How to do reflex math - by Ben

Tonight's guest blogger is Ben, with some important information!

When you log on there will be a crab talking to you after he’s done a rabbit will start talking to you. Then you will type in the numbers shown and after typing a certain amount of numbers you do one, two or three games. When your done with that  you get an island pass. You will notice all the games are closed except for two ninja to the stars and wind rider. Click on one of the two games and a bear that has a blue jacket and a whistle. She will talk to you about fact families and the have you do a picture puzzle. It will ask you math facts and will fill in the squares. You will do two picture puzzles and they will end up as picture of the game you choose. Then the game pops up and you read the instructions then play the game . You will see it says how many math facts you get right and get tokens.  After you play the game in the top right corner you will notice a grey dot. Play the games a bunch and it will turn green. After it turns green go to the first game and you will see it says  5 days. That means you need to play for five more days till you get a new game. But only green light days count. Also when you have green light you can move your mouse over to left and a shop will appear. Every day you have to get a green light before you can go to the shop. Click on the shop and a bunch of categories pop up and keep clicking till you see what you want then you check the price on it and spend your tokens on it. That’s how you play reflex math.

Math: Test tomorrow on single and double digit division. Study by looking over the practice tests at the end of these two chapters.
Spelling and Vocabulary: New word lists, test Friday.

Really cool morning! We got to FaceTime (like Skype) with Sophie's aunt who is studying ballet in Russia! She told us all about the people, the food, her language issues and what to do if someone steps on your toes! Nyet! Eventually we lost the connection, so we practiced division in math class. There will be a math test tomorrow. After lunch, we went to the library, then practiced our spelling and vocabulary. We finished the day with building the concept map and the Question of the Week with Mingl's class. See you tomorrow!!

Math: The kids were "saved by the bell."
Spelling: None this week. It's a short week and we have the Unit 2 test.
Language: New vocabulary words, test Thursday.

News: We have received about $600 in grant funding so far for our classroom iPads, and we still have about $1000 to go. Thank you so much to all the AMAZING donors that have given so far! Please spread the word, post it on Facebook, tell your employer! Here is a link to the Donor's Choose website: http://goo.gl/K4dqYs

I had fun today, so I'm thinking that the kids probably did too. A WatchDog dad spent the morning and part of the afternoon with us. It was really good to talk to him and have him in our classroom! We learned about "Powers of Ten" today, and watched a really cool video made by IBM from the 1970s on powers of ten (watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0). Then we practiced multiplying and dividing by powers of ten. For example: 2.785 x 100 = 278.5, or 4.5 ÷ 100 = .045. This may seem pretty straight-forward to most adults, but this is a big leap for many kids. They need practice to gain confidence with this idea of a decimal that seems to "jump" around. Of course, the bell rang seconds before I was about to assign homework. Grrr.

After lunch, we went to the library, then reviewed for the reading unit 2 test by playing a game called Kahoot! The kids loved it. That is an understatement. They were begging to play again. You never would have guessed that we were reviewing a reading comprehension passage from an old test to prepare for the unit test. It was just plain FUN!

After recess, we did a worksheet bomb at 5 minutes per station for 6 stations, then quickly went over it. This touched upon all the topics on tomorrow's unit test.

See you tomorrow!

Math: P. 100 28-28, include a picture (Singapore Math) that describes the problem.

This will be short, I have class tonight. Lots of pictures and the rundown of what we did are on Twitter, check it out! Welcome to our new student!

See you tomorrow!

Math: P. 86 -26 find the compatible numbers and estimate, THEN watch the "Stacking Method of Division" video (down on the right).
Spelling: Last week was super busy and there were too many tests on Halloween (not to mention a parade and party), so I skipped the test and we'll redo last week's spelling lists.
Vocabulary: New list this week!

Following us on Twitter yet? More division practice today. We looked at using "compatible numbers" to help us estimate the reasonableness of our answers. We also discussed the parts of a division problem. Ask your child what the Quotient, Dividend, and Divisor is. The quotient is the answer to a division problem. The super-secret code word is Twitter. The dividend is the number being divided, and the divisor is the number doing the dividing. We met with Mingl's class for the Question of the Week, then made a concept map for this week's story.

After lunch, we went to the library, then came back and worked on writing, while discussing Author's Purpose. Finally we met back up with Mingle to do vocabulary rotations.

Help Spread the Word...

I wrote a grant on Donor's Choose (www.donorschoose.com) to get two iPads in the classroom for iMovie projects.

Check it out here: http://goo.gl/K4dqYs

For the next week, the grant will be matched, dollar-for-dollar (up to $100). Use the code: SPARK on the payment page.

Thanks,

Doug Rolley

Oooooh. Bellyache! Too much candy. Yuck! I'm good until next year!