Red Ribbon Week: Wacky Wednesday

What are you wearing?!  Did you get dressed in the dark this morning??? 

Our outfit choices this week allow us to express (and others to see) decisions we've made on the inside about being drug and bully-free!

Like Dr. Seuss' crazy words and characters, students (and some teachers!) wore crazy, mismatched outfits today.

Dressing crazy today was a good reminder about how sometimes it takes courage to be different, like when your peers are doing something you know is wrong, to speak up about it, resist their pressure, or even choose new friends.  Students were not alone in dressing crazy today, which helps us understand how good, true friends can help us feel more comfortable about doing the right thing, even when it isn't "cool" or "popular".

Some of us even got a head-start on tomorrow's dress day, crazy socks and shoes, in honor of Dr. Seuss' The Foot Book.

St. Augustine Field Trip

Today was an exciting day for our classes!  This week is Red Ribbon Week, and we're expressing our choices to be drug and bully-free by participating in special dress days.  Most of the days are Dr. Seuss-themed to match our Oh the Places You'll Go school theme for 2013-2014.   Today was Twin Day (dress like a friend) in honor of Thing 1 and Thing 2 from Dr. Seuss' The Cat in the Hat.

Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to take many pictures of friends dressed as twins because we went on a field trip to St. Augustine to kick off our study of Florida history in social studies.

Our first stop was a Timucua Native American village, where a holata (sp? chief) was immediately chosen, tattooed, painted with war paint, and decked out in deer skin:

We learned about some Timucua weapons and tools made from natural resources and how this people group traveled by canoe to trade with other Native American tribes around Florida.  We made necklaces from abalone shells, which are native to California, to teach us that Native Americans across the U.S. traded natural resources from coast to coast.

Then we had a chance to try out some Timucua work such as scraping out a canoe,

tending a garden,

drilling holes,

and grinding corn.

              We even had some time to relax and play Timucua games similar to some we still play today.

Before we traveled in time hundreds of years, everyone applied war paint and tattoos.

Our next stop was Fort Menendez, a Spanish settlement.

Our guide introduced us to the Spanish

and the French

who both occupied Northeast Florida.

We learned some Spanish construction skills

and crafts such as weaving

 and candle-making.

Many students purchased fun souvenirs from the gift shop during lunch.

We enjoyed a peaceful bus ride back to school, thanks to our favorite game.  ;-)

Red Ribbon Week Kickoff

Today our classes kicked off Red Ribbon Week early with a health lesson and a special guest.

Textbooks can teach us what legal and illegal drugs are and how they can be harmful, but Officer Rose helped us understand why people try/use drugs and how this choice can affect us in many ways.  Some drugs harm our bodies and can cause a lot of damage in our lives like unhealthy relationships with friends and family.  Using drugs can interfere with our ability to learn, work, and do things we enjoy.  Drug use can also lead to other undesirable behavior like lying, stealing, and violence, which can result in being arrested and spending time in jail. 

Next week, we'll continue to look at the cause and effect relationship of choosing (and being) good friends in addition to choosing to be drug-free.

Multi-Digit Multiplication Strategy: Doubling/Halving Factor(s)

Two things...

First:
Take a deep breath.

Second:
Keep this in mind:  
This strategy should be used on a "case-by-case" basis, depending on the factors.  
It should be used to make an easier, simpler problem when possible.

Here we go...

 This strategy is only useful when both factors are even or if one factor is odd and the other is even since you can't halve an odd number without using fractions.

Since both odd an even numbers can always be doubled, this strategy is useful in more contexts.  It's especially useful in this context, when multiplying by 5.  Some students struggle more with halving numbers, so this strategy may be more challenging for those students.

