Met the parents & addition chart

Last night was a great night to meet some of the parents of students in my class.  Many were surprised when they found out I had told the students that they didn't have to do their homework, especially if they spend their time being kids and climbing trees.  It is an individual decision for families to make if they are able to support their child with homework.  Some families don't have space for a desk or the environment is too noisy or simply too busy.

Sharing a great book with a child is one of the most powerful ways to instil in them a love of learning.  My 15 year old daughter and I still enjoy reading together and have read great books like The DaVinci Code and Mao's Last Dancer as well as The Power of One.  These great books stimulate a lot of grown up discussion about our world and our role within it.

Today we started our focus on "Friends to 18".  This is one way to help students quickly recall number facts up to 9+9.  When they can do this then their knowledge of place value can take them to the bigger numbers.  Students at this age should be using a variety of mental and written methods to add 2 digit numbers and begin to do the same with 3 digit.

We started an 'Around the World' game where students are sitting in a circle and one student stands behind another.  These 2 students are in a race together to match the number I give them with the 'answer'.  Today the 'answer' was 12 and then we had another game where the answer was '11'.  I say a number and they have to say, as fast as possible the number that matches it to get the answer.  If I say '4', the first person to say '8' moves onto the next person.  The aim is to see how many people you could be faster than to hold the class record. AR is our record holder at the moment with 10.  I don't know that she will hold it for long as there are some very competitive people in our class ;-)

Here is a copy of the addition chart I gave the students today to help them practice the number combinations.