Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Unit 11: Angles

We wrapped up Unit 11 (Angles) today. It was a shorter unit. Below you will find examples of our anchor charts from this unit to help assist your child in completing their review as well as preparing for their test tomorrow.

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Unit 10: 2 Dimensional Shapes

Below you will find an overview of the concepts that your child has learned throughout unit 10! This geometry unit has a lot of vocabulary. I would suggest reviewing the vocabulary with your child.

Lines, Rays, Line Segments, Angles

Types of Angles


First students learned about right angles and we discussed how you can use right angles to determine the other types of angles. A right angle is an angle with a square corner. (Students will learn about angle degrees in the next unit) Once students had an understanding of right angles, they learned that an acute angle is smaller than a right angle. To help students remember the definition of acute angles I told them to think of a "cute little baby" to help them remember that an acute angle is an angle that is smaller than a right angle. For obtuse angles, I told them to think of a "big sneeze"' We would go " ob..ob...tuse!" in a sneezing sound. It was quite funny!   Then students did an angle sort. They were given a right angle on wax paper and they got to measure and explore angles using their right angle. So, if the angle was less than a right angle it was acute. If it was greater than a right angle it was obtuse. Please see below for pictures of students measuring their angles!

This is an acute angle because it is smaller than a right angle.
This angle is obtuse because it is greater than a right angle.
Here's an example of their finished angle sort.


Classifying Triangles
Next students learned how to classify triangles by sides and angles. See anchor charts below. Students had a lot of hands on practice classifying triangles. 

Types of Lines
Next students learned about the different types of lines. 
Students enjoyed finding the different types of lines in a map. 

Classifying Quadrilaterals
Next we classified quadrilaterals. Students learned that the same quadrilateral can have different names. For example, a square is a parallelogram, a rhombus, and rectangle. 

Lines of Symmetry 
We also discussed that just because a shape has a line that splits the shape in half, it doesn't always mean that it is a line of symmetry. In order for it to be a line of symmetry, you should be able to fold that shape over the line so that the 2 parts would match exactly.
For example, in this problem Jackie is correct. Please have your child explain to you why!

Friday, February 6, 2015

Unit 9: Relate Fractions, Decimals, and Money

Modeling & Recording Tenths and Hundredths as Fractions and Decimals
To begin this unit we observed these models of tenths and hundredths.
We talked about why tenths are larger than hundredths, because the whole is only broken into ten parts versus the whole being broken into a hundred parts. The more parts the whole is broken into, the smaller the parts are. Students also were able to conclude that 10 hundredths = 1 tenth.

Next students were given the following problem.
You can see that this student below represented 7/10 as a model, fraction, and decimal.
This student did the same but also showed 7/10 on a number line.
Another example
I thought that it was really neat that this student labeled each part of their model.
Since students also have to understand decimals on a number line, we labeled 7/10 on a number line as well.
Some more examples of problems from this lesson.

Relating Fractions, Decimals, and Money
During this lesson, students learned how money is related to decimals.  We talked about the fact that there are 100 pennies in a whole dollar, therefore pennies represent hundredths. We also discussed that there are 10 dimes in a whole dollar, so dimes represent tenths. Please see the anchor chart below that I created to help students see the connection between decimals and money.
This is how we began this lesson.
Then students did some exploring with pretend money and the relationship with decimals.

How Can You Rename Tenths as Hundredths and Hundredths as Tenths?

How Can You Add Fractions when the Deniminators are 10 or 100?
We began with this problem. 
Students were able to figure out that it would be helpful to change 3/10 into 30/100 to be able to add the fractions.
Students then had some fun playing adding tenths and hundredths dominoes.

What Strategies Can You Use to Compare Decimals?
Below you will find some sample problems as well as some strategies that students used to compare decimals.
Students also enjoyed playing a Decimal War game where they were able to practice their strategies for comparing decimals!