Subitizing: What is it and why is it important?

You may have heard your child mentioning subitizing activities we have been doing in class. Subitizing is "instantly seeing how many" meaning,  subitizing is not counting but recognizing common pattern arrangements such as those we may see on a dice or domino.   How good can you subitize? The results might surprise you....

Can you count faster than a chimp? 

not easy eh?

The students has been practicing this, doing games, quizzing one another and just explaining what they see. This is an example of what a student might explain if they were subitizing if they saw this picture for just a few seconds:

They would tell me they see 9, when I ask how they know here are some explanations I have heard from them before:

"I see 3groups of 3 and if you add 3+3+3 that is 9"

"I saw one group of 6 blue dots and one group of 3 red dots and that gives you 9"

"I recognize that pattern, when I see it I know it's 9 because I've seen it before"

This is something that can easily be practiced at home, the students have really enjoyed the games we play in class and as they progress the hope is that the more they can subitize quickly they better their number sense will be if they can instantly see things in groups and be able to clearly explain how they know the answer. Things that can be used at home to practice:

-coins

-dominos

-dice

-cards with dots

-anything you can see in groups!!!

Weekly Update

Hello parents and students!

The first few weeks of January have been very busy for us, we have dived into our prairie research and the students are comparing life as a prairie kid in the past compared to now.  Some examples of research questions the students have come up with are:

What was school like?

How did people get around?

What did they eat?

What were houses like?

How did people stay warm in the winter?

What kind of jobs did people work?

What did kids do for fun?

What tools did people use to make life easier?

Our trip to Fort Calgary and Cantos museum on Friday is perfect timing, as the students can take what they learned from the trip and apply it to their research questions!

We have started a poetry unit, using the prairies as our inspiration.  The first poem the students created was a piece about the senses, some wonderful pieces developed from that.  We’re moving onto different kinds of poetry and the students have been creating art that will later be used as an inspiration for their writing.

I taught the students how to use google maps last week, they thought the satellite view/streetview function was the neatest thing!  Using it I showed them areas of Winnipeg that were of interest, they I let them explore with it outside of the city looking at the prairie landscape from a bird’s eye view, the students then designed their own bird’s eye view art using the google maps for ideas.

In math we have been working on strengthening our number sense, they students have been doing activities with grouping and subitizing.  We will be starting a unit around measurement soon, linking it with our prairie inquiry work. 

Busy weeks coming up!  In February we will be having a pioneer day….more details to come soon!

Ms.Q   

Weekly Update

Hello parents and students! 

First post of the new year!  You will notice I posted some prairie links to the side here, this is to help the students do their research. So we have left the arctic behind and we are moving onto our inquiry work with prairies communities.  The students have been looking at a variety of books and websites last week getting a feel for what life is like. I’ve read them a handful of stories to help paint a picture of prairie life, then and now.   The city we will focus on is Winnipeg, we will compare Winnipeg and Calgary since they are both considered prairies communities. I’ll be posting a lot of links and helpful resources in the next few weeks if your child is ever interested in doing extra research at home!  I will keep everyone in the loop about the different activities going on in the classroom, I have a few ideas up my sleeve….

In math we will be continuing our morning math problem at the start of each day.  We are doing a calendar project for the month of January and many of the questions will be related to using the calendar.  As a class we are working to develop our mental math strategies, by doing this it increases the student’s computation ability and helps them strengthen their basic facts.

I will have more posts once we start working more deeply with our inquiry work, will also put up some more math websites as that seemed to be a popular request last term!

Ms. Q

Weekly Update

Hello parents and students!

I want to thank you all for coming out for sharing night, the students were very excited to show off all their work from the last few months so it was wonderful to see such a great turnout!

It was a busy week as we prepared for the big night, the students worked very hard to pull the room together.

Just over a week until our winter break!  Though it's hard at times for the students to stay on task with all the excitement in the air, we have a lot of work to do until the break!   Next week the students will be putting the finishing touches on their arctic fairy tale, finally publishing into their own book!

We're wrapping up our inquiry work on arctic communities, the past few days we've had some discussions as to what we've learned since we started all the way back in September. In reality we could study the arctic all year because there is so much more we can dig into but we will be moving on to study prairie communities in the new year.

