Common Assessments

Students are ready and excited to show the learning gains they have made since our cycle 1 Common Assessments. We are testing Math tomorrow, December 13th and Science on Wednesday, December 14th.

Get plenty of rest!

Fun with Magnets

Our learning point for our new Science workshop is Magnetic Attraction and Repulsion.  Students have enjoyed exploring and testing ideas related to our learning point.  Today students discovered magnetic poles through their exploration.  They decided that like poles will attract and unlike poles will repel.  For example, a magnet's north pole will attract a magnet's south pole and a north and north pole will repel.  It was difficult to end today's investigations.....the students were so engaged!

My Thoughts on Math

This week I asked students to compare and contrast the terms equation and expression.  We worked all week with these two words and I wanted to check for understanding of this vocabulary. Here is what Nathaniel D. said:

The difference between equation and expression is that an equation has an equal sign.  An expression does not have an equal sign.  The things that are the same about the two are that they both can be number sentences and they both can have some type of operation.  Those are the similarities and differences between an equation and expression.  Examples: 5+5 (expression) 5+5=10 (equation)

Q-Bitz

I introduced a new game to students this past week. Q-Bitz!!! It fast became the most popular activity.  Students played this quick thinking game to challenge their visual dexterity.  In each round, a card is turned over revealing a pattern.  Students had to duplicate the pattern using cubes.  The first to match the pattern keeps that card.  The player with the most cards after 6 rounds wins.  There were some students that quickly emerged as experts.  One of our experts, Kaliyah shows off 1 of her 6 completed puzzles. She won every round of her game!