Math Journal Sundays ... On Saturday

Are you ready for some Math Journal Sundays ... on Saturday?  This weekend is our Canadian Thanksgiving, so I'll be cooking (and eating) up a storm with my kids the next two days.  Tomorrow (after we finish making the bread and apple pies) we'll be heading to my parents' house for our first Thanksgiving supper.  Then on Monday I'm having my inlaws over for our second Thanksgiving supper.  My husband makes an awesome smoked turkey, and I've been drooling over a new dessert recipe on Pinterest that I'll have to try.  LOVE, LOVE, LOVE Thanksgiving dinner!!!

OK - now that I've completely made myself hungry, I'll get back to the math journals.  This week we finished our Patterning unit - test was on Thursday.  On Wednesday, as part of our review, the students completed a Summary of Learning foldable.  We made a small flip book for this.  The students wrote our unit learning goals at the bottom of each page (so that it would show), and then gave their own example for each under the flaps.

The spelling mistake on summary is driving me crazy on this picture, but this student is so thorough on everything else, I'll forgive her ... just this once.  ;)

Here is her example for the first learning goal (this student is in grade 5).  After she handed this in, we discussed how her pattern rule needs to be more specific.  If she is going to use the recursive rule, the pattern should be the number of cupcakes starts at two and increases by 2.  If she used the explicit rule it would be multiply the term number (number of students) by 2.  A great review for her right before our test.  And you know what?  She nailed it on the test - well done!!!

After students completed their summary of learning foldables, I had them hand their journals in so I could give them an overall mark for the unit.  I used this rubric I found here at Frogs and Cupcakes.  It's perfect!!!  The sharing and collaborative nature of this blogging community is definitely one thing I'm thankful for this Thanksgiving weekend!!!

When students got their journals back, I had them add a learning goal of their own underneath the rubric.  What was their goal for the next unit to improve their mark?

Yesterday we started our new math unit - Exploring Numbers - part of our Number Sense and Numeration strand.  To do a quick unit preview and activate prior learning, I did a fun foldable I had seen on pinterest - we made little books.  The students thought this was "so cool", and I heard many say they were going to make more of these this weekend at home.  Click on the picture to bring you to the link at I Have Good Books.

We called these little books "My Number Book".  Inside each book, students had to choose a number, then complete the following on each page:

• write the number in numerals
• write the number in words
• write the number in expanded form
• draw the number in base 10 blocks
• draw the number in a place value chart
• rename the number

These little books turned out great, and I'm glad the students now have a reference in their journals that they can check when they have questions during their lessons.  Maybe, just maybe, I won't be asked a million times, "How do you do expanded form?", or "What's a place value chart?" ... something else to be thankful for this weekend.  ;)

Interactive Math Journal

Interactive Math Journal 2

Building Better Math Responses

Math Concept Posters

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