Return to Math Workstations

In previous years I have used Math Workstations and Guided Math in my math classes.  This was with Grades 4 and 5.  My students and I found it to be quite successful and fun, though I have to admit, it was a TON of work for me to get the stations ready.  Regardless, it was probably the best experience I've had teaching math being able to give extra help to those who needed it, build the confidence of those who felt they hated math or just weren't good at it, and to provide a little extra challenge to strong math students.

We tried this approach in 3A in the fall and will return to it now.  I've seen a lot of growth and maturity within the class and am hopeful that this round of workstations will be more successful than the last and that students will find that they are learning, but having fun at the same time.

Because creating the math workstations takes so much time, I will not be creating and sending home a weekly homework sheet, at least for now.  Please continue practicing math facts...addition and subtraction to 20 and multiplication to 6 x 6 and related division facts.

I added a new multiplication game in the websites list:  Space Race Multiplication

Please check with your child to find out what they practiced at workstations each day.  As well, if you could encourage your child to remember to respect themselves and their classmates by following class expectations at workstations, that would be very much appreciated.  Here are my expectations:

Read instructions carefully (I'll make sure that those who need help reading and understanding will know what to do)

Work quietly  (do the assigned work and be respectful of yourself and others so everyone can complete their tasks)

Stay at your station  (until the timer goes and it's time to move)

Be polite and kind (this is an opportunity for students to practice positive interpersonal skills; to compromise; to share; sometimes to work together to complete a task; to work with others who may not be your friends; to be tolerant of others' differences)

Clean up before leaving  (all students in a group are expected to help tidy the station where they are working and to leave it ready for the next group. Everyone stays until everything has been tidied up)


I am hoping for a rewarding week for everyone!

Introduction to Division

Tomorrow marks the beginning of the final third of the school year, at least that's how I see it.  The push will be on to cover the last of the outcomes that we will need to for Grade 3 and review those that we've already covered.

Division will be our next big topic.  I will be linking it to multiplication since those two operations are related.  Students will be encouraged to "think multiplication" to solve division problems and recall division facts.

I will also be working with the class to do some mental math on paper.  For some of us, it is hard to hold numbers in our heads, so getting practice on paper can help.  To begin with, I will have the class look at numbers to see how they can be broken down into numbers that are easier to deal with. For example: 16 can be thought of as 10 + 6 or 15 + 1 or 10 + 5 +1.  Eventually, the way they break it up will depend on what number they are adding it to or subtracting it from, for example, but for now the goal is to have the kids be more comfortable breaking down numbers. 

There will be no homework review sheet this week.  Please continue reviewing addition, subtraction, and multiplication facts.

I hope everyone enjoyed March Break!

Marching on...

Thank you to all of those parents who came for parent-teacher interviews.  I saw many of you and it was great to touch base about how your child is getting along with the math concepts and skills we have been working on.

This week we will continue with multiplication.  I may be able to touch on division on Monday or Tuesday, but I will be out on Wednesday and Thursday, so we will not get very far with it.  There is an assembly scheduled for Friday afternoon, part of which 3A students will be leading.  The wrap-up to French week will be combined with that assembly and there will be French bingo as well that afternoon, so I am not sure how much math we will be able to do on Friday afternoon!

I will not be sending home a homework sheet this week.  Please just practice multiplication facts.  It is fine for your child to have a multiplication table to peek at while working on these.  There is not an expectation in Grade 3 that students have the facts memorized, but the more they know the better off they will be when they move to Grade 4.

Other skills to continue practicing:

Skip counting by 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 25, 50, and 100.  That's a lot!  Practicing with coins is a great way to practice counting by 2, 5, 10, and 25.

Addition facts and subtraction facts to 18 (or 20) will be invaluable to them for life, so please don't forget to keep working on those.

And, any simple, real-life addition, subtraction, and multiplication word problems you can make up for your child or have them make up would be really good practice. 

Examples:

A recipe calls for 5 cups of chopped broccoli. You've already chopped 3 cups of broccoli. How many more cups do you need?

The dog gets fed 1 cup of food twice a day.  How many cups does he get in one day? How many cups does he eat in a week?

An Echo Dot costs about $60 on Amazon.  You've already saved $25.  How much more will you need to be able to buy it?

Remember that multiplication is repeated addition.  A problem that we automatically see as a multiplication problem might be solved by your child using repeated addition.  This is perfectly okay and shows that they understand the concept.

Have a wonderful March Break!

Moving along with multiplication

Last week the kids had a chance to move around to different stations to identify the number of groups at a station, the number of things in each group, and to write the corresponding multiplication sentences that the groups of things represented.  There were groups of tangrams, groups of Hex-a-link cubes, groups of scribblers (packages), groups of coloured rods, groups of little heart erasers, and even groups of Halloween eyeballs.  I was really pleased with how well students embraced the activity and how well they did with it.

The class was also introduced to the 4x table.  We reviewed the 2x and wrote out the 4x products beside the 2s.  Students were able to see that the 4x are the doubles of the 2x.  Since the 2x are the same as the addition doubles that students are already familiar with, the 4x can be thought of as "double doubles"!

