January Blast

We're back and we're back at it.

This month our focus will be:

• addition and subtraction with and without regrouping with answers to 1000 (limited to 1, 2, and 3-digit numerals)
• measuring length using centimetres and metres and estimating lengths using centimetre and metre referents
• calculating perimeter
• introduction to multiplication

That's a lot, so any additional support or practice you can provide at home would be appreciated. Students will be given nightly homework, mostly in the way of math facts to practice, so if you or someone else at home could spend a few minutes (even just 5 minutes) doing this, I'd be grateful. The kids did a great job when I asked them their doubles facts on Friday :-)

To begin this month, we'll be continuing the work we began in December with addition and subtraction. Regrouping problems always pose the greatest challenge for students. Before the Christmas break students practiced modelling the process using Base Ten blocks. We'll do more of that as we transition into working without Base Ten blocks. This isn't anything new to students as it is part of the Grade 2 curriculum as well, we'll just be starting to work with bigger numbers.

Below are links to two videos from the Khan Academy talking through the thinking involved in solving 2-digit by 2-digit addition problems with and without regrouping. We will watch these in class, but watching them at home and talking about the math involved should help all of this make more sense.

One note about these videos....the person explaining the processes mentions "carrying" and "borrowing". Though those are the terms I was taught in school, we no longer use those because they don't really show a real understanding of what is happening to the numbers we're working with. "Regrouping" is the term that is used now. We regroup our ones to become tens when we have more than 9 ones when adding, such as in 13 + 9. We regroup our tens so we will have more ones to work with to be able to subtract, such as in 54 - 27.

Khan Academy 2-digit addition without regrouping

Khan Academy 2-digit addition with regrouping

Have a great week!