Friday, March 1

 Hi parents,

We had a great day today and ended our week on a high note.

In the morning, students finished up their French work from yesterday. We also finished building the big version of our K-Nex Rollercoaster. It is massive and it has a loop. Unfortunately it can't make it around the full track without a little boost, but I think it may have always been like that - it's about 25 years old.

We met with our buddy class and played "Place Value Pickle". It's a simple math game that builds estimation and place value skills, and its great for kids of all ages.

In Science, we learned about levers in more depth, in particular the role of a 'fulcrum'. Students experimented by making levers with objects from around the classroom, and moved the fulcrum to allow light objects to lift heavier ones.

At the end of the day, we learned more about multiplication. We talked about the 'Noodles and Bowls' strategy, which is a slow, but reliable, way to solve multiplication problems. Basically, you'd take any multiplication problem, lets say 3 x 5, and then draw 3 circles (bowls), and then put 5 lines (noodles) in each one. Then count them all up.  This is great for beginners as it provides a clear visual of the process of making equal groups, but ideally students eventually move away from it and use skip-counting instead.

At the end of the day I handed back a bunch of marked work, including the Angles Quiz. A lot of students lost marks for really minor mistakes, like not indicating the 'vertex', or not labelling angles as obtuse, acute, or right. I hope they see that as a learning experience to read questions more carefully.

Have a nice weekend,

Zac

REMINDER: TEA TIME TUESDAY - MARCH 5

BYOT (Bring Your Own Teabag)