This week for science we finished up our Rock and Roll unit with an online assessment and began our new unit about resources on Earth. In this unit, the student will be distinguishing between renewable and nonrenewable resources found on Earth. Students will also make a connection to natural resources that are found in Florida and how it sustains Florida’s landscape. In partnerships, the students made trading cards of different resources, either renewable or nonrenewable. The students used text resources in the class to research their topic. After finishing, the students traded their cards with another friend to become an “expert” in another resource.
Unit vocabulary words: renewable resource, nonrenewable resource, natural resource, phosphate, oil, limestone, silicon, wind energy, solar energy, environment
In math, we also started a new unit on multiplication. On Monday and Tuesday we explored multiplicative comparisons. Multiplicative comparisons is just a fancy way of saying multiplying by comparing groups. This unit also introduces some algebraic computations, so instead of using a question mark symbol for the unknown number, letters will be used instead. In our math journal, I guided students through several problems using the following method:
Emily has 9 pennies. Leah has four times as many pennies as Emily. How many pennies does Leah have?
Emily 9
Leah 9 9 9 9
N= 4 x 9
N= 36
So, Leah has 36 pennies.
In this unit we will be learning multiple different strategies and models to help us solve multiplication problems that are 3 by 1 digit problems and 2 by 2 digit problems. On Thursday and Friday students learned how to use the zero strategy to solve multiplication problems fast and efficiently.
3x7=21
3x70=210
3x700=2100
3x7000=21000