Hello,
This morning we had our best block so far this year. The students were working with Base 10 blocks to represent numbers and there was so much enthusiasm and critical thinking. I was so impressed by the many ways the students found to represent the numbers.
I wish I had taken some photos or videos, but I was too involved in the lesson to document it today. Choose any number between 100 and 999 and ask your child to describe or draw three different ways to represent the number using Base 10 blocks. I'm sure they will be up to the challenge.
The key concept we worked on, was showing that 10 ones = 1 ten and 10 tens = 1 hundred. We built with base 10 blocks in several different ways to represent a variety of numbers.
The students need to complete both sides of the Base 10 block activity sheet they received for homework. Many of the students completed this work in class.
In Language, we continued to work on making connections. We read a selection of levelled books, individually, then shared key points about the story and shared some personal connections with the group. We concentrated on making connections to key themes and events in the story, rather than surface level characteristics (talking about feeling nervous like the character and why, rather than connecting to the fact that both the student and the character go to a school.)
We also discussed why books can provide more detail to the reader than movies can provide to the audience. I used an example of going to see the first Harry Potter movie, when I was in university, before reading the book. My girlfriend at the time had read the book and didn't like the movie. She insisted that I read the book that weekend, so I could see how much better the book was than the movie. The students were shocked that I had dated someone else before marrying my wife! So, congratulations to all of you because you found true love with the very first person you ever dated, at least according to your children!
Finally, in Science, we started to work on our group structures. There was some great collaboration and students successfully used problem solving skills when they encountered difficulties. Our goal is to finish the work on our structures tomorrow. The students are welcome to bring in more materials on Friday.
Also, please visit the following link for information on setting up online payments for school fees.
https://ocsb.schoolcashonline.com/
Have a great evening.
Mr. Skinner
