Tag Archives: missing partner

Update in Room 102!

It has been a busy week for all of our first grade rockstars!!!  They did a PHENOMENAL job at the Holiday program… and looked absolutely adorable!  🙂

We have been staying busy in the classroom, too!

Reading:  We still have our three choices in our Reading Workshop.  Read to self, work on words, and listen to reading.  This week, we learned about “Vowel Teams!”  A vowel team is when ANY two vowels are stuck together inside a word:  rAIn, bOAt, tEAm, rEAd.  When the kids find these while they’re reading, they try this little rhyme, “When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking!”  See if your first grader can point out some vowel teams at home, too!  🙂

We talked about finding a Sleepy E or a Bossy E when we read, too!!  This is when an “e” parks itself at the end of the word.  We have to be detectives to figure out if that little “e” is telling the vowel to “Change your sound!”  Or, if that “e” is sleeping silently.  The kids know to listen close when they’re reading and if they hear the vowel say it’s name, they know that “e” on the end is bossing them around!  If they hear the short sound in a word, they know the “e” is sleeping peacefully at the end of the word.  🙂

Bossy E:  like, life, home, write, close, use, time, gate, slide, prize…

Sleepy E:  love, were, apple, little…

 

Writing:  In writing, we went back to writing small moment stories.  The kids had SO many fun things to write about and share!  We reviewed what small moment stories include:  a zoomed in idea (or a bucket idea), details to share with the reader to help them picture the idea, and a feeling so we know how the writer felt.  Our next step in writing is to start the revision unit, so the kids will learn more about how to add dialogue, what to do to add details to the middle of the story, and even learn to revise by taking some information away!  Keep up the hard work!

 

Science:  In science this week we learned about the 3 states of matter!  Everything in the world is made up of matter– the three states are:  solids, liquids, and gases.  We did a couple experiments to help show the kids what the difference between the states are.  Solids KEEP their shape no matter where they are.  Liquids take the shape of wherever they are poured, they can change shapes.  And, gases are invisible, but also take the shape of their container.  We will continue exploring the different states of matter this week… 🙂

 

Math:  We have some seriously amazing math whiz’s in our class!!  We have been working hard on *LISTENING* to a story problem to see if we can figure out what is missing, a partner or a total.  We know that the partners go on the bottom of the math mountain, and the total always goes on the top.  Once we find out what part of the problem is unknown… we can start to solve.  There are multiple different ways that the kids use to solve their math mountains.  Clapping the known partner and counting on to the total, to find the missing partner.  Clapping the larger partner and counting on the smaller partner to find the missing total.  As our story problems get longer and a little bit trickier, it’s REALLY important for the kids to picture it in their mind and listen close for what they are trying to find!  Keep up the great work!  🙂

Math Update

This week our first graders continued to work with the make a ten strategy for addition with teen numbers. We solved multiple problems that had a missing partner or a missing total. Our first graders are doing so well with this skill! Eventually it would be best, if our mathematicians could do the make a ten strategy mentally!

We also began playing a new game this week too! The concept is similar to our other card games, but this time our cards are purple! 🙂

To solve these cards, our mathematicians were encouraged to look at the first partner (9) and count on until they reach 10. They would then put up one finger for each number that they counted on, which in this case is 1. Next, they would put up 4 more fingers because 10 and 4 make 14. The missing partner would then be seen on the fingers that they were holding up (5). For a little bit of a challenge, some of our kiddos tried solving these cards by mental math. 🙂 They were very successful!!

 

Due to the Fog Delay, we were not able to get to our last set of cards. These cards areblue. These cards present subtraction problems with teen numbers where the total is missing. We will cover these on Monday. We will also continue to work with story problems with teen numbers and coin amounts. Around mid-week, we will finish up the unit with an assessment too!

Math Update

Our first graders worked hard this week to prepare for our Unit 3 assessment.  We spent our math switch time on Monday and part of Tuesday solving missing total, missing partner and subtraction stories using the great strategies that we’ve learned during this unit.  We also practiced with our red, yellow and orange quilt cards to prepare our brains to solve all different types of equations.

The kids were definitely ready for the assessment and performed very well.  Woohoo!!!

Still, they will be asked throughout the rest of this year to solve stories, and we don’t want your child to lose any of the great strategies that they’ve gained from our learning.

To support your child at home, please encourage him or her to always PROVE THEIR ANSWER when solving a story.  For a missing total story, your child can write an addition equation and count on.  For a subtraction story, your child can write a subtraction equation and use a circle drawing or our counting up strategy to find the answer.  For a missing partner story, we have encouraged our students to make a math mountain (with the total on top) to find the answer.

