Wacky Wednesday

Today was a little different than most days.  We usually split our Math and ELA pretty evenly.  Today, we leaned a little more on math because, quite frankly, we needed to.

In the midst of teaching, we noticed some gaps, and as we were addressing those gaps, we realized that the teachable moment was NOW!!!!  So instead of wrapping up and moving to ELA, we stayed with Math!  That is the marvelous thing about having your students all day - you teach what is needed, when it is needed!

• 1st/2nd/3rd - Extended Math Block
• Yep, we did three full periods of Math today.  We were doing number talks which generally takes about 15-20 minutes, but today we noticed gaps.  So our Number Talk turned into a full on mini-lesson dealing with number sense and multiple ways of addressing it.
• We broke into groups for our daily number review and then did a share out.  We don't normally do it that way, but today with what we saw in Number Talks, it was necessary.  We had to stop and readdress some of the number sense problems that popped up and showed them a few more strategies they could use.
• We finally did the interactive lesson for 5.3 which was using the distributive property to solve multiplication problems involving 10's.  In other words, if you don't know how to do 5 x 30, you can do 5x10 plus 5 x 10 plus 5 x 10 to get 50+50+50 which is 150! My small group used graph paper to draw the chunked distribution of the 10's to help them solve their daily exercises.
• 4th - Literacy
• We started off reviewing chapter 1 and 2 that we read yesterday.  We practiced do quick summaries using temporal order words like First, Next, and Last!  Then we spent a lot of time going over character traits and "PROVING" the traits by using the text.  We read Chapter 3 and stopped along the way to discuss traits that popped up like "smart" or "likes to learn"... and then they had to say how the book supported that trait.
• 5th - Lunch
• 6th - PE
• 7th - Literacy
• We finished chapter 3 and then read chapter 4.  We again spent time on using the text to help describe a character and how their actions can be used to describe their character traits.  We did some inferential thinking as well.  I can tell that the students are enjoying our new class novel and that they are starting to think more deeply as they read.

Homework:

• Math: GoMath 5.3 Practice Pg. 279-280
• Math: Study Multiplication Facts!
• Spelling - Practice Sheet
• Think of a name for The Math Rabbit
• Read your independent book - We need more AR points!