After hearing 6-word stories shared by students from Virginia we decided to create our own using one of the themes from the novel: family, courage, hope, fear, guilt & survival. Before getting started we discussed learning intentions and criteria to ensure that students understood the requirements. Our initial 6 word stories were literal, so to make it more challenging, one of the criteria was to use one of the themes from FISH. We created some excellent 6-word stories that we tweeted and shared with other classes around the world.
"Losing what you love is devastating" -Arnav
"Tiger is such a positive thinker" -Susie
"Losing one would lose them all" -Tia
"We are refugees. Survival is hope." -Tyson
"My family is all I have" -Mykaela
"We have nothing more than hope" -Zoe
Over the past week we’ve been working with dividing decimal numbers. We spent some time reviewing long division with whole numbers prior to getting started with decimals to make sure that we all had a solid understanding of how to divide before taking one step further. Dividing decimals includes that same estimation strategies that we used with multiplication, but this time we predict quotients rather than products. Some great questions were asked – “how do we estimate the quotient when the dividend is less than one, such as 3.2 ÷ 0.4?” and “when I used my calculator to see if my estimation made sense, it showed 8. Is my calculator making a mistake?” This led to a great discussion about division in general, but also what to do when estimating. It’s a common thought that when we divide, the quotient gets smaller, but in actual fact that’s not true. When we divide by a number less than one, the quotient gets larger. So 3.2 ÷ 0.4 does equal 8. Before estimating, we need to move our decimal to the right (knowing that doing so will result in an equivalent quotient) for both numbers so our equation becomes 32 ÷ 4. Those numbers are far easier to work with! And when we can relate challenging questions like these to a real life situation, it makes it much easier to grasp. If we had $20 to spend on iTunes and each song was 0.49, we’re going to be able to get 40 songs. Dividing decimals and getting a larger quotient now makes far more sense.
Next week:
- Orienteering Field Trip at Campbell Valley Park Nov 3
- Grade 7 Camp Elphinstone Parent Info Night 6:30
- Photo Retakes Nov 6