Our biggest focus this past week was to start practicing more on our research-to-write skills which combines the skills of informational writing and persuasive writing! We're starting out with a whole-class topic to research on (Bees), and eventually once we practice our research skills enough we'll move on to independently research on our own topic! What's going to be the final product(s), you ask? Multiple guidebooks both handwritten and typed for your reading pleasure (and hopefully by the time Open House rolls around!)
We're starting a new unit in math and here's what we're going to be focusing on:
And here's the Build-Down Strategy we used to practice our 9s:
And just in case you (or your child) forgot, here's the Use-Ten Strategy for 5s (I want students to rely less on skip counting, as it takes longer, especially when multiplying bigger numbers)
Using these strategies will help your child be more fluent in their multiplication facts, but these strategies can also be extended and applied to bigger numbers (What's 5x26? Well, 10x26 is 260, and half of that is 130, so 5x26 must be 130. Booyah!). Rote learning wont help as much with the multiplication of bigger numbers.
I would appreciate it if you folks practice these strategies with your child at home. And use arrays to show these strategies, as it will make the learning more concrete! It's challenging to solve 6x8 when you can't visually comprehend 5 rows of 8 in order to build-up to 6th row!
I think that about does it for now! Cheers and have an excellent Sunday folks!
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| Future sneaker aficionado! |
