The week that was..

Testing, testing...

On Monday and Tuesday I focused on getting the Maths and Reading assessments finished. The children helped by getting on with their independent work and helping each other when they were stuck; this was particularly impressive in Maths where they were basically teaching each other.

On Wednesday, one of the Mums who has set up her own baby food business came in and told the children all about it in terms of how she came up with the idea, how she got started and what's currently happening. The children were really engaged and had many questions for her. Clearly, this is all part of our Inquiry this term.. Nutrition and the Food Industry.

BTW. on Monday, the children are going to spend the morning cooking an unhealthy snack and a healthy one. We are then taste testing. During the cooking process, we shall be emphasising the quantity of sugar used and discussing/demonstrating alternatives ie. do you really needs heaps of sugar and salt to make something palatable. If not, why does the food industry do it? (I will also be taking the opportunity to bang on about measurement/units of measurement/accuracy measuring etc. as we are doing this for Strand Maths). Thanks again to Mia's Mum for organising this.

Charlotte sharing a book with the class while I had a well-deserved break :-)

On Friday, the children had a great time rehearsing and then performing plays for our year 3 buddy class. The buddies really appreciated it and I used the session to get an idea of the acting talents we have on hand for this year's production.
 
Maths HW last week: subtraction issue. A few parents mentioned that their child struggled with the decimal subtraction HW problem last week.

The strategy we have been using for this type of question is reversibility:
eg.

2.3 - 0.875

0.875 + ? = 2.3
0.875 + 0.125 = 1
1        + 1.3     = 2.3
0.125 + 1.3 = 1.425

NB. This is year 7 level work. So if your child is struggling, don't worry. If you are helping at home, just look at applying the strategy to 2.3 - 0.8 first and only then try with the 100ths and then with the 1000ths. However, we will be covering this in class in some depth, so there really is no need to worry... and we will not go past 10ths for those that are not ready.

PS. Writing is gong really well, as is the daily dictation. I am trying out a lot of new teaching ideas this year and so far, so good. :-)