Finding Equivalents

Recent investigations in math have focused on student justification of equivalent multiplication and division expressions. Students have been writing story problems and creating visual representations to prove these equivalencies. The process has been challenging but fun! 

Sammy's Story Problem

Justifying that 6 x 9 = 18 x 3 

"There are 6 houses with 9 cats in each house. 3 houses get burnt down so the 9 cats from the burnt down houses move in the other 3. So there are 18 cats in the other 3 houses." 

Chase's Story Problem 

Justifying that 2 x 9 = 6 x 3

"There were 2 fishermen that each caught 9 fish. When they ate dinner, there were 6 people so they each had 3 fish."

Macy's Story Problem

Justifying that 2 x 9 = 6 x 3

"There are 2 monkeys and each have 9 bananas. 4 more monkeys come, and then they have to split them with 6 monkeys. So they decide each monkey will get 3 bananas." 

For Behavior Bucks, brainstorm a story about ants invading a picnic   and sharing sandwiches for this equation: 2 x 6 = 4 x 3

Happy Brainstorming!

Plant and Animal Unit Highlights

In recent weeks we have learned all about inherited and environmental characteristics of organisms.  We have also researched instincts and learned behaviors of organisms, and we have studied life cycles of plants and various groups of animals (mammals, reptiles, insects, etc).  Students can reference the links below as a fun way to review these various science topics.

Current Topics:

Animal Adaptations

Plant Life Cycles: Plants with Seeds

Plant Life Cycles: Angiosperms

Plant Life Cycles: Plants with Cones 

Plant Life Cycles: Plants with Spores 

Animal Life Cycles  

Upcoming Topics:

Food Chains

Food Webs

An Author Celebration: Spotlight on Jordan

Through the course of the year, the ELA teachers push our readers and writers to live the life of a reader... live the life of a writer. Our classroom has a quote on our wall that reads, "You must read like a writer to write like a writer!". In Mrs. Koster's class, no one embodies this more than Jordan! Jordan is constantly pushing herself to read new books and interesting genres. Because of her reading habits, she has shown tremendous growth this year as a writer. She has shown so much growth that when the "Work Over Time" bulletin board came up Wednesday morning, her class stood outside in AWE... reading each piece and celebrating with her, even congratulating her on her work! Isn't this what we dream of as fourth grade writers? Our hope is that readers will see our piece and be amazed! We want them to feel what our characters are feeling. We want them to laugh and cry with us in our narratives.

Jordan... we are SO proud of the author you have become this year. This board is dedicated to your growth! Mrs. Koster wants you to know that it is only a tiny picture of the growth that has occurred on the inside this year!

Thank you for working hard at perfecting your craft. You are an inspiration! Never stop writing!

Mrs. Koster & Mr. Pinchot's Classes Visit Florida's Frontier!

Today, our classes took a trip to Florida's very own frontier! Did you know that Florida HAD a frontier? Sometimes, we think of a "frontier" as being only related to the wild west, but that isn't true. Did you know that a frontier is actually an underdeveloped area open for a field of discovery? We got the chance to step back in time, onto the grounds of one of Florida's eleven national parks today... Kingsley Plantation!

Zepheniah Kingsley was the owner of this plantation. The difference between a farm and a plantation is that a plantation has twenty or more slave workers. Each of the Kingsley's slaves was a part of the task system in which they worked the fields of sea island cotton each day. Their task was to pick 70-90 lbs. of sea island cotton! We learned that an adult was considered to be 10 years of age or older... that means YOU friends would be picking 70 lbs. of cotton a day! Then, the seeds had to be picked out by hand. Sea island cotton was a luxury item because it was extremely soft, with long fibers. The Florida climate is the perfect recipe for growing sea island cotton with its swampy, sandy terrain and humid air. However, we also learned that picking sea island cotton is quite different than your usual cotton, because sea island cotton grows in trees and vines up to 7 feet tall! After our tour and scavenger hunt had ended, we enjoyed a nice lunch under the palms on the banks of the river... just another day in the sweet life of a CCE fourth grader! 

Enjoy the pictures of our trip back in time...

Koster and Pinchot Historians... What did you like best about our trip today? What new facts did you add to your historian brain? What vocabulary word did you hear today that we have been studying in ELA this week? Give Mrs. Phillips and Mrs. Nash's classes something to look forward to!

Deepening Our Understanding of Mathematical Properties and Relationships

In our final weeks of school, our focus has turned back to nurturing and developing essential understandings in mathematics. Our students should be very confident with the following categories of numbers:

Odd Numbers:
* have a 1, 3, 5, 7, or 9 in the ones place, have only odd factors (odd x odd = odd)

Even Numbers:
* have a 2, 4, 6, 8, or 0 in the ones place, always have a factor of 2 (odd x even = even, even x odd = even, and even x even = even)

Prime Numbers:
* only have 2 factors (one and itself), 2 is the only even prime number

Composite Numbers:
* have more than two factors, can be even or odd

Square Numbers:
* make a square array and have an odd number of factors (can be made by multiplying a number by itself
ex: 1 x 1 = 1, 2 x 2 =4, 3 x 3 = 9 therefore, 1, 4, and 9 are square numbers)

Our current Scott Foresman Investigation in Math (Number Puzzles and Factoring) challenges students to identify numbers that contain one or more of the above-listed categories.These have been presented to the students as "puzzles"...
For example, Think of a number that is even and square.......4 works (produces a 2x2 array, 4 is even).....16 also works (produces a 4x4 array, 16 is even).

In working through number puzzles, students must also distinguish between factors and multiples. 
Factors of 8 are 1, 2, 4, and 8
Multiples of 8 are 8, 16, 24, 32.....(and so on)


Our puzzles have extended to considering FOUR CLUES at a time! We love BRAIN GYM. :-)
*Example: Think of a number that is even, a multiple of 3, less than 100, and a square number (the number 36 would work in this puzzle).


As these ideas have been reviewed and developed, we have used them to build our understanding of prime factorization. The kids REALLY are enjoying this! What an engaging and powerful way to integrate our understanding of factors, prime and composite numbers.

Our 5th grade teachers are SO excited that these "rising 5th graders" will be coming to them with a solid foundation build upon understanding of fundamental properties and relationships of numbers.

Our students are so excited and empowered too- they are even using their understanding of number to find all of the factors for large numbers such as 180 (which has EIGHTEEN factors, by the way)!!

Math Rocks!