All posts by lspady
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A Few More Videos
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More Math Videos
Math Videos
Just a Couple Things….
Here are a couple of announcements for you:
1) When I meet with each group this week, they will receive information concerning a Science Olympiad opportunity at ESU #3 on Nov. 5th. If your child is interested in attending, please fill out the permission slip and send back to me or there is a link on the slip that you may also use to register on line. Please only do one or the other, not both. We are only able to take 16 students in grades 4-6, so we will be randomly drawing students on Oct. 29th. You will be notified if your child’s name is drawn.
2) Classroom spelling bees will be held this week. The students will be taking a written exam consisting of 20 words. These will be scored and the top 12-15 students will be asked to participate in the school bee. Sunset’s school bee will be held on Nov. 4th at 1:30 in the gym. Loveland’s school bee will be held on Nov. 12th at 1:30 in the gym. Family members of the contestants are welcome to attend.
3) Fourth grade EY students will take a written math exam this week to determine the top 24 students that will attend the Marrs Magnet Math Competition. When those students have been determined, they will be given some practice materials to use. The Marrs Competition is on Monday, Nov. 18, there will be more information coming for those that are selected to attend.
That is all for right now! 🙂 Please let me know if you have questions or concerns. Thanks!
End of First Quarter
Wow! Where has the time gone? I’m sorry I haven’t posted in awhile…we’ve been busy finishing a couple different projects while also finishing our strategy booklet. Drawing a picture is an effective strategy for all sorts of problems. We found that after drawing a picture, other patterns surfaced like patterns and organized lists. When have you used the strategy of drawing a picture to solve a problem? Let us know by leaving a comment!
Students have been working on Wordly Wise for vocabulary development. Have you noticed them using any of the words in conversation? Students created vocabulary videos using Explain Everything (app on the iPad) or Keynote. Here are a couple different videos:
Students also created math problems. Some used Explain Everything and others used Keynote. We are sharing our problems with some students in Wisconsin using Google Drive and they will be providing problems for us to solve. Can you solve these problems?
I’m hoping to make it to most of the conferences scheduled for this week, but I may not make it to all of them. If I don’t make it to your child’s conference, I will call you and we can either have a phone conference or schedule another time to meet.
I’ve had such a great time working with your children 1st quarter. Our 2nd quarter concept will be communication and we will be spending some time on literary devices and writing while continuing our vocabulary development with Wordly Wise. We will also start Math Olympiads in November. Stay tuned for more information!
Have a great week!
Parent/Teacher Conference Information
Hello Again! I wanted to touch base with you before conferences to tell you that I will not be sending home participation records. We, the EY Coordinators, have decided that our blogs will be more than enough information and that the participation records would be somewhat redundant. I will be checking to be sure that everyone is able to access the EY
Blog and if we need to send copies home, I will do that. This tool is so easy to use and I think I will keep you more in the know than the participation records ever did. I hope this is acceptable to you. Please feel free to voice your opinion as a blog comment or in an email.
I also wanted to comment on the Daily Challenge. Each day, at the beginning of class, I post a short problem for the students to solve. These may be math related or language arts brain teaser sorts of puzzles. The students are required to write the problem down in their notebook and try to solve before our next meeting. We go over the answers the next time we meet. At the end of each quarter, I will look at their notebooks to check for completeness and award a certificate and a small treat for those that are done. I have just starting looking over the first quarter ones and I am impressed by their work. Hopefully, they will keep it up!
I believe all students are now enrolled in the Khan Academy–https://www.khanacademy.org/. They have been pretesting in the math area and just exploring the site. We won’t spend a lot of class time on this, I just wanted them to have access to this as a resource. They can always go there and learn something new! 🙂 Their username is their first name, last initial, 66– all together, no spaces, and their password is their 5 digit number that should all know. Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.
That is all for now! Have a great day!
September/October News
Hello to all of you! This is my first blog ever– I think this will work well as a communication tool. I will send out a short e-mail blast each time I post a new entry. Please feel free to provide input as we move forward.
Time is flying by! I can’t believe the first quarter is almost over. We have been very busy! Our big family wedding took place last Friday and all is well! Lots of family time and a beautiful evening for the wedding! We are so proud and blessed to officially welcome Kamrie into our family.
Ok, back to business! In EY, we have been busy discussing stategy in all walks of life but mainly focusing on math problem solving strategies. Each of the students have kept a booklet summarizing and practicing these strategies. I think these will be very helpful as we begin doing some math competitions. I have been impressed by how they have been able to connect these strategies to real life experiences outside of math class.
Our vocabulary enrichment, Wordly Wise, is also coming along. The students are settling in to the expectations and have been pretty good about being prepared for class. We will continue to work on this.
The Strategy Seminar was a huge success! Many thanks to Mrs. Spady and Mr. Lee for all their organizing efforts. I heard lots of positive comments from the students and parents. Hopefully, we can do some similar activities again this year.
Conferences are coming soon, Oct. 15-16. My thoughts are that I will be at the school that I am normally at on each day for the first conferences and then I will switch for the second set of conferences. So, that means I will be at Sunset on Tuesday and Loveland on Wednesday for the October Conferences. If possible, I will come to your teacher conference at your scheduled time. If I miss you, due to the number of students that I see, please feel free to call to set up an individual time. I will be glad to meet with you to discuss your child’s progress. There will be Participation record sent home with report cards. There really isn’t a grade because much of what we do is group based, but there are expectations. I will be sure to let you know if the expectations are not being met.
We have a couple of math competitions for 4th and 6th grade coming up. Unfortunately, I cannot take all the students so we will have to take tests to determine the participants. This really stinks! I wish I could take all, but they limit the number of teams per school. You will receive a permission letter when we have the teams determined.
Thanks so much for all your support. I am enjoying working with all the students. Their enthusiasm and love of learning is contagious. Thank you so much for sharing them with me! Have a great weekend!