This week held some exciting events! Fourth Grade put on their dancing boots and performed their wonderful play THREE times on Thursday! We certainly appreciated all the hard work they put in to making it a spectacular performance!
On Friday, we actively enjoyed Kiker's annual Track and Field! It's always such a great day of Team Building and bonding with one another outside the classroom! We were so lucky to have such beautiful weather too -- smiles all around!
In reading, we started a new novel, Winnie's Great War. It's a historical fiction piece that gives an account of the real Winnie the Bear, a mascot for a Canadian Brigade in WWI. AA Milne was inspired by this orphaned black bear and his brave adventures to create Winnie the Pooh. It's a neat account based on the author's great-grandfather's diary. We also integrated social studies and nonfiction reading by reading, questioning,and analyzing an article about an inventor of our own choosing. Some of that reading has ignited ideas for Science Fair and for further independent investigation!
In ELA, we are analyzing and discovering all the pieces to what make great sentences! We are watching for patterns, identifying how they work together, and then creating our own. We are becoming pros at understanding and using dependent and independent clauses, commas, and conjunctions. Knowing the WHAT and WHY behind how words are chosen and put together to form thoughts helps us feel powerful as writers.
SBLC mathematicians have figured out that it's immensely helpful to know their multiples with fluency. 3rd grade has worked with division in many different ways this week, including using multiplication to divide and playing a game with remainders. In all of these settings, it's been useful to connect factors to divisors and to connect dividends with products. While division seemed like a whole new language at first, it's becoming more familiar and we're even finding ways that we use division for many real-world contexts in our home lives, too.
4th graders have a whole new appreciation for multiplication fluency because they've been learning how to use the 2-digit by 2-digit standard multiplication algorithm. Effective use of this traditional approach to multiplication requires a deep understanding of place value, mindful regrouping, and careful organization. When we already know our multiples (especially those tricky 6s, 7s, and 8s!), we are better able to focus on the other components of this multidigit work. When we don't yet know our multiples efficiently, then we have to constantly stop in the middle of our algorithm process to calculate. This increases the chance to make an accuracy error and we're learning that one error makes the whole problem inaccurate. Yikes!
If you make time for a little multiplication fluency this Thanksgiving break, here are a few resources to consider:
Visual Multiplication Strategy-based Flashcards
Kakooma game
Fluency Parent Info
As always, promote accuracy and flexibility first, then build fluency over time! Try a little practice each day or choose one fact a day to practice, then gradually build up over a week.
For each and every one of our SBLC family! We hope you enjoy this time of feasting and being together with loved ones.
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