Ah yes, Thursday, the day when everything seems to come crashing down, and the children and I suddenly realize we only have 1 more day left this week to get things done.
We spent a great deal of time today working on math. Together we looked at the way we have been performing division using manipulatives, and the standard algorithm for long division. We looked at each step and talked about what is happening and how it equates to what we have been doing with our play money. We took copious amounts of notes on this, that will hopefully help us when it comes time for us to explain it in our math videos.
Tonight students have one division problem to work out. They should do this using the standard algorithm (but are more than welcome to work with their manipulatives as they do it), and they should explain at each step what is going on by labeling each number, and what they are doing. As always, there is an example:
In between bouts of math, we also read a ton of The Mysterious Benedict Society today. Things are getting super interesting. The kids are spying, cheating, lying, and all sorts of secret-agent type stuff. Trenton Lee Stewart (the author) does a great job of leaving each chapter on a cliff hanger, and I make sure that I always stop reading at the end of a chapter!
Tonight students should continue writing their stories. Tomorrow I would expect the stories to be near completion as far as a rough draft goes. Tomorrow we will be doing some peer editing, and revision.
Please also remember that tomorrow is quiz day, and we’ll have some final review quizzes on everything we’ve done so far this quarter. Some students are still having some issues with food webs and transfer of energy, so I would recommend reviewing notes on those as well as the chapter in our science book.
so, tl;dr
Do this one problem using the standard algorithm, labeling each step with what each number represents, and what you’re doing.
Keep working on your rough draft of A Bad Road for Cats version 2. This should be close to done.
Review your food webs/ecosystem notes
And read!
Have a good one,
-Mr. Potter