Published January 24, 2012 | 
In order to meet the math facts speed goals for our Math Incentive Program, I’ve asked the students to spend 10 minutes on weekdays studying them. I’ve created a homework check sheet to reward students with room points who are working hard to meet their goals.
Student who reach their goal of passing their math facts, they can substitute reading or doing homework so that they can continue to earn room points for returning their slip.
Published January 8, 2012 | In a previous post I showed you how there are only 36 out of the 100 math facts that have to be memorized for multiplication, the rest are either easy (1 • n = n) or commutative (a • b = b • a). The same rules apply to the addition math facts as well.
Subtraction facts are a little trickier because the minuend (top number) goes from 0 to 19. This is because students often have to deal with problems that involve regrouping (borrowing) such as:
34
-15
Obviously, the 4 must become a 14 through regrouping. When taking this into account we end up with a table that looks like this:
At first glance 155, but it turns out that memorizing 72 of them is enough to get them all.
Notes:
n – 0 is easy (yellowish color).
n – 1 is easy, just count down 1 (blue-green color).
Pink numbers represent double digit numbers that don’t need regrouping (i.e. if you know 6 – 3 then 16 – 3 is a snap; but 16 – 7 requires dealing with both digits in the minuend).
The uncolored numbers total 72. A lot, but better than 155. I have designed three subtraction practice test you can download on the Math Facts page. Two of them are 40 problem tests: one deals with the minuends 3 through 10; the next 11 through 19. The other test has all the facts in white boxes shown in the table, plus 8 others, for a total of 80 problems. This way students can build up to the 80 problem quiz.
Published January 8, 2012 | Did you notice the new button at the top of the blog webpage? The Math Facts page is a new resource page that has been added to give information about the Turner Math Incentive program. You will find a kink to a pdf that you can use to download and print practice tests.
Published January 6, 2012 | The Dental Foundation of Oregon‘s Tooth Taxi is coming the week of February 6 through February 10 to treat school aged children (K-12). There is paper work that needs to be filled out, so it’s a good idea to fill out the permission slip as soon as you can and return it to the office. Here is the permission slip, which also contains other important information about the Tooth Taxi.
Published January 5, 2012 | It’s time for our first round of OAKS state testing. Our goal is to have everyone complete this round before the end of Janaury.
Fifth grade will be taking the OAKS state tests on the follow dates and times (these times are also marked on our calander, but are grouped here for an easy to overview):
January 17 & 18 from 8:15 to 9:45
January 19, 20, & 23 from 10:45 to 11:50
January 25 from 10:15 to 11:45
Published December 11, 2011 | Science
On Monday, December 12, the students will be introduced to the parts of a compound microscope. Also, we will review the parts of an insect, as well as the life cycle of an insect (see Science on the resource page). This material will be tested (closed book) on Wednesday of this week, and this will be the first science test for the new term. Students, of course, will also be getting study materials on Monday so that they can prepare for the test.
After the break we will continue our study of classification by learning more about vertebrates, then move on to ecosystems.
Social Studies & Language Arts
Social Studies has been integrated with Language Arts (writing) over the last month while the students work on learning the art of writing notes without copying sentences out of resource material (we are using both textbooks and encyclopedias). The concept of writing down just the facts in short phrases, or rewording longer items in their own words, is challenging for most elementary students. Many feel insecure about writing when they know they can’t match the polished prose of textbooks. I try to assure them that I want to hear the voice of a fifth grader when I read their papers, and that no one expects them to write as well as the textbook authors.
We are also working on the draft and editing process while the students create an expository writing piece about an early explorer.
Math
Tuesdays and Thursdays continue to be math unit days where the students work on computational skills in subtraction, addition, multiplication and division (including, eventually, fractions and decimals). On the remaining days, students have been working with geometry. This includes identifying triangles by their angles and sides, as well as figuring the area and perimeter of quadrilaterals. We will continue geometry after the break as we study volume and surface area of three-dimensional figures.
Once our explorer reports are done in Language Arts the students will construct geometrical puzzles and write directions to those puzzles to see if their classmates can build their creations from a set of written directions.
Next month the entire school will start working on math facts (subtraction, addition, and multiplication), but more about that in January.
Published November 23, 2011 | I wanted to remind parents that I can email the weekly progress report. This is especially helpful for parents who are living apart.
A few things to remember if you want to use this option are:
If you would like to start or stop receiving progress report emails, simply send me a note letting me know. Please type or print the email address very carefully to help me avoid errors in setting up the mailing list.
Published October 29, 2011 | As parent-teacher conferences approach please remember I’m always just a phone call, email, or visit away. Anytime you have a question or concern contact me; I welcome communication anytime of the year.
As you may recall from the note on last week’s weekly progress report, your child will not bring a progress report home this week. I will be going over the reports with you during conferences. The official district conference dates are November 2 and 3, but if you need to reschedule we can certainly meet on a different day. Remember that Friday, November 4 is a district cut-day, and so there will be no school.
Published October 10, 2011 | Last Thursday, your students received a spelling list entitled: “Hardest Easy Spelling Test,” which, by the way, is available in the resources section of this blog. Although the words seem simple, and there are only 12 of them, they are some of the most misspelled words in our language.
I not only test these words using a formal spelling test, but I look for them in the student’s writing. I have already found students misspelling some of these words in their reading comprehension, which I’ve been pointing out to them in short one-on-one conferences as I go over their work.
One of the problems with traditional spelling programs is transferring the learned spelling to writing assignments. As these words are high utility words that the students will use often, students will have a lot of opportunities to use many of these words almost every day.
Published October 6, 2011 | I’ve now added a resource page to the blog so that parents and students can access some of the materials and information that I give out in class. You can check it out by using the menu at the top of the page.