More Math Strategy Work

Today we played a game called Parts and Wholes. With a partner, students took turns hiding a random number of their 18 cubes under a sheet. (The total number of cubes was increased as they became more proficient.) Each student then attempted to use mental math skills to figure out how many cubes were covered, based on how many remained uncovered.
I find this game to be quite interesting and hope that we have more opportunities to play; because this game requires the children to start taking the written strategies we have been using for subtraction and to use them mentally. Having the capacity for efficent mental math is key to being a stellar math matician. And just like any other muscle, your mental math muscle must be strengthed regularly. The wonderful thing is that this activity is a quick and easy 'trick' to stimulate that mental math. I would encourage parents to take advantage of five minutes here and there to ask students similar problems.
I racked my brain and thought of some times your family might sneak in a mental math questions:(For each find the total and then hide or take some away and the child figures out how much you took. (Maybe if they get it right, they can have what was taken as a treat! :))
- eating a snack like M&Ms or pretzles
- playing with legos
- picking up a box of crayons or colored pencils
- looking at change in mom's wallet (just the practice of counting change is VERY helpful)
- collecting mail from the mail box
- reading papers in the homework folder
- reading pages in a book
- playing with a collection of toys
- playing with board game pieces (like checkers)
- minutes on the clock or left till dinner

The key is be creative and share with your child what you think about when you get the answer for yourself.
The following are just two short videos of children sharing their strategy for the game. I hope that soon we will find time to film more and therefore post more for you to see!

Spelling Pyramid Strategy

This is just an example of the strategy we are practicing this week for studying our spelling words:

r
re
rep
repa
repay
repaym
repayme
repaymen
repayment

or

p
pl
pla
play

Testing Strategy

Well, every week now we have been taking a "cold" reading assessment. "Cold" means it is a test on a passage or story the students have not read or worked with before. The following are some tips/strategies that we have discussed in class to help us perform better on these tests:

1- Just know that the writer is out to trick you! He or she wants to know if you are a serious reader. (We already know you are smart!) That is why we read every single answer choice, to make sure we choose the BEST choice.

2- Read EVERYTHING!!! Including the directions, questions, captions, side-bars...

3- Go back into the text for EVERY question. 99% of the time there is direct evidence in the text to support a correct answer. At this grade level, there are many that come straight-forward from the text.

4- When we read a question, decide on what the key words are or event is then go and find those words/event in the text.

5- Once you find the section the question is refering to, READ AROUND REAL CAREFUL- that means, a little before and a little bit after to make sure we don't miss anything.

6- Pay attention to words in a CAPITALS and that are bolded.

7- If we need to figure out what a word means or what word means the same as one in the text, we should use the "Plug it in, Plug it in" strategy. That means that we should "plug in" all the possible answer choices into the text to see which makes the most sense.

8- Always do your BEST, and don't "poop" out! Work just as strong on the end as you did in on the beginning. (It is a common pattern for students to miss more questions at the end of a test, because they got tired reading the end of the passage and/or of answering the questions.)

Remember- Friday is test day! Believe in yourself!