I forgot to do something yesterday, so I’m doing it now!
In The Mysterious Benedict Society book that we are currently reading, there is a riddle that we figured out as a class yesterday. The students insisted I put it on the website to see if their parents could figure it out as well, so here it is:
Looking for something? Open me!
I’m sure that your something inside of me lies
Of course you can always find hope in me
though despair must come first; and later, surprise
what’s sought, though depends on the seeker –
one looks for bobbin; the other, for beaker;
Others, for nature; still others, for nurture –
the quarry will vary from searcher to searcher
and yet (I suspect this will strike you as strange),
my contents are set and will not ever change.
If you still cannot guess what I mean, here’s a clue
The answer – what I mean – is inside of me, too
So did you figure it out? If not, ask your student!
Today we had a bit of a crazy backwards day, and we have VERY little homework because of it.
We did some quick review of division and the standard algorithm, but it seems most of our students are doing pretty well with this now. We introduced the idea of a repeating, never ending problem, and how we can solve that, and represent our answers.
Next we talked about finding the area of non-standard objects. We are pretty good with finding the area of simple things like rectangles and now triangles, but if we put a bunch of shapes together, how do we find the area of those?
We can break most objects down into triangles and rectangles, and find their respective areas, and then add them up. It’s very similar in fact, to the way that we break down numbers into their parts, find their products, and then add up the partial products using the distributive property of multiplication over addition. Neat how all of math is connected, isn’t it?
Tonight the students have two division problems, and two area problems to do. They have copied down these problems and shapes on a piece of paper. For the shapes they should find the area of each shape, by breaking them into smaller, manageable pieces. They shouldn’t worry about the perimeter, as we haven’t talked about finding sides of a triangle yet.
We did some typing of our Goldilocks stories, and students decided how they are going to split them up into multiple pages, and what pictures they would like to put on each page.
After this, we had an officer form the Knightdale Police department come and talk to us about drug and alcohol abuse. Our kids had some really great questions and made some very good connections to these things, and Officer Guthrie put on a really great presentation for the children. Please if you get a chance ask your child about this today and what kind of impressions they got/things they learned.
Finally, we took some quick notes on the musculoskeletal and cardiovascular systems. The students will have a LOT of vocabulary this quarter to learn, so looking back at their science journals from time to time would be a good idea.
And then before we knew it, we were out of time!
so, tl;dr
Just 2 division problems and 2 area problems to do tonight for homework:
And as always, read for 30 minutes and get reading log signed!
remember our fall carnival is tomorrow evening from 6-7:30. Come out and have some shaved ice, a hot dog, get your face painted, and play some games!
Friday is early release!
Have a good one,
-Mr. Potter