Many of our classroom friends were sick this week :( I hope everyone has a restful weekend and feels better by Monday!
Landforms - This week, we continued exploring landforms, reviewing the names of common landforms, their characteristics (or attributes!) and the pros and cons to having each in our community. Students generated quite a list, reflecting on basic needs for survival as well as quality of life:
Attributes - We started some art to demonstrate our understanding of attributes. We hope to have these displayed during conferences to explain the criteria.
Number Sense Game - Students learned/reviewed/practiced the card game "Shut the Box" this week, and approached it from differentiated levels. Some students are learning about recognizing dot patterns at a glance (subitizing), counting on, counting back, and using tools and strategies for score keeping with addition of multiple addends. Phew!
To play "Shut the Box", you need 2 dice, and cards 1-12 (they do not need to be the same suit).
Start by laying out the cards in order, face up.
First player rolls both dice.
First player can turn over the card that matches either the sum (+) or difference (-) of the dice.
We are working towards automaticity of basic facts, but our entry strategy for developing these skills is being able to count on (start with the largest number and count on the other dice amount) and count back (start with the largest number and count back the other dice amount).
For example: if 4 and 5 are rolled, the player can turn over 9 (5...6,7,8,9) or 1 (5...4,3,2,1).
The first player continues to roll the dice, turning over cards until they can't turn over any more cards.
The cards that are left showing are the added together and that is the first players score.
The cards are turned back to face up, the dice are now passed to the second player for their turn, following the same process.
The winner is the person with the LOWEST score.
Current strategies we are using for adding scores:
1. Using a Hundred's Board, students start with the largest number and count on the other numbers until a total is reached.
2. Students work to group numbers to make 10 to develop mental math strategies, including deconstructing numbers (12 is 10 and 2).
Colour Groups - We had our second Colour Group activity today. Ask your child what they made in Colour Group, and what fun events happened during the assembly.
Have a wonderful weekend everyone!
Ms. Thomas
