Holy Trinity Parent Information Session

There will be an information session for all parents of students who will be attending Holy Trinity in September at Holy Trinity on April 7th at 7PM. This is often a valuable session for parents and gives everyone an opportunity to see the school, and ask any questions you might have. Students will be going to visit the school on April 22nd during the school day. For more information please see the flyer on our school website.

Next Unit in Math - Decimals!

We have spent a great deal of time learning about fractions in the last few weeks. It is important that students have a strong foundation in their understanding of fractions in order to better understand their relationship to decimals, percents, ratios and probability.

This week, we are beginning to learn about decimals. Below is a beginning Blendspace unit that covers the basics of decimals. It only shows decimals to the hundredths. In grade 6, we learn decimals up to the thousandths. This is a great place to start however, and reviewing this unit with your child can greatly assist them in developing their understanding of decimals.

In our unit on Decimals, we will be covering:

• relationship between fractions and decimals
• comparing and ordering decimals
• rounding decimal numbers
• adding and subtracting decimals
• multiplying and dividing decimals
• multiplying and dividing decimals by 10, 100, 100 and 0.1, 0.01, 0.001 (mental math)

Here is the link to the Blendspace unit on decimals. I will be adding to it as we go along:

Decimals Blendspace Unit

Blendspace for Air & FLight

Here is the link for our Blendspace unit for Air & Flight:

Air & Flight

http://www.knowitall.org/nasa/simulations/flight/parts.html

https://www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-12/UEET/StudentSite/airplanes.html

Mixed numbers & Comparing Fractions

Over the last few days, we have been learning about mixed numbers and comparing fractions. Most students in grade 6 usually are able to identify mixed numbers and improper fractions, and they are generally good at drawing pictures to represent these amounts. The challenge is to show them how to relate these to a number line, and then to use a more exact method for when their drawings are difficult to distinguish. Here is the anchor chart we created to show how to convert between mixed numbers and improper fractions:

Today we began learning about how to compare fractions. We started today with proper fractions, and tomorrow will continue to learn about how to do it with mixed numbers and improper fractions. There are basically 4 methods to compare fractions, and here is the anchor chart we used to show the ways:

Equivalent Fractions

Today we learned how to find equivalent fractions without using a model. Most of the students were able to identify equivalent fractions by using a model like a fraction circle or a number line. I really like to try to emphasize the use of a number line when teaching fractions, because it helps students to better understand where a fraction might "fit" relative to whole numbers.

The big idea about equivalent fractions is that they are fractions that show the same amount, but broken up into different size pieces. We can find equivalent fractions by multiplying or dividing by any fraction equal to 1 (eg. 3/3, 4/4, 5/5, etc).

Here is an anchor chart that we have up in the class that explains how to find an equivalent fraction using multiplication or division to assist.



Also, we watched these videos to help us better understand fractions and how to find equivalent fractions.