The Teachers' Lounge

Dear Families,

The Teachers’ Lounge is a problem that pushes students to think deeply and carefully about division situations.  It highlights the two types of division situations, quotative and partitive, or grouping and sharing.

In a quotative, or grouping division situation, the number in each group is known and the number of groups is unknown:  24 fourth graders are playing soccer.  The coaches want to make teams of 6.  How many teams can they make?  6 is the number in each group, and the unknown is how many groups will be made with 24 kids.

In  a partitive, or sharing division situation, the number of groups is known and the number in each group is unknown:  I have 24 cookies to share with 6 friends.  How many cookies can I give to each friend?  6 is the number of groups, and the unknown is how many cookies will be in each group.

In the classroom, we talk about whether a division situation is asking “How many groups?” or “How many in each group?”  When you look at the student work below, that is one place your conversation might go.  When you read the juice and water machine situations, think about which problem is a quotative situation and which problem is a partitive situation.

Please start by reading the problem, and involve your child in viewing his or her work.  You'll find some questions below that will guide your conversation.

Please bear in mind that each pair of students saw these problems differently and therefore solved them differently.  Each partnership’s work is valid.  There was no “right way” to go about this.

We started working on this problem last week.  Working with their math partners, students solved the problem and showed their thinking on a poster using equations, pictures and words.  They worked hard to make their work both accurate and clear.  Today, math teams switched posters and left notes for each other about what could make the posters better.  Revisions were made, and then we had a math meeting on the rug where several students shared their work.  After the meeting, each student wrote about how he or she felt The Teachers’ Lounge problem helped them grow as mathematicians (That might be a good way to begin your conversations.).

I love this problem.  As I told the class today, it's like a washing machine.  They go in grass-stained 3rd grade mathematicians and come out clean and shiny 4th grade mathematicians.  This work sets the bar for the level of deep mathematical thinking they'll be doing all year.  I hope you are as moved by the sophisticated thinking you'll see in their work as I was.

Happy thinking,

Lauren

Reading Reactions: Growing New Ideas

One of the goals of doing reading reactions is to linger on ideas that feel important, and to flesh them out so they lead to new ideas.  We flesh them out by doing the reaction and following our thoughts, we flesh them out in conversations with partners and book clubs, and we flesh them out in whole class conversations.  Here's an example of a new idea that grew out of reacting to Magritte's Empire of Light last week.  Denniz noticed that the top part of the painting is light and the bottom part of the painting is dark, and said, "I think he wanted to make the picture because it's like angels and demons."  He shared that on the rug, and then he said, "Maybe he's showing heaven and hell."  I asked, "If that's true, what do you think Magritte thinks about life?"  One of Denniz's classmates said the because the part where we live is in darkness, Magritte must think we're living in a kind of hell.  Intense, right?  Who knows what Magritte really thinks or what he was trying to portray, but this is a really interesting and well supported idea, and it's a perfect example of how a reaction can lead to a new, fabulous idea.


Here's another example, this one from our conversation today about Granny Torrelli Makes Soup by Sharon Creech.  Rosie is the main character.  In the part of the book we read today, Bailey, her best friend who is blind, was missing.  Everyone was really worried that something bad had happened, especially since he was alone and cannot see.  It turned out he wasn't lost, and that he had just gone, "for a short walk that got very long."  When they were reunited, Rosie kept insisting that Bailey had been lost, and Bailey kept insisting that he hadn't been, that he'd just gone for a walk.  Here's the class' reaction from that conversation (My notes to you are in pink and blue.).


As students continue to react to text and to discuss their ideas, the expectation will be that the reactions and discussions lead to new (mind boggling!) ideas.


Thanks for reading.

All Right vs. Alright, A While vs. Awhile

Word demon quizzes from last week are coming home today.  A quick note about "all right" and "a while."  I prefer for students to use those spellings, as they seem to be the proper spellings, even though "alright" and "awhile" are indeed acceptable.  Source:


http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/all-right-versus-alright.aspx


"Awhile" is an adverb, but it's much more commonly used as a noun, especially by fourth graders.  "A while" is the proper version when "while" is a noun (It's been a while since...).  Source:


http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/a-while-awhile.aspx

Reading Reactions

Heads up:  There is an example of a reading reaction (Thanks, Jack!) after the jump.  You may find it helpful to take a quick look at it so you have something to picture while I explain reactions!


All year, we've been noticing our reactions to text.  We are studying the different ways readers might react to text, and we're thinking about how our reactions help us understand the text on a deeper level.  There are lots and lots of different ways to react to text, and reactions have varying degrees of sophistication.  We are working to broaden the types of reaction each student has, and to move them further along the spectrum of sophistication.

Grammar, Word Study and Editing

Dear Families,

I hope this post finds you well.  In school, we’ve been talking about what words every fourth grader should absolutely know how to spell right now (list of the 300 most frequently used words also available in the links section.), and about what grammatical rules every fourth grader should absolutely follow all the time.  We’ve also been working to establish editing routines.

GRAMMAR

As we begin our study of spelling and grammar, the class has agreed that all students’ writing should always have capital letters at the beginning of sentences and for proper nouns, correct punctuation at the end of sentences, and that sentences should not be missing any words or have any unintentionally repeated words.  We will not study these things in school—the expectation is that everyone should be doing them all the time starting now.  We will add things to the list as our study of grammar progresses.

Division with Remainders

Last night's math homework included division problems.  While we haven't explored division yet this year, that homework helps me get a sense of what division understanding is still hanging around from 3rd grade.  I hope no one is traumatized!

October Newsletter

Dear Families,

I hope you are all well.  School is in full swing, and it's hard to believe fall is truly upon us.  We are deep into our studies in room 315.  My purpose here is to to give you a sense of what we've been up to in math and reading.

Math

We finished a unit on multiplication a little over a week ago.  The purpose of the unit was for students to:

• build their understanding of multiplication as involving equal groups (There are six baskets of apples.  Each basket has 8 apples in it.  How many apples are there in all the baskets?).
• understand the array model of multiplication (think Small Array/Big Array), and to use it to relate their understanding about the number of groups (six baskets) and the number in each group (8 apples).
• reason about numbers and their factors.  To do this, we collected the factors of 16 and the factors of 48 and looked for patterns.  The students' observations included ideas such as:

• All the factors of 16 are factors of 48.
• The factors of 16 fit inside 48, because 48 is made up of 3 16s

•  begin gaining fluency with the multiplication combinations
  

Last week, we started a unit on data.  The purpose of this unit is for students to: