March 26

What’s new?

We had an incredible visit from playwright, Emil Sher, yesterday. He came to speak to grades 5-8 about turning Hana’s Suitcase into a play. It was captivating, informative and extremely enjoyable to learn from him. In our ongoing effort to develop our media literacy skills, the grade 5 students helped me tweet out about his visit. We had a pleasant surprise this morning when we checked up on the status of the Tweet! Check out my blog post to see what we found, and what we did with the information!

 

Our multiplication and division skills have also been improving! We will be having a test next Tuesday, April 2. Here is a link to the test outline. Today, Mr. Kom also helped us with our study skills. He shared this planner with us, which each student has started to fill out for themselves. Depending on each student’s extra-curricular activities and schedules, their planner will look different. Students are encouraged to practice using whichever tools they feel work best for them. As always, extra practice worksheets will be provided in class, students can take the textbook home, they can practice on Prodigy, and they can explore some of the other suggestions made as well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here are two videos reviewing the strategies we’ve learned for both multiplication and division.

Multiplication:

Division:

 

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March 22

Things to Remember

Happy Friday!

It has been a fun-filled week full of costumes and activities. But that doesn’t mean the learning has stopped!

 

Math

Today the students got their “Adding and Subtracting Decimals” test back. Please sign and return on Monday.

We have continued with our multiplication and division unit. Students have learned a few different strategies for this, and I will be posting a blog with a tutorial on these strategies shortly. In the meantime, you can ask your child to share what they’ve learned so far with you.

In terms of rote multiplication, next week we will be focusing on 3s and 4s. Here are some tricks to help you practice:

3 – Doubles + 1 – when multiplying by 3, multiply the number by 2 and then add one more group. Ex: 4 x 3; 4 x 2 = 8 plus one more 4 = 12. Therefore, 4 x 3 = 12

Here’s a really cool video showing how to skip count by 3s

4 – Double Double – when multiplying by 4, double the number, then double it again. Ex: 6 x 4; 6 x 2 = 12 and 12 x 2 = 24. Therefore, 6 x 4 = 24

You can use the same links from my last post to practice these new facts.

 

Public Speaking

We have started the process of writing our public speaking speeches! We will be breaking this process up into very manageable pieces, and working on it in class. The first step is to just brainstorm a topic. Here is the schedule, where you’ll be able to see all the due dates.

By Monday, students need to fill out the brainstorming sheet and email me with their topic choice. We will continue on from there next week. As always, if you have any questions, please let me know.

 

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March 20

Becoming Primary Learners

There has been a lot of buzz around the school on documenting learning. As you may or may not be aware, I am part of a cohort of teachers working with Silvia Tolisano, learning and practicing various methods of documenting our own learning as teachers, and the learning of our students. Dr. Mitzmacher has blogged about our experiences, and shared his goals at the Town Hall at the beginning of the year, for all OJCS students to own their own learning (North Star!) and manage personal student blogfolios.

It has become my goal to share what I’ve been learning with my students, to help them understand what an authentic artifact of learning is, how they can capture their own learning and how they can use documentation OF, FOR and AS learning. 

 

I recently wrote a post on my professional blog about my journey so far. My ultimate goal is for each child in grade 5 this year, to share their learning journey with you – their family and friends. I welcome any and all feedback as we go through this process. Please visit my blog and share your thoughts with me and with your children. I hope you will get as much out of this process as I believe you will, and as I believe your children will!

Category: Language Arts | 3 Comments on Becoming Primary Learners
March 15

Why did two 4s skip lunch? They already 8!

Who doesn’t love a good math pun?

And it’s perfect timing for our multiplication and division unit! As we embark on this next unit, it’s extremely important that students are practicing their multiplication facts daily, or as close to that as possible. As a guide, we will be focusing on specific facts each week, however that doesn’t mean a student couldn’t spend more time on a fact, or move on if they’ve mastered it. It’s all about finding out which numbers need extra work, and persevering till you’ve mastered it! We will be practicing all our multiplication facts up to 12×12.

Here are different things you can do to practice the facts:

  1. Make Flashcards. This is much better than buying them premade! Writing the facts down is in itself a form of practice. Students can cut the cards, write the multiplication sentence on one side, and the answer on the back.
  2. Math rap songs. For our auditory learners, listening to songs about multiplication and adding a beat to it can be helpful. Students can learn all the newest pop songs by heart…why not their multiplication facts? YouTube has tons of options. You just need to find the one that appeals to you.
  3. Online multiplication practice. These are a few suggestions but there are TONS to choose from.
    1. https://www.multiplication.com/quiz/multiplication-self-correcting-quizzes
    2. https://www.multiplication.com/games/play/quick-flash-ii
    3. https://www.timestables.com/
    4. https://www.coolmath4kids.com/quizzes/multiplication
    5. https://webmathminute.com/online
  4. Printed practice sheets. I have heaps of practice sheets that students can take home.
  5. Find tricks to help you remember your facts. I will share tricks each week as well.

