Happy Wednesday :)

We did some work on our big class rekenrek! We are supposed to be FLUENT with combinations 0-5. What does this mean?

It means students can be flexible and efficient when working with these numbers IN CONTEXT. It does NOT mean ONLY flashing 2+3, 1+4, etc and expecting them to have it memorized. That is an important part, but students also need to be able to transfer this learning. 

Here is some of the work we're doing to help us with this fluency. We are doing simple addition and subtraction problems and showing the values, etc with tally marks and circles. Some students are writing the addition/subtraction sentences too :) 

Here is an EX problem, so you can do some at home: Mrs. Cota ate 5 cookies. Then she ate 3 more. How many cookies did she eat in all?

Yay for Marshall! A counting master! 

Today we talked about the math word measure. It was fun to go on a measuring hunt around the room as we worked with and explored the words longer and shorter.

More work on fairy tales. I'll have to take a picture of the giant in our room, from Jack and the Beanstalk. He's huge! Fairy tales will help us learn the parts of a story (pic above) and how to retell. 

Retelling is SO SO SO important! Even if your child can accurately read a level 4, for example, if he or she can't retell it, then they don't score at that level. They are expected to name the characters and retell the story in their own words in order to accomplish this.