I Love Math!

As every new year starts, I relish welcoming a new math class.  The students come in with their own ideas and understandings and I get to figure out how they know what they know.  We grow as a class by sharing our ideas and how we problem solve.  The new Envision math program also places great emphasis on this problem solving piece.

We have covered the introduction to place value by diving right into decimals into the thousandths place.  The children can read these numbers with accuracy and are beginning to utilize this knowledge to add and subtract mentally by utilizing mathematical properties.  We will continue to explore place value by incorporating the operations.

Math in the fifth grade requires a good understanding of content area vocabulary.  I love to include the vocabulary in a novel way that gets the class excited about learning and creating.  Our classroom math glossary is well underway.  To further incorporate the newly acquired iPads into the curriculum, the students will start creating slides to demonstrate some of these terms. The very best way to demonstrate knowledge is to explain how to do it.

Daily, the children are now using Notability for note-taking and work completion.  There has been emphasis on organization and personal responsibility for work completion.  Work is shared regularly using Google Drive as our sharing tool.  Just Friday we had a great discussion on how to get notes to one another.  The students were typing notes of directions for how to complete the Math Glossary page.  When it came time to share, students sent the work through Notability, the Notes app on the iPad, direct email or sharing a Google Doc.  Wow, who knew?  In the end, we had an entire lesson on how to go through all of these methods for sharing and found a norm.  For sharing notes that will be utilized, Google Docs was the winner.  For getting Mrs. Lynch quickly when they need help, email was the chosen method.  I can't wait to see what happens next week.