We appreciate all the time that you take to encourage your child on their math homework.  Practice makes permanent and we don’t want our first graders to lose these wonderful strategies!!!

Next week, we will dive into our new learning in Unit 4 which focuses on teen numbers, place value and strategies for solving equations with larger numbers.  On Friday, every first grader was given a pre-test to evaluate their skills and prior knowledge to determine the best fit math group and math teacher for this new unit.

We look forward to helping your child grow even more as a mathematician!

Miss Taber 🙂

Math Update

We continued to practice our subtraction strategies during our math switch time this week.  Our first graders are becoming experts at writing subtraction equations and using our counting up strategy.  We are beginning to rely less and less on circle drawings… although we do encourage the use of this strategy for proving our answers and solving equations if we are stuck.

This week we also worked with addition stories that involved finding a missing total(This type of story occurs when we know both of the partners and want to add them together).  When solving a missing total story, like the one below, we’ve encouraged our students to make an addition equation and count on or to use a circle drawing.  Again, the kids did such a fabulous job of listening to a story and putting the information from that story into an equation that they could solve. Check out an example of a missing total story below:

There were 2 dogs at the park.  Then 4 more dogs came.

How many dogs are at the park altogether?


Here is our method for solving a coin story with a missing total:

Jen had 1 nickel and 2 pennies.  Her mom gave her 2 more pennies.

How many cents does Jen have now?

We ended the week with a review of all the stories that we’ve learned how to solve:missing total, missing partner and subtraction.  After reviewing our strategies for each type of story, we used our listening ears to solve a mixture of stories.  (Please click here for an example of each kind of story and the strategies that your child can use to solve them.)  Our students did a wonderful job listening and trying to identify what was missing; however, the toughest stories to understand and solve were definitely the ones that involved a missing partner.

As your child works their homework pages this week encourage him or her to listen for what’s missing and then pick an appropriate strategy to solve the problem.  Please make sure that your child proves their work with either an equation, circle drawing or math mountain.  And… especially support your child as they solve missing partner stories!!!  We will be taking our Unit 3 assessment on Thursday.

 

Math Update

As first grade mathematicians we worked hard before break to solve missing partner and missing total addition equations.  We found that if we could identify what was missing (either a partner or a total), we could use our counting on strategy to find the answer.  We reviewed that theTOTAL is always the greatest number in an equation and it’s always the answer after the equals sign when we are adding.  We reviewed that the PARTNERS are the smaller numbers that can be added together to make the TOTAL.  Please continue to use this language with your child at home as you solve equations.  The more exposure your child has to these math words the easier it will be for him or her to identify what is missing in an equation.

Since coming back to school after break, we’ve been studying subtraction again.  We started the week solving subtraction stories.  Our number one strategy for solving these stories has been to use an equation.  However, we encouraged our students to draw a circle drawing first if they weren’t sure how to create a subtraction equation for the story.  Here is an example of our methods for solving a subtraction story:

Sam had 6 cookies.  He ate 2 of them. 

How many cookies are left?

We emphasized that a subtraction equation always begins with the total.  We have to make sure to put the GREATEST number first so our equation and answer make sense.

We ended the week solving subtraction stories with coins, like the one below:

Jill had 1 nickel and 3 pennies.  She lost 2 pennies. 

How many cents does she have now?

We also learned how to use our orange quilt cards to practice solving subtraction equations using the “counting up” strategy.  Since we aren’t able to write on our quilt cards, “counting up” took the place of using a circle drawing.  Check out the explanation below:


Thank you for practicing with the yellow and red quilt cards at home with your child over break.  Please continue to use these cards to increase your child’s speed and accuracy with their math facts.  We will be sending home our orange subtraction quilt cards soon to add to your collection!

 

Math Update

This week our first graders solved stories that were missing a partner instead of the total.  This was our first time exploring ways to solve this kind of problem.  We found that our math mountain strategy helped us organize the numbers so we could count-on from the known partner to the total in order find the missing partner.  So, we worked hard to recognize the total and partner in each story so our math mountains made sense and our work was accurate.

We also learned how to turn our missing partner math mountains into missing partner equations.  Both of these methods are a great way to show proof when solving a missing partner story which is demonstrated below:

Joe saw 6 snakes in the grass.  4 of the snakes were green.  The rest of the snakes were orange.  How many snakes were orange?

We ended the week with two games that provided our students with opportunities to solve unknown partner equations.  Our yellow quilt cards trained the kids to find the missing partner by clapping and counting on with their fingers until they got to the total.  The pancake game also helped the kids to use one of our strategies (math mountain, equation) to find a missing partner.