We also went over some terminology, specifically the names of the parts of a multiplication sentence (see photo below)

We will carry on with multiplication this week, hopefully looking at the 3x and 6x tables (the 6x are the doubles of the 3x!), and looking at word problems that involve multiplication.

Please check your child's backpack for a homework sheet.  One will go home tomorrow and will be due back on Thursday.

Thanks, and I hope to see as many of you as possible during parent-teacher interviews this week, though we may need to touch base in the library as I will likely be on duty at the Book Fair.

More Multiplication

I didn't end up adding a new times table to learn last week except for the 5x, which students were introduced to at the end of the previous week. 

This week we will continue with 0, 1, 2, 10, 5 and add at least the 11 times.

Please keep practicing facts at home and looking for examples of arrays and groups of things (packages of juice or pop, ice cube trays, the arrangement of gum in a package, etc.).  Even though there is NOT an expectation that students have the facts memorized by the end of Grade 3, it is expected that they understand strategies to help them figure out products.  Practice at home with arrays and making groups of things will help with this.

I will send home more problems for homework this week even though the return rate on last week's work was disappointingly low.  Students will not be asked to complete much work, but it will all be good review for them.  If you could ask to see it and encourage them to complete it, I would appreciate it.

Have a great week!

Multiplication continued....

Sorry for the lateness of this post.  Sunday ended up being my Family Day holiday.

This week, we will continue with the concept of multiplication focusing more on how useful multiplication is as a computation strategy.  Therefore we will be looking at some simple, real-world problems and word problems that involve multiplication.

Last week, we introduced the following timestables: 0, 1, 2, 10, and 5.  Since we were not at school on Wednesday, the 5 times ended up being introduced on Friday by a substitute teacher who was covering for me.  I will check in with students on Tuesday to find out what they understood.

Last week, I also introduced the multiplication table to the class and students shaded in the rows and columns of facts that they've already learned. We reviewed how to use a multiplication table to find a fact that they are looking for.  Though the goal is to have students understand how they can figure out products (answers to multiplication questions) on their own, it is still very helpful to know how to use a multiplication table.  The table is also useful for helping students recognize patterns and relationships between the products of different factors (numbers that are multiplied together).

This week, we will review the 0, 1, 2, 10, and 5 times, and add the 11 times and 9 times.

In addition to working with our multiplication facts, report card time is fast approaching so I will be doing some assessment with students to see how well they understand the various concepts we have worked with since the last reporting period.  These concepts include place value, addition, subtraction,  and measurement with centimetres.

I will create a review document for students to work on for homework this week.  If you haven't had a chance to give your child any practice with the concepts we've been working on then this will give them a good review.  Please don't panic though if your child is stuck on some things.  I do try to circle back to review concepts as we go, but sometimes it seems that if they don't use something (or aren't thinking about something) on a regular basis, they lose it.  That's why giving them a few questions here and there at home is really helpful.  They can be addition/subtraction or multiplication facts that you put up around the house or in their lunch box; involving them in discussions about estimating costs and totals; skip counting with coins (or bills!); counting the number of carrots in a bag and figuring out how many carrots would be 5 bags (that's multiplication!).

There are lots of multiplication games online that give students good practice with their facts.  There are a number of games at Multiplication.com and the rally game, linked below, is one of them.  The games on this site allow you to choose more than one timestable to work on in one game.  So, students could choose all of the tables that we worked on last week and will introduce this week.

Multiplication Rally Game

There are lots of other multiplication games on sites such as Mathplayground.com, abcya.com, and fun4thebrain.com.  Some may require apps that you will need to download and some games may take a bit to download (or maybe my 9 year old computer is slow!).

Have a great week everyone.

Multiplying Menaces

This week our focus will be on multiplication.  Please see last week's post about how important it is for students to understand the meaning of multiplication and what each factor represents in a multiplication sentence.

So far, we've dealt mainly with rows of objects, so we will also look at how multiplication can be represented by groups of things.

This diagram illustrates the multiplication sentence 3 x 4.
There are 3 groups with 4 little circles in each one. Count them one by one or skip count by 4 to find the total number of little circles.
3 x 4 = 12

Along with continuing our work to understand the meaning of multiplication and recognize when it is useful to use it, we will begin working on multiplication facts.  We will start with easy ones: 0, 1, 2, 10, and 5.  I see no reason why we can't master these this week!  We'll try and see how we get along.  The 0 and 1 times should be super easy; the kids are already familiar with the 2 times since they've been learning doubles addition facts since Grade 1, as well as skip counting by 2; the 10 times are easy to remember because a 0 is placed after the number (which means the place value has increased by one place); and most kids find skip counting by 5 to be a breeze.  That really won't leave us many other facts to learn, especially considering the commutative property..... the fact that 2 x 8 equals the same product as 8 x 2.

Please ask your child about what they're learning in multiplication and feel free to quiz them on their multiplication facts.  Let's aim for 0 and 1 facts on Monday; 2s on Tuesday; 10s on Wednesday; and 5s on Thursday.

Have a great week and Happy Valentine's Day to all!