How Can You Help?

Parents often ask how they can help their students with math at home. The answer is -- help them see how you use math every day.  I came across this chart that shows some easy ways to incorporate math into your every day lives and is an engaging way to reinforce math at home.  I hope this helps -- let me know if you use any of these ideas!

 

Seeing Double

Before spring break, I talked with our scholars about memorizing their doubles addition facts up to 12+12.  As we begin our journey into multiplication, knowing their doubles will be key to understanding, and eventually memorizing,  multiplication facts, such as the x 2 and x 4 facts. 

Today we took a short quiz (12 problems) to see how many of them had reached the goal of memorizing those facts. Ben R holds the new record of completing these 12 problems in 20 seconds!  Way to go, Ben! Ask your child how they did on today's quiz. There is no secret to memorizing the facts -- just hard work and practice.  Students will be given another opportunity next Monday to show they have these facts memorized.

Blogging about Blogging!

Today I am blogging about....blogging!  Yesterday was our first lesson on Kid Blog.  Talk about excited -- the room was buzzing with excited bloggers.  While our first blog was about spring break (everyone had something to say about that), future blogs will be about what we are learning in class.  Our lesson included the importance of using correct spelling and grammar, as well as using content area vocabulary correctly. We also talked about learning how to be good digital citizens. How do you leave an appropriate comment for someone? Students took home a bookmark with sentence starters to help them learn how to make thoughtful comments.  

I have included links to our Kid Blog sites here. Please take a few minutes to look at our blogs and please feel free to leave a comment -- we LOVE comments!

Real World Math

I was so happy and proud to hear from a parent this week about how their child was using their math skills in the real world. Madison, one of our scholars, was volunteering with her mom at the Special Olympics last weekend. They worked in the concession stand and her mom told me that Madison was adding up prices and correctly making change.  Way to go, Madison -- that's really using your problem solving skills outside of the classroom!

Open House

You won't want to miss Open House next Thursday, March 7th. The choir will perform at 5:30 and you can visit your child's classroom from 6-7.  Your student will be able to share their experiences from our recent Roller Coaster unit as well as a game board they designed in math class.  Don't forget to drop by the Engineering Lab and check out the great ceramics in the library. 

Ross Perot Museum Field Trip

What a great time we had on Thursday at the Perot Museum in Dallas. Students got to experiment with robots, feel what it's like to be in an earthquake and build a building that will withstand an earthquake. Here are a few pictures of our trip:

Visit the Cannon Elementary Facebook Page for more pictures of our trip. Thanks to all of our parents who attended with us. We couldn't have done it without you!
 

Math Curse

Did you know math is all around us?  There is math in the library, math in the artwork, math in the tiles on the wall.  We had a great time last week reading our book of the month,  Math Curse, by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith. 

Scholars worked with a partner to find math around the school, take pictures of it, and create a math problem.  We will soon be putting together a Cannon version of Math Curse that you will not want to miss!  Challenge your student to find math around your home, in the grocery store, at soccer practice -- it's a great real world application of problem solving.