Marshmallow challenge!
Some towers have survived better than others, but ALL groups today created a tower that held up a marshmallow! hooray!
In Language Arts we had group discussions about how we classified our passages from last night. Many students disagreed on which passages should be classified as sequence, and which should be classified as chronological. Even though we had some disagreements, students were able to have civil discussions about it, and we eventually reached a consensus.
Tonight students have another set of passages to examine. They should create their own graphic organizers this time around for each passage, and classify each passage. I would recommend that they do this on the back of their worksheet.
TextStructure5
In mathematics we talked about the importance of knowing what our numbers mean. A number like 1/2 written on our paper doesn’t tell us much. Is it 1/2 of a pizza? A brownie? Is it 1/2 of a gallon of gasoline? Often students become disconnected from math and lose track of what’s going on in word problems because they lack labels. We are trying to get into a habit of always labeling our drawings and our numbers so that we are actively thinking about what we are doing.
Tonight students have two equations to look at. On their own, the equations mean little. They are just fractions and operations. Students tonight need to give these equations meaning. They should look at each, and write a word problem that would be solved by the given equation. Once they have written their own personal word problem, they should solve it just as they did last night.
The two equations that students should bring to life are:
1/2 + 2/3 =
and
3/4 – 1/8 =
I would love to see some creativity on these as well!
In science today we began talking about forces, and motion. We discussed the forces that are constantly at work around us, such as gravity and friction. These forces are so prevalent in our lives that we often don’t even think about them.
We did some thinking exercises where we thought about what would happen if these forces didn’t exist. What would happen without gravity? What would happen without friction? If I picked you up off the Earth and plunked you down in the middle of space, how would you get back home? Could you?
Many students said they would ‘swim’ home. But when we swim we are pushing against the water. In space there is nothing to push against, so what would occur?
We had some good discussions about this.
Later in the computer lab we played with some interesting tools that allow you to simulate an environment without friction, or vary the friction. Sometimes what students expected to happen would not. I hope for some this helped dispel any misconceptions they had.
so, tl;dr
Write a word problem that could be solved using each of these equations (so a total of two word problems). Then solve them:
1/2 + 2/3 =
and
3/4 – 1/8 =
Classify the text structure in use for each of these short passages. Then draw a graphic organizer on the back for each:
TextStructure5
And as always, read!
Have a good one,
-Mr. Potter
