Grade 4/5 Math: Beginnings

Welcome to 4th and 5th grade math.  For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Meredith Jose.  I’m so excited to be working with your children this year.  While we’ve been reviewing necessary routines, such as partnership norms and walking in the halls, we’ve also been doing some math!

In fourth grade, students are playing a game called The Spiral Game.  As they play, their goal is to work together to develop a winning strategy.  Anticipating moves of your opponent and thinking of possible pathways to respond are important concepts in logical reasoning.  Some things the students are thinking about while developing these winning strategies are:

• Does it matter who goes first?
• Is there something about the game board that influences the outcome?

Stay tuned for their final strategies!

Fifth graders have been looking at functions (input/output tables) involving two rules.  We played a game in which students gave me a number and I gave them the result. In one example (see below), students came up with two rules to describe what was happening.  

Some thought the rule was (nxn)-n, while others thought it was n x (n-1).  They both seemed correct, but are they the same?  I challenged the students to try to develop a visual model to prove whether or not they were the same.  Here are some examples of what students shared in our discussion.

I hope to see many of you at Curriculum Night tonight at 5:00.  Enjoy the rest of your week!