Thursday and Friday, March 1 & 2, 2012

UPDATE:  Kenny's Wall Art was added to the page with all of the other examples of the class.

The Number Sense unit on subtraction is coming to an end.  We are now working on some Word Problems involving borrowing and will be doing a pre-quiz on Monday that will not be graded but will look like what the final test looks like.  I may even have the students design a Math review sheet before the test to provide them with some extra practice.

Throughout this unit, I have been emphasizing that subtraction simply involves the skill of being able to add up from the lower number to get to the higher one:

 Another technique we have been using, when checking the homework, is very similar and involves adding the answer to the lower of the two number combinations so it will add up to the numeral on the top.  Here is an example from the SMARTBoard:

We have been spending some more time in trying to understand what we are reading.  I have found that this new Reading Response form I am using provides prompts for the students to make deeper connections with the materials they read.

I decided to model this by doing a response on the New York Knicks basketball player, Jeremy Lin.  I used the Toronto daily, 24 to get this article. The articles are usually not that long for the students to read and the reading level is not too high.  The next time we do a response, I am going to allow the students to make a choice on the material they want to read.

Linsanity article

Mr. P's response

The phonemic awareness work continued today but this time we took a closer look at the 44 sounds in the English language.  Here is a link to the pdf document put out by The National Right to Read Foundation in the United States: http://www.nrrf.org/PhonicsPrimer.pdf

Different students took turns reading from the list and I used the SMARTBoard to add some additional words to some of the sounds we came across.  In the photos below, there is no writing on it but just the 44 sounds.

A couple of students took turns looking more specifically at some of the sounds we came across in activity that we started on Tuesday.

Jennifer's work on SMARTBoard

Johnson matching the correct sounds to the words

Jennifer working on SMARTBoard

HOMEWORK:  

Reading Response:  The students may select a reading material (magazine, newspaper, or book) of their choice.

Pre-Quiz on subtraction work involving borrowing.  The students are going to have to create 8 questions [ 3 with 3 digit, 2 with 2 digits, and 2 word problems].  They will write the questions on a piece of fullscap paper and the answers on the post-it notes.  I will check this on Monday, to see if they are right, and then they will exchange the questions with their peers to solve.  

sample questions

paper for questions and Post-It notes for putting the answers on