Bottom Line: Yes, this strategy will get you the correct answer.  Yes, it is neat to see that doubling one factor and halving the other will result in an equivalent problem.  No, it is not efficient, which will lead us into using a traditional algorithm next week.  :-)

Multi-Digit Multiplication Strategy: Break Apart Factor(s) Using Landmark Numbers

Today we reviewed how to take a factor and

A landmark number is a familiar number (we know right away where it is--what comes before and after it on the number line) used to help count more efficiently.  Many landmark numbers are multiples of 5 or 10.  We can use landmark numbers when breaking apart factor(s):

Over the past two weeks, students have explored what happens when multiplying by a multiple of ten, how it is similar to multiplying by one.  We've done many think-alouds that sound something like this:

Since 3x15 is 45, we can use 45 as our "leading numbers", but we need to remember that we're multiplying with a multiple of ten (150), so it's really like 45 tens, which has a value of 450.
 
(Yes, you can also just cover up any zeros, multiply, then put the zero(s) on the end, but conversations like this will give students a much greater understanding of why they are doing what they're doing, increasing their number sense.)

 
If 3x15 is still intimidating, we've also talked about how you can think about it as 3x10 and 3x5, then combine the products.

Multi-Digit Multiplication Strategy: Break Apart Factor(s)

Until this year, I never realized there were so many ways to multiply numbers!  I will be doing a mini-series this week on multi-digit multiplication strategies since students will continue to practice using the strategies they've learned on a home learning "Problem of the Day" over the next several weeks.  This week, we'll be practicing multiplying 3-digit numbers by 1-digit numbers.

Today we looked at:

Breaking apart factor(s) by place value is a basic strategy that is easy to understand and use for many of the multiplication situations we'll find ourselves in this year.  It's also easy to visualize using an unmarked array.

We'll use this strategy again when we multiply two, three, and four-digit numbers, breaking apart both factors.

What's your mindset?

At our faculty meeting last week, we viewed this (short) video on the effects of praise:

As we progress further in the school year, our students will be challenged when they build on basic skills and deepen their understanding of concepts...growing pains!  What a great reminder of how important it is to praise effort, not innate ability, when things get more difficult.  Watching this has definitely made me more aware of how I praise our students!

Cluster Problems for Multi-Digit Multiplication

True story: Several years ago (when I was still a third grade teacher), I was in a fourth grade math teacher's classroom for an Early Release meeting.  When I'm in other teachers' classrooms, I like to scan the walls for charts and other visuals I can recreate and use with my students.  I distinctly remember seeing the words "cluster problems" in this teacher's room on a chart as a multiplication strategy.  Cluster problems?!  I thought to myself.  What are cluster problems?  I've never even heard of those! Reason #120 to keep me in third grade math. 

Well, fast forward a few years, and now I am a fourth grade math teacher who is responsible for teaching her students how to multiply greater numbers using new strategies such as...cluster problems!  After reading (more like studying!) the teacher's edition for the lesson introducing cluster problems no less than three times, I bypassed Google for help and went straight to YouTube! 

Our benchmark for fourth grade multiplication goes up to four digits times two digits, so we will use cluster problems when appropriate.  When using cluster problems to solve a multi-digit multiplication problem, it is important to discuss how the cluster problems are related to the "final problem".  In other words, how can using a combination of cluster problems help solve a more challenging problem?

As students become more comfortable with this strategy, they will create their own cluster problems to solve a final problem.  When creating your own cluster problems, some things to think about may include:

• How can I break apart one factor by its place value?
• How can I break apart one factor in another way?  What landmark multiple(s) can I use to solve this problem? (Landmark multiples are 10, 5, 20 times a number.  They can be used to help you get close to the number you're multiplying more quickly.)
• Can I half one factor, then double the product?
• Can I half one factor (I recommend the one that's greater) and double the other factor to create an equivalent problem?

Auction Day!

You might be living under a rock if you haven't heard your student talk about Chief Cash or Auction Day this year!  Both classes recently earned their first auction.  Students earn Chief Cash for following our school's behavior expectations and Guidelines for Success (safety, respect, responsibility, honesty, always doing your best).  When the whole class demonstrates these behaviors, a number is drawn and recorded on the class' chart.  The class earns auction whenever they have 10 in a row.

Everyone was allowed to participate in the first auction, but we will start tying participation to weekly conduct grades, so watch for a contract to come home soon with the next auction's behavior goal.  Thank you SO much for sending in items.  Both auctions were huge successes!  In case you're curious, the top-selling items were knit caps in both classes.  :-)