Wednesday, 14 August 2013

Mathletes of the Week - 29/07/2013 to 04/07/2013

This weeks top 5 Mathletes!

1. Conor Mills                       1300 Points  (Bronze Award)  - Great job Conor!

2. Ben Scott                           1200 Points (Bronze Award) - Great job Ben!

3. Oliver Kenning                  948 Points
4. Kaitlin McGlinchey           658 Points - Great to see you in the Top 5 Kaitlin!
5. Arthur Werner                    507 Points

Tuesday, 6 August 2013

Maths Basic Facts

Hi all,

The class has done a great job of progressing through the Basic Facts ladder so far this year.  It was fantastic to see more rungs highlighted in their snapshot folders.

I would like to see more of a instant recall of some of the basic addition, subtraction, multiplication and division facts.  It's a bit old school, but I have decided to have a timed basic facts of 50 random mixed operation facts every Monday morning.  I will supply the test questions for them to practise 3 times between Mondays.  They can practise at home or school, but they must have their sheets available for the test on Monday.

The target for this test is 50 questions in 2 minutes with 96% accuracy.  Once the students have hit that target, they have "graduated" from having to do this test, and can extend themselves on the iPads or Mathletics.

We'll see how it goes, but I'm encouraged by the overall engagement to hit those targets.

Thursday, 1 August 2013

Mathletes of the Week - 15 July to 21 July

This weeks top 4 Mathletes!

1. Ben Scott                 1250 Points  (Bronze Award)  - Great job Ben!

2. Arthur Werner          210 Points
3. Fionna Munro          74 Points
4. Sneha Wevita           50 Points

Wednesday, 31 July 2013

Mathletics - Mathletes of the Week - 8 July - 14 July

This weeks top 5 Mathletes!

1. Arthur Werner    2305 Points  (Silver Award)  - Great job Arthur!

2. Ben Scott           1130 Points  (Silver Award)  - Great job Ben!

3. Gemma Arnott   755 Points
4. Kailey Parker     749 Points
5. Sneha Wevita     500 Points

Live Mathletics Levels

Due to technical reasons, there hasn't been any Mathletics tasks set, but these are good times to catch up on outstanding ones, and for the students to monitor themselves on Live Mathetics.  Pictured are what is included in each level of Live Mathletics.  As you can see, it gets quite technical in the upper levels.  At primary school, by the end of Stage 6, I would expect most students to be able to manage Level 5 successfully, and be reasonably proficient at Level 6.

With this in mind, I have blocked almost all students from Level 1, and will also be blocking some from Level 2.  I won't block any higher levels than that because it is still important to go back and maintain those easier facts from time-to-time.



Welcome back for Term 3

Hi all,

Welcome back to Room 20 for Term 3, and a busy term it promises to be.

We have our syndicate production coming up in Week 6, along with competitive swimming throughout the term, beginning next Friday with the school trials.  We also, of course, have Goal Setting meetings next week, and I hope to see you all there.

Our topics this term, apart from Production, are Earthquakes and Volcanoes (appropriately) and Food and Nutrition.

For Reading, we will be focusing on "real-life" reading, such as newspapers, advertisements, packaging, symbols, icons, graphics, etc; we will be also reading Poetry, studying inferring the main idea and the language features of poetry.

For Writing, we will be focusing on learning how to write explanations and a range of different types of poems.

For Maths, we will be focusing on Multiplication, Division, Fractions/Decimals/Proportions, time and geometric transformation.  Also, in order to improve the recall of basic addition, subtraction, multiplication and division facts, we will be starting to do weekly timed basic facts tests, where everybody can practise at home and school throughout the week.  There will be a collection of facts to learn.  To "graduate" from having to do this, the aim is for the students to complete the 50 problem test in 2 minutes with at least 96% accuracy.

At home, we expect the students to be working on the goals that they have set themselves, silent reading, websites Reading Eggs and Mathletics, the Basic Facts Ladder and writing in their personal writing books.  I would like to collect the writing books every Friday.

Again, if you have any queries, please feel free to come and see me or Rachel before or after school.  We're happy to help out as best we can.

Thanks

Wednesday, 10 July 2013

Mathletics - Mathletes of the Week - 1 July to 7 July

This weeks top 5 Mathletes!!


1. Ben Scott           2027 Points  (Bronze Award)  - Great job Ben! What a way to debut on the list!

2. Jared Woodgate          1145 Points  (Bronze Award)  - Great job Jared!

3. Oliver Kenning        1076 Points  (Bronze Award)  - Great job Oliver!


4. Luv Nawani             726 Points - Good to see you back Luv!
5. Arthur Werner         622 Points