Some upcoming things...

Hi wonderful parents (and anyone else who reads this),

This week we looked at how the area of a rectangle could change, but the perimeter could stay the same. We also looked at how we could keep the perimeter of a rectangle the same, but change its area.  We ended the week learning a strategy called generic rectangles for multiplying multi-digit numbers. It is a strategy the reinforces area as well as helping students learn how to decompose numbers to multiply them faster.

Here are some upcoming events this week that affect our class time together:
Monday is an early release day, students with a 7th period get out at 1:10.
Tuesday is our chapter 2 test
Wednesday and Thursday are academic conferences so school is shortened.  Students with a 7th period get out at 12:30, or they can stay for lunch and get out at 1:00.
Friday is a regular day, thank goodness :-)

See uprep.net for the complete conference day schedule.

Week 5, Areas

This week found us exploring what area is and starting in on a perimeter exploration.

First, to really solidify the concept that area is covering the surface of something in square units of a specified size, we covered our desks in square inches to see how many square inches cover our desktops.  We found that 1,152 square inches would cover our desktops.  

 We then saw that this could be calculated more quickly by measuring the length and the width of our desktop in inches and multiplying those two numbers together. Some students also calculated the area of their desktop in square feet and found that they have 8 square feet of working space.

On Friday we began exploring perimeter.  At this time most students are realizing that area is measured in square units like: square centimeters, square inches, square meters, square miles, square feet.... (the size of the unit used depends on how big or small the object is) and that perimeter is not measured in square units, but rather just: centimeters, inches, meters, miles, feet....  This concept will be further explored in week 6 as we dive into exploring perimeter.

Week 4, done

This week was a short week, but we accomplished a lot!  The students took their first test and began Chapter 2.  We started chapter 2 by looking at the differences between dot plots, histograms, bar graphs, Venn Diagrams...  We made our own histograms after conducting an experiment about just how long we each felt 60 seconds was.  For some reason I consistently think that 60 seconds have passed when just 40 seconds have gone by, that must be why I am the punctual one in my family :-).  Ask your student how long they felt 60 seconds was, it might enlighten you on why or why not they are on time.  Ha ha.

Making our class histogram about how long we felt 60 seconds was.  A finished one is on the left.

Week 3, Can you believe it?!?

Can you believe it? We have been in school for 3 weeks already!  All these wonderful 6th graders are settling into the routine of our class.  They are doing great with the organized binder and they continue to practice working together in their groups.
This week we worked with rectangular arrays and with factors.  We used pennies to build all the arrays we could that used 36 pennies, then we saw that the dimensions of those arrays corresponded to factor pairs on a Multiplication Table (1*36,  36*1,  2*18,  18*2,  3*12,  12*3,  4*9,  9*4,  6*6). We discovered that all perfect squares have an odd number of factor pairs.  We also learned about prime and composite numbers and that the number 1 is neither prime or composite, it is a UNIT!  I sang a song about "One is the Loneliest Number" (I am an okay singer, but certainly not a professional).

Roxie and Kaitlyn work on making arrays with pennies.

Our classroom groups are working together well to share ideas.

We will have our first chapter test on Thursday September 10th.  I am confident that these 6th graders will do their best on this upcoming test.  

In other news, I will be absent on Friday Sept 11.  Our class will continue with the lessons in my absence.