Category Archives: Math

Welcome to Week 3!

Hello Parents!

I hope you had a wonderful weekend! This week, we will begin differentiated homework in second grade. This means that each student in our class will still have the same expectation of homework (1 page of math and 1 page of language arts–reading comprehension this week), but the pages will look different.

In math this week, we are focusing on the following skills:

  • Different ways to write numbers
  • Different names for numbers
  • Problem-solving with tens and ones
  • Counting patterns up to 100

In grammar this week, we are focusing on the following skills (and this work will be done in Centers):

  • More practice with sorting nouns
  • More practice with common nouns and proper nouns
  • Alphabetical order

In writing this week, we are focusing on the following:

  • The elements of a complete sentence (subject & predicate)

I am looking forward to a great week!

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End-of-Year Math Fun!

Hello! We have been busy in second grade getting ready for the end of the year, completing all of our required assessments, and learning everything we need to learn before moving onto third grade! This week, we have been working with introductory lessons to multiplication and division, focusing on equal groups. We already know that we use addition to put things together or make bigger numbers, and we use subtraction to take things away or make smaller numbers. This week we are learning that we can also use multiplication to quickly make bigger numbers and division to quickly make smaller numbers. Below are the videos we watched today to help us learn the basics of division — dividing our total number into equal groups. Happy Almost Summer!

 

 

Fun Subtraction With Regrouping Video

This week we will have our chapter 6 test in math, which focuses on 3-digit addition and subtraction with and without regrouping (“borrowing”)! Here is a fun video we watched today that gives us a nice trick to remember that “if the number on top is SMALLER than below, it’s time to go with the regrouping flow” when we are subtracting.

Breaking Apart Numbers to Subtract

This week in math, we are learning how to break apart numbers to subtract. To assist my students in doing this, I’ve uploaded a “120 chart” on my website. Students may use this as a visual aide to assist them with doing breaking apart numbers to subtract and, eventually, my hope is that students will be able to visualize this chart in their head, so that they may solve problems that may seem complicated using only “mental math”.

120Chart

Using the 120 chart to solve a problem like “50 – 37 = ?” my students are expected to know how to:

  1. Break apart 37 into 7 ones and 3 tens
  2. Find 50 on the hundred chart and point to it
  3. “Jump back” 3 tens and 7 ones
  4. Land on the number 13, which is the correct answer to the problem “50 – 37 = ?”

Please find the 120 chart here: https://missmcwoodson.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/120chart.pdf or in the right column on my website, under “Take Home Binder”.

How Many Fives Around the Clock?

I came across this video earlier today, and I was pleasantly surprised when I heard the voice of Genevieve Goings of Choo Choo Soul, who I know from a freeze dance song I frequently use for my children’s dance classes. I was excited to find Genevieve’s educational video of counting around the clock by fives, which is something my second graders and I practice each day during our math “calendar routines” and spiral review. I will be sure to show them this video before calendar routines when we get back from the winter beak!

Tens Partners

At this time in our second grade classroom, we are focusing on the following addition strategies:

  1. Solving word problems by finding the given information, determining what the problem is asking us to find, and identifying key words or phrases
  2. Solving addition problems with up to 4 addends vertically

While there are number of strategies my students know how to use, I’m a big fan of the “spiral review”, which includes going back and reminding ourselves of some addition tips and tricks we may have picked up in first grade. I recently discovered fun educational hip hop videos created by Flocabulary, a Brooklyn-based company that creates educational hip hop songs and videos for students in grades K through 12. Below is a video that we watched on Monday to remind us of our “tens partners” which will help us add (and subtract… which we will be delving into when we return from the winter break in January) more quickly!