Math Fluency Boxes

In a previous post we shared how we love our Number Rolls.

These are part of our Math Fluency Boxes, which are full of activities to help us become fluent with numbers.  We have filled our boxes with many activities, and we found a new favorite today:  Hundred Grids.  We added an activity that has a blank hundred grid on one side and a regular hundred grid on the other.

There are so many possibilities with hundred grids.  

We can fill in numbers in counting order, shake dice and make our best guess to fill in specific numbers, or fill it in randomly...

....but our new favorite game is "Guess My Number."  

For the game Guess My Number, one partner has a number in mind and the other asks questions to narrow down possibilities to try and find out the partner's number.  

We found out that some questions are somewhat helpful and cancel out one or two numbers (like, "Is your number 68?") or some questions can be very powerful and can cancel out lots of numbers (like, "Is your number less than 50?").

We are getting smarter as mathematicians every day!

Synthesizing As We Read

We have been noticing how our thinking changes throughout a book as we read.  We usually have a deeper understanding by the time the book is done.  This happened as we read Poppy...

This especially happened as we read The Other Side.  We noticed that our schema about the Civil Rights Movement was important in our deep thinking about this book.

  We really paid attention to how our thinking changes during our first reading of Grandfather Twilight and we stopped to record our thinking at different points in the book.

We are deep thinkers in Room 408!

Number Rolls

We are excited about our Number Rolls!  Number Rolls are part of our Math Fluency Boxes.  Our Math Fluency Boxes are much like our Browsing Boxes for reading.  We have lots of great practice activities in our Math Boxes to help us be flexible and fluent with numbers.

We are keeping track of our counting with our Number Rolls...we started at zero and have made it into the hundreds and thousands!

Going Public Space Posters

To share our space learning we decided that we wanted to post Fun Fact posters around the school to teach others about space.
We took a look at several posters and identified what made them special ways to teach people.  We came up with the following list.

As we created our posters, we kept this list in mind.

After we created our posters, we decided where we wanted to hang them.  It has been exciting to see people learning from our posters throughout the school!

Exploding the Moment

We have been revisiting how good authors stretch out exciting moments to make their stories come alive.  We call this "exploding the moment."  We read a few books that were excellent examples of this.

The author stretches out the moment where the boy finds a marooned horseshoe crab and has to quickly flip it over in order for it to survive.

The author writes about when the main character gets a chance to ride a high-diving horse and stretches out the moment as the horse is diving from the high platform into the tank below.

The high-diving horse book is based on a true story from Atlantic City.

We also saw real footage of high-diving horses from the mid-1900s.

We were on the edge of our seats as we read how the little girl in the story got the chance to ride a high-diving horse!

After reading Crab Moon we also became interested in horseshoe crabs and how they have been around for 450 million years.  We also enjoyed watching videos of horseshoe crabs spawning on beaches.


We love writing like authors!

Time Machine

We received a problem-solving Time Machine to use in our classroom.  The people who are willing to solve a problem take opposite ends of the Time Machine.  They each take a step forward and take a STAR breath (Stop, Take a breath, And Relax).

They each take another step forward and wish each other well.

Next, they take a step forward and say, "1-2-3, Let's do it!"

They take another step forward and the person with the issue says, "I don't like it when _______.  Please _________."

The other person respects their wish and says, "I can do that."

We have found great success with our Time Machine!