What is it?

Occasionally we play the game What is it? during morning meeting. It has been a while since we played it so we played a round this morning. We take a found object or a common object and try to think of new uses for it. Perhaps the name of the game should be What could it be? Ask your child to tell you all about it.


Homework ~ Read a good book or two. Check out a Bedtime Math story.

Mathematical Thinking

Mathematical Thinking
We are learning to share our ways of looking at mathematical situations and ways of solving mathematical problems with each other. We are noticing that most of the time there is more than one way to solve a problem or look at a situation. When we listen to each other explain how we figured something out we learn new ways to think about things. This helps us to be mathematically flexible which helps us not "get stuck" when working on math problems. Below are some photos of one way that we look at a mathematical situation - seeing dots on dot cards - in different ways.

We do a short (5 minute) daily activity that involves looking at dot cards. I flash a dot card picture (as seen below) to the crew for a few seconds. After I cover the picture, I ask the crew what they saw. They then tell me how many dots they saw and how they saw it. We have several students share how they saw the dots. Here are a few examples:

One student saw this as the same configuration of dots on a domino. She knew that this was 8 because this is how 8 appears on a domino.

Another student saw this as a row of 3, a row of 2 and another row of 3. He said that 3 + 3 + 2 = 8.

Another student saw the 6 dots on the sides like they are arranged on a 6 domino. She then added the two dots in the middle to get 8.

The next student saw the 3 + 2 + 3 =8 pattern but she saw it in columns instead of rows.

Another student remembered that we had previously seen a 9 dot arrangement on a previous day and noticed that this was the 9 dot pattern with one dot missing in the middle so it had to be 8.

Why do we do this? I explained to the crew that it is similar to reading - we can "sound out" every word we read but that would not be efficient. We need to have a bank of words that we just know so reading can move along quickly. This is true in math, too. We need to have strategies to deal with numbers so we don't have to count every dot to know how many dots there are in a pattern. We become more efficient using numbers.


This activity also helps us be able to break numbers apart into chunks that are easier to work with in our head. This makes us more flexible when adding and subtracting numbers. We will eventually begin to move on from dot cards and to visualizing numbers and basic addition and subtraction facts. Having the dot patterns in our minds can help us make that transition.

One other reason to do this short, daily activity is that it stimulates our creativity. We begin to look at things in more than one way. This helps us be open to finding more than one solution to our problems.

Homework
Reading ~ Read a good book or two.

Sharing

You may remember that I mentioned our passionate learners in an earlier post. I have tried to remember to get more pictures of this but I usually miss the moment because they occur at random times and I don't have my camera ready. Below are a few of the moments that I did manage to capture.

Lilliana reads her story about a scared little pig to the crew. Lorena holds the microphone for her.

The crew loved the story and liked being able to ask the author questions.

Russell shares one of his Titanic models with the crew.

He is actually very excited about this -- he just looks relaxed and laid back.

Pointing out the features of the ship.

Homework
Reading ~ Read a good book or two.
Math ~ Home Link 10.7 More Number-Grid Puzzles

Library
All library books are due tomorrow. We had our last library visit on Tuesday when a representative of the Douglas County Public Library came to speak to us about summer reading.

Wonder and Explore Stations

We added two new stations to our rotation recently one is the Snap Circuit Electricity set that I mentioned in an earlier post and the other was a large bucket of uncooked beans. We had used the beans for a lesson on volume/capacity and the crew really wanted more time with those beans so we added them to a station. Both stations have been big hits and inspire lots of creativity, collaboration, communication and critical thinking. (Thanks to Ms. Michelle for a donation of AA batteries to keep the circuit station up and running!)

Below is a short, 10 second video of Russell and Brianna sending the fan up into the air using the circuit set (yes, that was supposed to happen). If you get this post by email, you will need to go directly to the blog to view the video.

Homework
Reading ~ Read a good book or two.
Pack your daypack for tomorrow's Voyage including a sack lunch, a water bottle, 2 snacks, light jacket and other small, lightweight personal items if desired like chapstick, tissues, sunglasses, hat.

Be sure your child brings his or her carseat or booster seat tomorrow!

Collaborative ShowMes

Today we worked on ShowMes about patriotic symbols with a partner. We had to collaborate on what facts were shared, what pictures were shared, who spoke which words, who drew any pictures and more. This is what it looked like in our room while we were doing this.

Homework
Reading ~ Read a good book or two.
Math ~ Home Link 6.5 Fact Routine Practice

Math Exchanges

One of the math activities that we frequently do is called a math exchange. We call it this because we are exchanging our ideas around a mathematical topic or concept. The activity begins with a problem that we read together as a crew to make sure that we all understand what the problem is saying. Then we all try and work to solve it on our own. After we have had a chance to think about this problem on our own, we collaborate with a partner to see if their ideas will influence our ideas and vice versa. Finally we end with a whole crew debrief session where we share our ideas and the methods we each used to solve the problem. So much great sharing and learning happens during these sessions. Below are some pictures of our session from last Friday.

 The Problem

Pam has 29 goldfish crackers for snack. Doug has 17 goldfish crackers for snack. How many more goldfish crackers does Pam have than Doug?

 Working Independently

 

Working Together

Work Samples

Group Debrief or Sharing

 

Next Problem

 

I have a bunch of red and blue crayons in our crayon tubs. I want to give everyone in our crew five crayons, but I want to know all the different ways that I could give them five red and blue crayons. How many ways can I do that?

Work in Progress

Homework
Reading ~ Read a good book or two.
Math ~ Home Link 6.2 Name Collection Boxes - There is a letter to families on the back of today's Home Link.

Important Dates
2/13 No School - Professional Development Day for Teachers
2/16 No School - President's Day
2/26 Winter Voyage ~ Day 1 - not an overnight trip (Day 2 will be in April - also not an overnight trip)
3/18 Student-Led Conferences for First Grade
3/23 - 4/3 Spring Break