This coming week we will be focusing on the easier facts to get them out of the way!

O, 1, 2, 5, 10

Tips and Tricks:

0 – Every number multiplied by zero is zero!   Ex:    0 x 1 = 0      0 x 12 = 0     7 x 0 = 0

1 – Every number multiplied by 1 stays the same!  Ex:   1 x 3 = 3    7 x 1 = 7    11 x 1 = 11

2 – Add the number to itself…in other words, double it!  Ex:   2 x 4 = 8 because 4 + 4 = 8

5 – There are a few different tricks for 5.

i) Cut the number in half, then multiply by 10. Ex:  5 x 6,   half of 6 is 3,  3 x 10 = 30  therefore, 5 x 6 = 30

ii) Multiply the number by 10, then cut in half.  Ex: 5 x 3,   10 x 3 = 30,  half of 30 is 15, therefore 5 x 3 = 15

iii) The last digit follows the pattern 5, 0, 5, 0… Ex: 5, 10, 15, 20…

iv) Think of a clock. The numbers on the clock represent the minutes in increments of 5. When the minute hand is on the 4, it’s 20 minutes. Therefore, 5 x 4 = 20

10 – Add a zero to the end.  Ex:   3 x 10 = 30     6 x 10 = 60    12 x 10 = 120

Category: Homework, Math | 3 Comments on Why did two 4s skip lunch? They already 8!
March 7

Thank you!

Thank you to all the incredible grade 5 students who worked so hard to produce incredible STEAM Fair projects. I loved walking around, hearing all that you learned, and seeing all you created.

Thank you to all the incredible families for taking the time to come and visit our class and share is our work. (If anyone took any pictures, please send them to me!)

 

Later in the afternoon we had the chance to go and see what the grade 6, 7 and 8 students had produced. Given that next year grade 5 students will be among those projects in the gym, each student was asked to look with a critical and inquisitive eye at all the projects. They needed to take a picture, video, or any other form of documentation to reflect on which projects inspired them and why. These annotated pictures or videos are due on Monday. How fortunate they’ll be next year to have this documentation to look back on as a memory for inspiration!

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March 5

Wonder Update

Each student is responsible for finishing to read Wonder by March 18. As every student was in a different spot, they have each created a schedule to follow over the next 2 weeks. Please check in with your child to see the daily reading goals they have set for themselves.

peacefully reading

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February 10

Math – Show What You Know

We will be having a Math assessment on Wednesday, February 13.

Students will be expected to know how to convert between metric units, from Kilometers to millimeters. They will also need to tell time on an analogue clock, and determine how much time has elapsed.

 

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January 22

WONDERful Acts of Kindness

 

Over the winter holidays, I read a book called, Hacking Homework by Starr Sackstein and Connie Hamilton. If you’ve read Dr. Mitzmacher’s blog, you know that homework is a topic of conversation currently going on in our school as well. One thing that resonated with me from Hacking Homework, is that we should “consider sound alternatives to traditional homework that foster a love of learning in all students and encourage them to learn outside of class, whether you tell them to or not.”

 

I have never been a huge homework-giver, but loved the ideas presented in the book about creating opportunities for students to learn valuable lessons, without necessarily realizing that they are learning. Hack 4 (be flexible with assignments and deadlines), Hack 6 (spark curiosity), Hack 7 (use social media for learning), Hack 8 (amplify student voice), and Hack 9 (team up with families) can all be found in our newest homework assignment: WONDERful Acts of Kindness.

As Summer, a character from our novel study, Wonder by R. J. Palacio, has taught us, what starts as a small act of kindness can ultimately have a very big impact. In the story, Summer started sitting with Auggie at lunch because she felt bad for him, however ended up finding a true friend in the end. Her act had a positive impact in her own life, and it also impacted the way Auggie felt every day when he came to school. On top of that, perhaps other students in the school were able to see Summer’s act of kindness and be influenced to do their own. We really have no idea the magic our simple actions can have on the world

…but we can try…

Today I launched our WONDERful Acts of Kindness challenge (based on an activity by Presto Plans). Each student will be challenged to perform (at least) three acts of kindness. When they have done their act, they will give that person a ‘Pay It Forward’ card, in the hopes that this individual will then perform their own act of kindness, continuing to pass on the card to influence others to do good deeds. This concept of Paying it Forward isn’t new, but here’s where we will try to get a little glimpse into how far our actions can travel. On the back of each ‘Pay It Forward’ card, there will be a link to this blog post, along with some guiding questions the students came up with today:

  1. What city do you live in?
  2. How did you get this card?
  3. What will you do to pass it on?

People who experience one of our acts, or feel the ripple effects, will be asked to share their story on our blog, so we can see just how far it goes!

As always, if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out. I will be handing the cards out to the students on Friday to get our WONDERful Acts on the move!

Category: Homework, Language Arts | 5 Comments on WONDERful Acts of Kindness