomorrow:)

Math Review for Blog

Country Study-we are in research mode! Each student is learning about a different country and as a class we have decided on some common themes (food, history, structures, etc.) to learn about. Some of the students are keen to continue research at home. This is totally fine with me!!! I’m asking that students use the notebooks we’ve created at school so that all information is in one place. After we feel like we’ve done enough research we will be working through some stations at school. This is not homework…this is a choice. School time is also provided!

Enjoy your long weekend…let’s celebrate this gorgeous weather while we can!!

 

Have Time for Another Post?!

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Today we did some practice with telling time. Yesterday our Mental Math Monday (or Tuesday since there was no school on Monday 😉)focus was time. I read a time and the students wrote the time down on paper. For example: when I said half past 10. They would write 10:30. Quarter after 6 would be 6:15. Quarter to 8 would be 7:45. 20 to 4 would be 3:40. 5 to 12 would be 11:55, etc. Then we switched to the 24 hour clock. I would say 13:00 and the would write 1:00 p.m., etc. Overall, we found that about 1/3 of the class felt confident with the task and were pleased with their score /30. This means that we wanted to do some practice and boost those feelings of confidence and understanding of the other 2/3 of the class. Students who needed extra practice partnered up with students who felt like they could support their peers. Students who felt okay-ish partnered with others who felt okay-ish. Afterward we did a sharing circle about the process and found…students enjoyed being learning leaders, students enjoyed learning from other their peers, students liked hearing ideas of how to practice telling time and either choosing one of those or developing their own activity, students realized that they knew more than they thought they did!

Time to learn!

Check in with your kids to see how they feel about telling time. Students are welcome to borrow some mini clocks to use at home for a few days to practice. You could also make flashcards, say a time and have them draw a clock or write the time to match what you’ve said, practice the 24 hour clock (which comes in so handy for travelling!), give a time and ask how many minutes until the next hour. Don’t forget to practice times like 3:37 or 10:18 when reading time, drawing clocks and telling you how many minutes to the next hour (which is like a compatible number to 60) can be a little trickier. I realize that most places have digital clocks, but learning to read an analog clock is a skill that everyone should know.

We will do another round of time for MentalMathMonday (January 30).

Time to go (lol)

Danielle