Hi Parents,
As I keep writing, time is really flying by. Some fun things coming up also - Springfield Trip, Crestwood Baseball Game, Memorial Day, June 4th! Wahoo! And, to cap off the ending of the year, the Progress Reports for Math and Social Studies were impressive, and the number of Accelerated Math objectives soared. I enjoyed running the Accelerated Math program by myself this year. I also am anxious to see the results of the Terra Nova Tests, taken the first week of March.
Last week we covered multiplication of fractions. The students understood the importance of "cancelling" first, rather than reducing the answer to lowest terms. Have you seen the "doodle drawing" worksheets I make for assignments? It takes about 45 minutes to make a new worksheet from scratch, but the students love them and work feverishly solving the problems and decoding the answers to read what the "doodle drawing" is.
This week in Math, we will begin Chapter 15 on Probability. This is an exciting "hands-on" chapter where the probability of events occuring can be tested by students working in groups. We will be testing probability with playing cards, dice, colored cubes, spinners, etc.. Wonder if this chapter will produce a multi-million dollar winner in some future "World Series of Poker" tournament?
The students will also work in groups determining combinations of objects - how many ways objects can be arranged in different orders. Did you know that ten different objects can be arranged 3,628,800 ways? Of course, the students will catalog combinations with a smaller number of objects. Then I will show them the simple mathematical way to predetermine the number of combinations without trials.
At the end of the week in Social Studies, I am going to show how messages were sent in code during the Civil War. It is not a coding system that can be easily deciphered without studying Cryptology. However, the students will work in groups, decoding given cryptograms and creating their own secret messages for the other groups in the room to decode. Students love doing this. You may be receiving some "alien-looking" messages at home from your son or daughter. More later. Mr. C.