It's always nice to come back from a break with a couple of new things on the go. Today we read a book about hockey called "The Highest Number in the World" and I started it by asking students what the biggest number they knew was. The first number I got was 190, and the other answers ranged from 21 to 7, 000, 000, 000, 000, to infinity, so there was also a wide range of understandings and many ideas to unpack.
We talked about how zeroes act as placeholders, how we can tell a number is bigger, how we could always make a number bigger by adding one and counting from a higher number using the patterns we already know (Seven trillion and one, Seven trillion and two, etc). Some students got really excited, and after that the
story was a little underwhelming (though certainly not for everyone--the story's inclusive rewriting of hockey history to include women was a hit with Linnaea in particular)
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| You can see my recording of some of the original answers as well as subsequent student's ideas |
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| We used the squares on the carpet to make a place value chart and teddy bears as counters |
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I also brought back this mysterious item from New York. The big reveal will be tomorrow morning, but we got a lot of guesses. (Spoiler alert: It's a replica whale's tooth)
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| Most common guesses were teeth, bones, shells and claws. |
But I really wanted to show you some details from last Thursday's 100th day celebrations. In the morning, we went around our circle with each child explaining what their favourite part of their vest was. (Valentine exchange took place in the afternoon, but was very busy so no pictures were taken.)
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| 5 Ninjagos |
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| 100 cats on 10 carpets |
Later we made towers with 100 popsicle sticks.
We walked through the school with our vests on parade
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| Brothers |
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| Some of the vests slipped a bit en route |
There was a lot of variation and individuality in the execution of each vest. Thank you to all parents for supporting this learning at home. As you can see by today's learning about numbers, students are thinking about numbers in new ways!
Sincerely,
Ms. Goegan
