Mental Math, BEDMAS and Timelines!

We have been busy lately in our class! First we studied some mental math strategies to assist us in performing operations quickly in our heads. Click the link below to see the strategies that we learned.

Mental Math Strategies

Next we learned about the order of operations that we can use to come to a consensus about a "correct" answer when doing multiple operations. Perhaps you remember BEDMAS from school? This is what we learned today! 

First, we looked at a number sentence (9 + 3 x 6 - 4) and tried to come up with as many different answers as possible. We saw that there are lots of different answers we could potentially come up with using this number sentence. However, I told the class that the correct answer is actually 23. Was anyone able to find a way to perform the operation that would give us that answer? Of course! Then I introduced BEDMAS:

Brackets

Exponents (which we do not study in grade 6)

Division

Multiplication   ---> division and multiplication are done in the order they appear in the problem

Addition

Subtraction    ---> addition and subtraction are done in the order they appear in the problem.

Here are some videos that may help to explain this concept in more detail:

TVO Kids Order of Operations

Finally, in Language we have been learning about a new reading skill, analyzing, which means finding facts in the story. I will post another entry about Analyzing, because it is an important skill in itself. 

In order to practice finding facts, however, we read a comic strip that explained a little about the history of electricity, and thenmade a timeline to show our learning. This helped students to demonstrate their understanding of the text and to find the facts within it. The timelines were completed using ReadWriteThink. Here is the link:

Timeline organizer