In math we have continued to work with base blocks to help develop our number sense.  Recently we are working on ways to count to 100 using skip counting techniques, grouping and mental math.  The students have been learning about odd and even numbers and using ten frames to show our learning.  By using ten frames, the students have discovered how even numbers always have a 'partner' while odd numbers always have one left over.  Here are some odd and even games your children can play at home if they are interested in practicing:

odd or even sorting
Jelly Diving

I look forward to seeing everyone at interviews this week!

Ms. Q

Weekly Update

Hello parents and students!   

How the weather has changed... just weeks ago we were wearing t-shirts outside.  We used the new weather to inspire us to brainstorm descriptive ways we could describe winter.  We read an arctic tale about a blizzard and then the students started working in small groups, together creating a poem about winter/blizzards.  Their poems are very creave and are coming along nicely! I've seen a lot of growth in the students writing since we did the fall group poems. I look forward to seeing the final product!

The students worked on their 'Promise is a Promise' watercolour painting with Mrs. Hittel the art teacher last week. The students picked a quote from a story and used the text to adapt their version of a picture from the story.  The paintings turned out very well!  Look out for a display on sharing night.

The students are continuing their arctic fairytale writing.  We are getting closer to the publishing process.  We have a new editing process we have implemented in class, it always gives the students something to work on because they are aware of what step they should be on before they can more on. Most of the students are onto their typing, being fairly new to typing it's understandable that some get frustrated but we have talked about how practice will help them get even quicker as time goes on.  I found these websites online that are fun to practice typing skills if your child is interested in checking out:

Typing games
Powertyping
Dance mat typing

We have been continuing to use the base ten blocks and indentifying multiple ways to represent numbers.  We are learning how to do multi-step problems with the base blocks and though it is challanging, it is important for the students to be able to solve problems using multiple steps, it is a skill that will help them in the future!

As we have been doing our inquiry work the students are creating a large mural of 'showing what we know'.  They has learned quite a bit during doing their research and by create the mural the student can reflect on what they know and what do they still hope to learn about more.

I recently read the students a story called 'Winston of Churchill: One Bear's Battle Against Global Warming'  It touched on the problem in Churchill, Manitoba with the polar bears unable to make it to Churchill to hunt for food due to the melting ice floats and the inablility for the bears to swim such long distances.  It was a great little story indicating the small things the average person can do to help.  I'll be showing them a video this week taken at Churchill where scientists explain what they know about polar bears and the kind of work they do with them.
 

Robert Munsch reads

In class we read the book 'A Promise is a Promise' by Robert Munsch.  I'm trying to get the students really familiar with the story so we can do a project in conjuntion with our arctic inquiry work.  I read them the story and today they listened to Robert Munsch read the story from his website!  If your child would like to hear the story again, or share with someone else here is the link to listen to it:

A Promise is a Promise

Enjoy!

Ms. Q

Weekly Update

Hello parents and students!

It was a busy week full of a lot of activities! The students have continued their arctic fairytale writing and it's coming along really well.  The students are realizing the expectations now when they write, we are learning how to rewrite, revise and edit our work so it can be even better.  This week as a class we had a discussion of what it would be like to live in Iqaluit compared to Calgary, the pros and cons.  I think the consensus was that it would be a pretty neat place to live, but the cold would scare off many!  We then discussed what we would need to life there sucessfully.  We will continue this idea and think of needs vs. wants.  I will eventually show the students the price differences between groceries there compared to here!  They could not believe when I told them that a lire of orange juice that cost just over $2.00 here cost $23.00 up there!  So that makes us think..... If you lived there, would you really NEED orange juice to live?  It's an interesting discussion that began to take place...

We did our soap carvings on Friday!  They turned out really well and the students were excited to see their work transform when we painted the soap with the ink paint so the etched part would stand out.  We  are not finished with the carvings though, the students will eventually write a story inspired by their art. 

On Friday we were also very lucky because Quest theatre came to our school and performed Big Sister, Little Brother.  It's aplay inspired by "The Emporer's New Clothes".  It was wonderful and I think the students really enjoyed it.  It was good timing because the students are writing their own story based on another one, so we talked about the idea of  'adapting' stories when we create our own sometimes.

In math we have been working with base ten blocks, the idea of representing and trading.  It's something that can be very difficult and a struggle to understand at first, so if your child wishes to practice more at home here are some great websites:

Blocks representing numbers
Blocks representing numbers #2
Identify the number

101 Dalmations choir practice starts on Tuesday during lunch, even though the deadline to sign up was Friday if your child is still interested in being in the musical, you can find the form off the Chaparral school website and bring it in on Monday or ASAP! 

Ms. Q