Welcome back from break!
I eased fourth grade math back into the school year by playing a game called Don’t Break the Bank. This game starts with 9 empty squares organized in 3 rows of 3. Students roll a 10-sided die and must put that number in one of the 9 squares. Once the die has been rolled 9 times, students must add the three 3-digit numbers. Their goal is to come as close to 1000 without going over. This game requires students to think strategically, but also to estimate across three different place values in order not to go over 1000. While students can (and do) easily estimate what should go in the hundreds place they often don’t take into account the ones and tens place, which can have them going over 1000. Estimating is an important skill and is one in which most fourth graders need a lot of practice. They had fun and one group even asked me to send the game to their classroom teacher so they could play with other students once they were back in class.
Third grade reading jumped back into their discussion of civilizations. We looked at what some of the hallmarks of a civilization are, which has required some vocabulary work as talk about hierarchical social structures as well as what we mean when we say culture. We did dip back into our study of Britain as we looked at the succession of the British crown. The girls were, naturally, very unhappy to learn that as recently as five years ago, girls would not become king if they had a younger brother. They were happy to learn that’s been changed, but it’s always interesting to see how recently these things have changed.
Second grade math was given a challenge today: to use their Cuinsenaire rods to determine all of the many ways of adding to one whole. I modeled the activity by using all of the easy ones (8 1/8th cubes, 4 1/4 cubes, and 2 1/2 cubes and then told them they couldn’t use those combinations but they could mix and match them. It took a few tries, but the sound of “Ohhh!!!” in the classroom was repeated again and again as students began to understand how to add fractions of different sizes to make a whole. Tomorrow we’ll go a step further and I expect a few brain explosions before the day is over.
Second grade reading dipped their toes into a new activity today. They will be learning how to conduct a Socratic Seminar. We’ll be taking this slowly as this is a very new way of learning and talking about what they’re reading. Today’s challenge was learning how to take turns talking when you’re not allowed to raise your hand. We’ll go back to this on Friday, but I’m definitely looking forward to hearing what they have to say. This is a very opinionated and lively group of students!
