Application of skills

Students have been applying their math skills to novel situations.  It has been interesting to watch the students problem solve and apply a variety of skills, adjust their thinking on the fly and find an additional know strategy to double check their work.  Practicing a skill in isolation is great for memorizing basic facts but does not provide the depth of knowledge necessary to have a solid mathematical foundation.   The transfer of knowledge often causes students to feel like they are "in the pit," uncertain and uneasy but also is extremely rewarding when they discover they were successful in their problem solving. 

   

Fractions and fair shares

Students explore problem solving for their introduction to fair shares. There are three students and seventeen cookies. How many cookies does each student get?   Are there any left?  What can we do with it?  

They loved sharing ideas like:  throw the cookies out, give them to the mom, she can decide, give them to who is still hungry.  

We then focused on the fair share aspect.  Students started cutting the cookies.  Many cut them in half, they were convinced this would work.  Partners reasoned through why cutting two cookies in half worked for fair shares and didn't work for fair shares.  Eventually students discovered that they could cut into thirds and each person would get two thirds.      

Students fold paper to represent fractions, explore the number of pieces in the whole and to prove their prior knowledge about fractions as correct or incorrect.   

Introduction to Habitats

Students went on a gallery walk and wrote words that the pictures on the tables triggered.  They did not know the topic of the unit yet and were using their reasoning skills to make connections between pictures throughout the room. A variety of habitat pictures were placed around the room. Once they visited each picture, they met on the rug to make predictions about what the unit might be aboutwith their peers.  After whole class discussion and figuring out that the topic was habitats, the students returned to the pictures and added additional words to the poster now looking at the photo through the lenses of a habitat.            

Observing the life cycle of caterpillars

      

Here are some questions the students are working on finding the answers to this week through observations and reading.  Ask your child a few of the questions below and see if their answers change as they make observations and gain additional knowledge through reading, listening and exploration!

What does a caterpillar look like?

How do they move?

What do they eat?  

What type of caterpillars do we have to observe in the Classroom?

What do they eat?

How do our caterpillars get water?

How do they get air in our classroom?

Rocking Readers

The students are loving the classroom donation of these awesome rockin reading chairs. Thank you generous donor for this thoughtful donation.   

2/3 grade music performance

 Today we enjoyed seeing many of our siblings and friends in the 2/3 grade music practice performance. 

 

Money money money

We are practicing counting money and accurately naming the coins when doing so.  What can you do to help your child?  Let them play with change at home, count it with them, give them change to pay for small items at the store, play store at home, give them an amount to make, have them make it another way, have fun and praise them for their attempt.       

Fossil fun

What are fossils?

How are they formed?

What do they look like?

Students explored fossils in their reading this week as they learned about the history of the earth.  

 

    

More Flat Friends

     

Flat People

             Each adventure is unique and exciting for the students to learn about. From Photos to drawings to write description, we have learned so much about the adventures of the Flat People from Mrs. Walter's class.