Falling into November Math Skills

The Interactive Math Skills block is a 10-15 minute block of time devoted to the review and practice of math skills. This is a routine that we do every day! It is a very important part of our daily routine. During this block of instruction, students are held accountable for participating by using white boards and markers to answer questions. At the end of each month, students are assessed by a quiz that covers the elements that were taught during the month.

This month in our Interactive Math Skills block, we will be focusing on some new skills. The following are skills that students will be working on throughout the month:
-recognizing and describing quadrilaterals (four-sided figures) such as rhombuses, squaures, and rectangles
-elapsed time of days, weeks, months, years and decades (10 years) and centuries (100 years)
-understand and recognize right angles (90 degrees), obtuse (greater than 90 degrees), and acute angles (less than 90 degrees)
-telling time to the hour, half-hour, quarter-hour and minute
-US customary measurement for length including inches, feet, and yards
-use variables for unknown addends (45 + C= 100, C=55)
-understand place value for numbers through 999,999 including rounding numbers
-making change for puchases

You can help at home by asking about the days math skills block and asking questions about the concepts above. The following are some sample questions that can be asked about this month's concepts:

-Mrs. Ross was buying some fabric to make a dress. She needs 4 feet of fabric. How many inches does she need?
-Miss Lipsky went to the mall. She got to the mall at 4:00. It took her 45 minutes to get there. What time did she leave her house to get to the mall?
-What unit of measure would be best to measure the length of a marker? Why? (inches, feet, yards)
-Mrs. Timmons bought two erasers at the school store. Each eraser was 15 cents. She gave the cashier two quarters. How much change did she get back?
-Guess My Number: I have 5 tens, 7 hundreds, 3 ones, and 9 thousands.

After asking your child questions in math it is always important to encourage them to tell you how they know the answer. Instead of just accepting their answer, encourage them to explain their process for thinking. This will deepen their learning experience creating a better understanding of the material.