Tuesday, December 14, 2021

 Today we: continued the social studies research on the Cordillera Region. This time the groups were shuffled so that new group members could share what they learned yesterday. Students who believed they had completed the task got to take on the role of leadership to help others, and those who were not done were given a second chance with different group members that were more supportive of their learning. The ones who were done also received insight on things they may have missed, such as the Sonoran Desert as an unlikely geographical feature in a landscape of rainy mountains. 

We also explored the language used to write word problems and made a chart of words that could be used for addition and subtraction problems, such as "difference" and "sum." Students were told to write problems of their own to demonstrate the use of math vocabulary, and then practice mental math strategies with their problems, such as friendly numbers or rounding. 

For example, Billy had 54 strawberries and picked 11 more. What was his total? Students added the 1 from 11 to the 54 to make 55, making the equation 55+10=65 which was much easier to solve once broken down. 

We also went to the learning commons today and took out some new books. Students are allowed to keep them over the holidays and I saw many chapter books being signed out! There was a wonderful variety of festive sweaters today and I can't wait to see the Festive hats tomorrow!