Monster Math

Last week divisions 1 and 2 explored the book You Can Count on Monsters by Richard Evan Schwartz. This book focuses on the math concepts of prime and composite numbers.

The students designed their own prime number monster bookmarks...can you tell what prime number each bookmark represents?

(clue...the monster above still has one more tooth to add)

Could you tell how many teeth that one monster had? That would be 101!

Today, the students solved a math problem involving cookies and monsters. The focus of the task was for students to approach the problem in different ways and communicate and represent their mathematical thinking.

The problem goes like this...
Three tired and hungry monsters went to sleep with a bag of cookies. One monster woke up, ate 1/3 of the cookies and went back to sleep. Later, a second monster woke up and 1/3 of the remaining cookies, then went back to sleep. Finally, the third monster woke up and ate 1/3 of the remaining cookies. When she was finished, there were 8 cookies left.  How many cookies were in the bag originally?

The students worked in groups to talk about where to start with this problem and approaches such as "work backwards" and "guess and check" were used. The students reasoned that the original number of cookies needed to be a multiple of 3 or 9. Here's a couple of example of how students represented how they solved the problem:

-Ms Novakowski

Writing Scary Stories

In support of our school's writing goal, a new series of books have been acquired called the Writer's Toolbox. Each book contains an example of a specific genre of writing (fairy tale, letter writing, etc) and then explains what "tools" a writer uses for that kind of writing.

Today, I read division 3 the book Share a Scare: Writing Your Own Scary Story. The scary story that we read included elements such as sensory details, imagery, suspense, a dark setting and foreshadowing. After discussing these elements, the students began writing their own scary stories.

Some introductory paragraphs follow:

I can't wait to read the finished stories!

~Ms Novakowski

Go Away Big Green Monster!

This week all the primary classes enjoyed the book GO AWAY BIG GREEN MONSTER! by Ed Emberley. It is a fun book to read aloud with great paper engineering that captivates the students.

There also is an iPad app with different versions of this book. The students loved listening to Ed Emberley read them the story and watching parts of the monster being animated. We also listened to a jazzy song that was written based on the book. 

The Kindergarten students in division 11 listened to the story and then used the iPads for the first time this year. They used the Doodle Buddy app and working in partners, they took turns to draw the big green monster, learning how to change the colour of their drawing tools.

The students in division 10 made big green monster masks and snuck up on Ms Loewen and scared her with their scary monster faces and voices!

The students in divisions 6, 7, 8 and 9 made monster bookmarks...they could make them scary, silly, happy, sad or mad. The students had all sorts of great ideas and started using their bookmarks as soon as they checked out new books!

So if you see any monsters around the school...you'll know where they came from!

~Ms Novakowski

BONES by Steve Jenkins

Divisions 4 and 5 are learning about the human body and have been looking at the skeletal system. They know so much about bones already! Some of the things they told me they know are:

They know the human body has 206 bones.
They know that babies have more bones than adults (and they know why...do you?).
They know the smallest bone and the longest bone in the human body.
They know about bone marrow.
They know about joints.
They know about the function of certain bones, such as the ribs and of the skeleton in general.

This week in the library we explored the book BONES by Steve Jenkins. The author/artist presents bones and skeletons of animals, many in actual size.

We learned that the human hand has 27 bones and the students had fun trying to find the 27 bones in each of their hands and then looking at the pictures of the bones in the arms and hands of other animals.

Several animal models were displayed such as a bat, a crow, rats and a snake. The students were asked to apply what they had learned about skeletons and think about what the skeleton of one of the animals might look like.

The information in information books can be so inspiring!

~Ms Novakowski

Library Mouse

We've had a special visitor in our library and his name is Sam. He has had an effect on all the students in the school in some way or another. Sam is the Library Mouse, a character created by Daniel Kirk.

Last week, I read all the primary classes this book. In the story, Sam lives in a library and comes out at night to read and read and read. One night, he decides it's time to write his own book so he writes a little book and leaves it on a shelf in the library. The book, and two more, are found by children in the library and shown to the librarian. She posts a note to Sam that they all want to meet this author! He is very shy but comes up with a clever way of helping students see themselves as authors.

After reading the story, imagine the students' surprise when they went off to select books to take home and they found several little books by Sam! It was a thrill a minute in the library and students were searching high and low for more books and for the possible location of Sam's residence. So fun!

Having Sam visit our library was so much fun! Thanks to divisions 4, 5 and 1 for helping to make it happen ;)

We have a little authors' centre in the library now where students can "meet the author" just like in the book and there are blank books for them to write stories in.

~Ms Novakowski