We had a fabulous first full week of school! We are settling into our daily routines and regular academic schedule. I am really enjoying getting to know the kiddos! See below for photos and highlights of our week. Math Bingo Friend Finder We started the week with another getting to know you activity called Math Bingo. Students solved simple equations to determine information to find such as...Find someone who has 4-1 siblings. Shopping for Books for Reading Workshop After learning about our class library and expectations for reading workshop time, students looked for books from our classroom library to place in their book box. Theses book boxes will be used throughout the year to hold books the kiddos will read during independent reading time. Everyone was very excited to find great books and start reading. I can tell we have lots of readers in our class! Saving Fred This is one of my favorite team building activities. Students worked in groups to save Fred, a gummy worm whose boat, (cup), capsized. Fred's life preserver, (a gummy Lifesaver), was under the boat. The challenge is to turn the boat over, retrieve the life preserver, place the life preserver on Fred, and place Fred inside the boat. The catch...you can't touch anything with your hands, only paper clips. This is such a fun challenge and a great way to practice the skill of working together. Every group was successful in saving Fred! Library Orientation We learned all about the library and expectations for checking out books from our librarian Mrs. Kuperzstoch. Then we played a Kahoot game to test our knowledge about what we learned. After that we got to check out books! So exciting to browse the library and find favorite books! Decorating Writing Notebooks It was great to see all the photos the kiddos brought in to personalize their notebooks. Everyone worked really hard to make their notebook inspirational and decorative! These notebooks will hold lots of stories and thinking collected throughout the year. Writing Time Now that our notebooks are decorated and covered with packing tape, (thanks to a few volunteers), we are ready to write. Our first writing of the year is a friend wanted ad. This is another way to get to know each other. Typically, our writers will have choice about their topic within the genre we are studying. I like the Friend Wanted ads because we discuss what makes a good friend and how to be a good friend before writing. We will create Google Drawings of our ads to display. Marshmallow Challenge This is another favorite team building activity. For this challenge, we partnered with Miss. Boldt's class and Miss Bae's class. Teams worked together to build the tallest structure out of spaghetti noodles that will support a marshmallow on top. The only supplies allowed are a yard of tape, a yard of string, and 20 noodles. The kiddos quickly realized it is harder than it seems, however, everyone used perseverance and kept trying up until the last second. Math is Visual and Creative Throughout the week, we learned some norms/ideas about math that will help learners tackle math throughout the year with a growth mindset. Some of the important ideas include: struggle is good, mistakes grow your brain, understanding not speed is important, math is visual/creative, brains can grow and change, and mathematicians believe in themselves. We worked on number dot images and found creative ways to "see" patterns in the number representations. Also looked for patterns in a growing pattern and found different ways to "see" the pattern growing. As we worked, we realized that there is more than one way to represent and see the visuals, thus understanding that mathematicians think of math in different ways. Additionally, we talked about how good mathematicians know how to represent math visually. 100 Faces In math, we used cuisenaire rods to create faces worth 100. Students worked with a partner calculating the value of the rods used to make their face. This is a great way to practice addition as well as working together. I took photos of the faces they made so we can look back at them to double check if the value is 100. Everyone enjoyed the challenge and being creative! Playing Save Twenty This is a great math game to practice a bit of strategy while calculating mentally. The goal is to get 20 or as close to 20 on each round without going over using 5 dice. It was tons of fun! Me Museums I loved reading about their favorites, special events, hobbies, favorite books, families, etc! It was so much fun viewing the displays and finding out more about each other. Everyone wrote a few interesting facts about some of their classmates as they went on our gallery walk. Thank you so much for helping your child prepare for their museum! Noticing and Wondering about Graphs/Data Displays Notice and wonder is a routine we will use often this year. It is a great way to engage students, allow for individual thinking, make mathematical connections, and to help solidify understanding of concepts. Often, students will notice more about math when they see an image and think rather than having a teacher tell them what to notice/do. For this notice and wonder, my mathematicians rotated to different images of data displays and recorded what they noticed/wondered. I asked them to think about the connection between the images and the math concepts represented. Then, I gave students a chance to discuss the images in small groups. Everyone noticed the images were all various types of graphs. Our first math unit is off to a great start!
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
November 2019
Mrs. Swyers3rd Grade Teacher |