Tuesday, 20 October 2015
Tomorrow is Blue Jay Day
To support the Blue Jays, we are asking students to wear blue tomorrow. Wear blue to support our Canadian team!
Monday, 19 October 2015
Changes to Blog Platform
As you may have noticed last week, Kidblog has gone to a membership fee model instead of being free for teachers. Sadly, this means that I will have to change the platform for students to blog in. Kidblog was ideal because it kept the blogs visible only to the students in our class, and anyone else specifically invited. I will be looking at a few options for blogging with the class as we go forward. For this week, please have your child write their blog post on paper. Sorry for the inconvenience!
Wednesday, 14 October 2015
Prime & Composite Numbers
Today we learned about prime and composite numbers. Before learning about this concept, we needed to review what factors and products are. Here is a link to a presentation that can help students to better understand these concepts. This may be helpful to review later for a quiz. Please feel free to download, save, copy and distribute these presentations any time. They are being made to be used. The more people they can help, the better!
Tuesday, 13 October 2015
Mental Math & Outlining
Today in math 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
In language, we are learning how to write a detailed report using multiple paragraphs. Today, we learned how to use the facts we read about Cheetahs earlier in this unit to organize our thoughts into an outline. Tomorrow we will use some facts about an animal to make our own outlines to practice this important skill. Here is a link to the success criteria, rubric and planning sheets we will use to be successful for our reports:
Monday, 12 October 2015
Order of Operations
Another math concept we learned about this week was the order of operations, which 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 this week!
We were lucky to have Ms. Akra teach this lesson. 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, Ms. Akra 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 she 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. We watched this first one in class:
Comparing and Ordering Numbers
This week we learned about how to compare and order larger numbers. Before students can really be successful at this skill, they need to have a fairly solid understanding of place value. That is why we teach place value first, before this concept.
The biggest idea that students have to remember about comparing and ordering numbers, and about place value in general, is that as we go further left in a number, the value becomes larger. For example, I would rather have 1 thousand dollars than 9 tens (or 90) dollars. Even though the digit is larger, the value of the 1 is more because it is in the thousands column (it is worth one thousand).
When comparing and ordering numbers, I encourage students to "stack" the numbers on top of each other, paying close attention to keeping the columns lined up. This helps them to clearly see which digit in each column is larger. See the attached presentation for an example. In class, we did an activity in which students worked in pairs to order the areas of a number of countries from greatest to least. We used place value charts to assist us with the activity. If your child needs to use a place value chart (or the "houses" idea like we did in this post) then that is fine. Students are encouraged to use whatever tools they can to help them understand concepts.
The biggest idea that students have to remember about comparing and ordering numbers, and about place value in general, is that as we go further left in a number, the value becomes larger. For example, I would rather have 1 thousand dollars than 9 tens (or 90) dollars. Even though the digit is larger, the value of the 1 is more because it is in the thousands column (it is worth one thousand).
When comparing and ordering numbers, I encourage students to "stack" the numbers on top of each other, paying close attention to keeping the columns lined up. This helps them to clearly see which digit in each column is larger. See the attached presentation for an example. In class, we did an activity in which students worked in pairs to order the areas of a number of countries from greatest to least. We used place value charts to assist us with the activity. If your child needs to use a place value chart (or the "houses" idea like we did in this post) then that is fine. Students are encouraged to use whatever tools they can to help them understand concepts.
Tuesday, 6 October 2015
Multiples, Sadako & Report Writing
Today in our morning class we learned about common multiples. First we practiced identifying multiples and played a game called Buzz, and then we attempted to solve our challenge problem:
We then discussed the concept of common multiples, and looked at a way to find common multiples easily. We will practice this a little more tomorrow for Bell Work.
Here is a link to our Blendspace unit that we will be using regularly to help reinforce concepts around whole numbers and place value. Boxes 10, 11 & 12 are all related to common multiples.
In language, we have begun reading a short novel called Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes. It is a story about a Japanese girl in Hiroshima about ten years after WWII, who contracts leukemia as a result of the atomic bomb. She believes that if she can make one thousand paper cranes, she will get well. I have been fortunate enough to visit Hiroshima and have been able to tell the students a little bit about what I saw when I was there, and some background information about Japanese culture. The students all seem to be really enjoying this story so far.
We are also writing reports as part of finishing up our unit on Analyzing. We will be learning about writing information reports that use an introduction paragraph, three main ideas and a conclusion paragraph. Today we read and looked at the structure of a report about Space telescopes. We will be writing a report together as a class, building a Bump it Up wall and then writing reports of our own.
A radio show is having a phone in contest. Every 3rd caller gets a t-shirt. Every 7th caller gets a baseball cap. In 50 callers, how many people would get both a t-shirt and a baseball cap?We solved this problem in partners and wrote our results on chart paper. Many students were able to find solutions to the problem by using a variety of strategies: number lines, use of multiples, listing numbers and circling multiples, and using division. We saw that while all the strategies worked, some were more accurate or more efficient than others.
We then discussed the concept of common multiples, and looked at a way to find common multiples easily. We will practice this a little more tomorrow for Bell Work.
Here is a link to our Blendspace unit that we will be using regularly to help reinforce concepts around whole numbers and place value. Boxes 10, 11 & 12 are all related to common multiples.
In language, we have begun reading a short novel called Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes. It is a story about a Japanese girl in Hiroshima about ten years after WWII, who contracts leukemia as a result of the atomic bomb. She believes that if she can make one thousand paper cranes, she will get well. I have been fortunate enough to visit Hiroshima and have been able to tell the students a little bit about what I saw when I was there, and some background information about Japanese culture. The students all seem to be really enjoying this story so far.
We are also writing reports as part of finishing up our unit on Analyzing. We will be learning about writing information reports that use an introduction paragraph, three main ideas and a conclusion paragraph. Today we read and looked at the structure of a report about Space telescopes. We will be writing a report together as a class, building a Bump it Up wall and then writing reports of our own.
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