Cerrito Creek

We are getting lots of mileage out of our MacBooks lately between VoiceThread work on the Gold Rush and writing scripts for the silent movie. This group collaborated on Voice Thread. 

Homework:
Read 30 minutes
ERB practice - 2 pages
Fifth graders are making strides every day in moving away from the algorithm when they have to multiply 19.99 x 15. There are so many occasions when we must use "starter problems," but it takes a lot of number sense to know which ones to use. Onward. The ERB practice homework can be downloaded on yesterday's blog. 
Blue Group:  Today we worked with area in geometry to discover the relationship between length & width compared to base & height.  The students were already familiar with the formula for finding the area of a rectangle, length x width = area.  Our work today led us to uncover that base x height can be used to find the area of a parallelogram that is not a rectangle.  Students cut parallelograms in half and reassembled them as rectangles to prove this formula works for finding the area.
No homework tonight.
Fourth grade math
Purple group:  After sharing the multiple choice homework, we explored more concepts in geometry today.  First we talked about slides (translations), flips (reflections), and turns (rotations).  Students learned how to describe these on coordinate grids.  Our other focus was volume, in particular, volume of rectangular prisms.  By looking at connecting cube constructions, students derived a formula for the volume of a rectangular prism:  length x width x height.  No 4th grade math tomorrow due to Step Up Day.

Fourth grade math homework, due Thursday
Purple group:  
Finish the JUMP Geometry packet (if you did not finish it in class)
Standardized Test Practice (skip problems you've seen before)