A few things to note:
- previews and a news note are coming home today
- I'm sending home the first Scholastic order of the year - apologizes that it's both September and October. I was waiting for the grade 4 leaflet to arrive, but it seems like they are not going to bother sending it after I put in the request a few weeks ago. We will have to make do for Sept/Oct. Hopefully we get the grade 4 version in November. My apologies! Orders will be due on Friday, Oct. 5
- Gymnastics tomorrow - many thanks to our volunteers - got an overwhelming number of people responding to our call for help! THANK-YOU!!
- Homework has started up - you probably saw some Math come home last week and yesterday.
In Math, we are currently working on patterning with a focus on organizing data in tables/charts and trying to find the connection between the graphical representation and the numerical patterns.
Last week, we built "rectangles" by first colouring square strips and examining the difference between odd/even numbers. We noticed that all the odd numbers did not form rectangles while the even numbers did. We then paired the strips off randomly to see if we could discover a pattern in adding odd and even numbers. This is an activity we still need to follow up and debrief on.
Another activity we've been working on is using an increasing number of smaller rectangles to build larger ones and looking to see how many rectangles we can spot. We've talked about "habits of mind" and taking the time to think, observe and re-check before answering. I think the activity also forced many of the children to look at the shapes more closely and in a new way. Yesterday, we de-briefed the homework from the weekend and came up with the numerical pattern:
Soon, we will be working on adding another layer to determining patterns: describing the pattern using words. This is always challenging for students so I will provide many opportunities to practice (some may be in the form of homework).
Many updates to share, but my time is running a little short this morning. Will attempt to post again later this week!
Have a lovely day!
