Ask Me About Wednesday, January 3, 2018

Today we enjoyed a book called Chicken Soup With Rice, by Maurice Sendak.  This book had some interesting vocabulary that we used context clues to unlock the meaning of some of the words.  We also worked with short and long i in the January part of the book.  We listened to Carole King sing the book, and it wasn't long before everyone was singing along!  This is definitely a favorite every year for students!  Ask me to sing along with Carole King!

In math, we worked with story problems.  It is so important for students to think about what the information in the problem and what they are asking.  We are using words only right now to think about the story problem and not talking about addition and subtraction.  Instead we are focusing on what is happening in the problem; are they joining groups together or taking them apart.  We use words like "and" and "join" or "take away" instead of plus and minus.  Today we practiced using the draw a picture strategy to solve the word problems.  The children did a great job, although they are eager to tell what the answer is, and unfortunately if they just look at the numbers in the problem and not at what is being asked, they may be wrong.  Instead, I tried to ask children to show and tell their thinking to their classmates instead of focusing on the answer.  We will be using other strategies, such as the ten fram, Rekenrens, number lines, and acting out the problem to understand and solve word problems.

Have a great evening!
​Miss Wolfe