We're back in the thick of number sense and numeration and revisiting a lot of the strategies from first term with a little more depth and breadth.
First a couple of programming notes:
1. A number of students were concerned about not having shoeboxes for their animal projects. Please let me know asap if this is actually the case and I'll try to support.
2. A number of parents had contacted me about summer school opportunities. Information regarding these went home today. If I missed connecting with you, please let me know and I'll pass the package along.
Our addition and subtraction unit started off with a bang on Monday when students were getting to know our new student teacher Ms. Vijan.
They were very interested in her dog. One student asked the new student teacher how old her dog was. When she answered he was 8, the next get-to-know-her question was, "But how old is that in dog years?" (Priorities, right?)
Interestingly, one of our students got the correct answer intuitively, but couldn't explain how he'd gotten there. So we figured it out by modelling the number on the board with 8 groups of 7. Another student insisted we'd counted wrong--the answer was 57, not 56! It was fascinating to see the wheels turn when I asked about whether a group of 8 would be an odd number.
Identifying number words and key phrases that signal addition and subtraction and modelling numbers by drawing circles to represent the number are helpful strategies that become even more important later--when the problems become more complex. We keep track of key information by underlining or highlighting it in the workbook, then drawing pictures to help count up.
The students are practicing using manipulatives (like counters or base ten blocks) to help make addition and subtraction concrete. They might also use also use counters or base ten blocks with a hundreds chart to help keep track of counting.
We're also back to the strategy of "Adding On". Students can use their fingers or counters to add or subtract once they have the first number as a starting point. This unlocks a lot of flexibility in how students can work with numbers because they don't have to have physical representations of both numbers. We practised adding up to 10 to some --really-- big numbers today and yesterday.
A hundreds chart can be useful to make sure you're not skipping numbers, especially when counting backwards. We talked about how the numbers don't change their order even when bigger numbers are in front (i.e. Counting backwards from 7299 is the same as 99, at least until we hit a round number)
Essentially, a hundreds chart is like a game of snakes and ladders (only upside down) so we got to work making our own snakes and ladders games to play in order to practice addition and subtraction.
Looking forward to playing this on Thursday when I return to the classroom. Tomorrow, I'm at a PD initiative planning a collaboration with a local dance artist. I'll post more about this when I have details, but I'm very much looking forward to it.
Sincerely,
Ms. Goegan
