Pratt's Primary Corner
Weekly Update- March 8, 2019
Week at a Glance
Math- This week we did some really cool Mondrian art puzzles that incorporated area, dimensions, multiplication and subtraction. We also wrote our own math stories and traded them with a partner.
Science/Social Studies-
- We finished up our projects for African American history month this week.
- We also started discussing food insecurity and brainstorming ideas about why people don't have enough food.
- We made our own grocery list for a day of meals and used www.kroger.com to determine how much that would cost. Students were then placed on a limited budget and looked at how their ideal meal plan would need to be changed based on their budget.
Writing- We started an opinion writing unit this week and have started discussing how writing can change the world. Students started by brainstorming problems in their school, home, community, and world. They then chose one of those problems and started writing a speech on how the problem could be solved.
MAP Testing
If you would like to prepare for either of these tests at home you can visit the website www.prepdog.org
Math Fluency
- It is important to keep in mind that we absolutely want students to know their facts from memory, but more importantly, we want students to have strategies to solve their math facts. In those instances where their memory fails them or they have a brain freeze (which they will), they can use a strategy to solve.
- Brain research shows that using our fingers and visual models to learn, helps us to visualize things even when we don't have them in front of us. We don't even realize we are doing this. Therefore, it is important that we don't take away counting on fingers or visual models from students too quickly, at this will help them obtain automaticity with their math facts.
Here is a website that would be helpful for practicing both addition and multiplication facts using visual models: https://mathvisuals.wordpress.com/math-flips/