Congratulations! I understand most of your students were able to get into RM and work last night. I did get a few messages saying there were issues, and I believe I have the solution. If your student's Guided Study building is closed, be sure to have them check the Office, which is the building directly to the right of the Guided Study building. They most likely have a few problems to complete in the Office. When they are done, they can go into Guided Study.
I mentioned in my last blog post that students should not go beyond the lesson “Equations” in Guided Study. For their weekend homework and for the coming week, they may work in Equations. They should not go beyond the lesson, “Properties of Multiplication.” They may complete it, but they should not go beyond it. If they do complete it, they should go to Wall of Mastery.
I am not sure if I mentioned this last week, but online homework is part of your students' grades. I have records on my end to tell me how much time they have completed, and I will be logging and entering their time online into my grade book. They will receive full credit for completing the full 20 minutes, half credit for completing 10-19 minutes, and no credit for completing less than half the time online. (If students are not getting at least 10 minutes online in Guided Study, they will get very little productive work done because Guided Study always starts with a 5 minute warm-up.) Their time does not start being recorded until after they are logged in, so if you are using a timer to monitor, please don't start it until they are logged in. Also, if the internet stops, or the program kicks them out, or any other technical disruption occurs, that time does not get recorded on the record that I see, so please pause any timers until they are logged back in.
Next week, we are starting multiplication, and we will be working on multiplication facts. We are going to be doing multiplication facts a little differently than addition and subtraction facts. Students are going to start by studying their multiplication flashcards each night, preferably with a parent or an older student. I will send the students home with a multiplication log each week to record how many times they practiced their facts. (They should go through them at least twice each night.) Please sign and date the log to confirm they have practiced their facts. At the end of the week, students will turn the log into the math fact bin, and I will include it as part of their grade based on how many times they have completed their facts.
We are going to start by practicing our two, five, and ten times tables. I have instructed the students to separate their multiplication flashcards into groups for each fact, but since facts do overlap, it is probably best if they separate the twos , fives and tens they need for the coming week into a pile single separate from the rest of the flashcards. Multiplication flashcards were on the list of supplies students were to bring to school on the first day. Most of you should have them, but if not, please get some this weekend. You can usually find them at Walmart.
I understand that practicing multiplication facts with your student is potentially time consuming, and I thank you for your support in this area. Math facts are crucial to math success, and multiplication facts are especially important. Students who have memorized their multiplication facts can easily perform column multiplication and division. They are set up for success with equivalent fractions and fraction conversion. Students who do not know their facts struggle in all these areas because all of areas require multiplication.
While it might be less time-consuming to have students fill out worksheets of multiplication facts, in my experience worksheets are ineffective in this area until students have had some multiplication fact practice. It is not as easy for students to try to figure out a multiplication fact they don’t know as it is for them to figure out an addition or subtraction fact they don’t know. If they do try to figure out an unknown multiplication fact by successive adding, they are more likely to be wrong. Naturally, practicing wrong answers would defeat the purpose of the facts, so it is best if they have supervised practice at first. We will eventually move into worksheets for multiplication fact practice after they have had plenty of supervised flash card practice.
In science this week we will continue our investigation of atoms and begin working more directly on electricity. We will be discussing some electricity basics like charges and states, and we will also learn about static electricity. Hopefully, we will have the opportunity to do a lab experiment on static electricity as well.
There are no tests in either math or science this week.
These are all the notes I have for you this week. Please send me a message through Jupiter Ed with any questions, comments, or concerns you have.
Sincerely,
Miss Wycklendt
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