Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Why Explore?






THIS ACTIVITY WAS GREAT! GROUPS OF STUDENTS WORKED AS A TEAM TO GATHER RESOURCES. SOUNDS EASY, DOESN'T IT? BUT THAT IS NOT ALWAYS TRUE! SOME GROUPS HAD A LARGE NUMBER OF ITEMS TO BEGINS WITH AND OTHERS DID NOT. TRADING, EXPLORING AND GENERALLY WORKING OUT THE PROBLEMS WAS A CHALLENGE. WHAT FUN! AND WHAT GREAT LEARNING !

Sunday, October 18, 2009

CARNIVAL TIME

Friday is the Fall Carnival. Our room is having a coin toss. To make it successful we need donations of cups, bowls and plates. Now is the time to clean out those slightly used items and send them to Room 6. Remember, one man's trash is another man's treasure!
Thank you, Mrs. B.

Grab it!

This is our group data chart.
Good catch Mya!
Jared and Shane are REALLY concentrating.
Some of our work was done outside. This is Kylie and Jacob using the "Grab it." Here we have Virgil and Chris.

This past week we did a very interesting math investigation. We checked our reaction time using the "Grab it" sheet provided in our math journals. Each student checked the reaction time on ten tries on the left hand and then repeated it ten times on the right hand. Then students determined the statistical landmarks. What are the statistical landmarks? The maximum, minimum and the three types of averages. These are the mean, median and mode.

The grab it guide then went home with a study link page. I hope you enjoyed participating in our math lesson!

Sunday, October 4, 2009

On Friday Room 6 had a first! We entertained the fourth and fifth grade at our monthly assembly. Every class will do it and we were proud to be the first. Proud, but nervous. We sang two songs, This Land is Your Land and Erie Canal. Every single student sang and every voice was just beautiful. I was thrilled and we received a rousing round of applause and complements from many teachers! On top of that our next Word of the Month is "courage." This group of students certainly showed their courage.

ESTIMATION CHALLENGE!

This was quite a challenge. Our goal was to estimate how long it would take to WALK to Santa Rosa. Wow, it was quite a bit of math thinking! The students first had to use the scale on their road maps to find the length they would travel, as the crow flies.
We walked for one minute and counted steps.
We measured our stride and determined the average class stride using the median. That was fun!
Finally we had to do a LOT of calculating to determine how many steps and how long it would take. Whew! The great part for me was listening to kids really think it through. They were even able to explain it to our principal when she came in to sing with us. Wow!