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In this short week, we will continue to write personal journal entries. Maybe you can continue this over March break with a daily writing journal. Even if it's in English, it's still great writing and sounding-out practice!
We will be finishing up our unit on structures and materials by discussing what we do with materials when we're done with them, and how to be environmentally conscious. For example, if we grow out of clothes, what can we do with them aside from throw them in the garbage? We'll share lots of ideas, and it's something you can talk about at home as well. When I was asking where we put paper that we're finished with, I was looking for the answer "dans le recyclage", but I first got 2 answers about reusing it (erasing and starting over, and using the other side). I'm super fussy about not wasting paper, and I'm glad it's sinking in!
In math, we're moving away from the numbers 2, 5 and 10. We started our adding with them because we wanted to use our skip-counting as a strategy. Now, I'm giving the mathematicians problems with a variety of numbers under 20, and seeing what other strategies they come up with. Yesterday I observed several helpful strategies for solving math problems. We shared them with the whole group and named them after the inventor (although many others had similar, and just as useful strategies). Here are the strategies we have shared so far:
"Le Jackson"
Drawing what the question says is a great way to make sure you understand what the question is asking. Here are the groups of gold, silver and bronze medals that Canada won. Added up, that made 25.
"Le Flynn"
Grouping things by 2, 5 or 10 is a great strategy because then we can skip-count. Here are Canada's medals arranged into groups of 5 using the hash marks that we learned to use when we did our surveys.
Counting up on a number line is a great way to make sure we don't skip any. This would be a good one to use for subtraction as well!
Several mathematicians had the idea to break numbers down into more manageable pieces. For example, 8 is a tricky number to add a lot of the time, but 5 is better, and goes together nicely with 25. That leaves us with just 3 to add on. No problem! Russia won 8 medals more than Canada, and that made...
Stacking numbers allows us to first add units, and then tens. We will not be tackling regrouping in grade 1, but it could be a fun one to try at home simply with multiples of 10 (e.g., 10 + 20).
Today was a bit of a different day because we got to use the Smart Board for all our activities. If you've never met a Smart Board, it is a very cool teaching tool. It is an interactive whiteboard, so I can use a projector to show files from my computer, but we can also use special pens and the touchscreen to edit writing, circle things and move things around, the way you would on an iPad. It's quite an elaborate set-up, so when I use it, I like to use it ALL day!
In French, we used it to correct the mistakes in my journal entry. Silly me, I had forgotten many capitals and periods and, though I did a good job sounding out, my students knew the correct spelling of the word "j'ai".
