Seabury School challenges gifted children in a community that cherishes each individual and fosters a love of learning, discovery and creativity.




Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Sink and Float-Is There A Set Rule?

Today during our collaborative time, we took our experiences with sinking and floating and began to explore ideas of displacement and density, while thinking about variables such as texture, shape and size.  Some of the objects explored today included a rubberband, a nail, coins, wood chips, leaves, plastic cubes, buttons, and bolts. Afterwards, we starting putting some hypothesis' together to understand what we had observed.  Below in the video is SOR and AK trying to determine whether having a hole in the object determines its ability to sink or float.



During a class discussion, one student had mentioned that a marble sank because it was heavier than the water and the air.  KeA responded that "Well, how does a big ferry boat float?  It's heavier than water!"  A question about displacement came up from ZK "What if (the object) stuck in the middle of the water?" He was referring to an object half floating and half sinking. Some misconceptions also popped up, such as: "a boat floats during the day and sinks at night because it can't see", and "an object sinks because it wasn't moving fast enough." We are very excited to see where this exploration leads us as we continue to examine how water is essential to life.  I will also be working with the ideas of controls and variables as we experiment using the scientific method.


Monday, October 15, 2012

Community Interactions

We had a busy week interacting with our community.  On Tuesday, we, along with the Navigators delivered our food bank donations to the Edgewood Community Food Bank.  It took a large truck and mini-van to haul it all.  Our grand total number of items was 1100+ and it came in at 931 pounds!  Boy did we have fun unloading and weighing it!  The volunteers were so grateful for our donations, and the students even got to help sort and shelve their items!  The students asked really great questions to better understand how their work will make a difference in the lives of others.




On Friday, we did our annual trip to the Pumpkin Patch.  This is always a favorite! This trip gives the students an opportunity to interact with a different type of community (rural) as they had fun and learned some new things too.  The highlights were the cow train and corn maze.



Practicing their scary faces for Halloween!


This week, we are back to work as we are learning a variety of addition strategies to recall our basic facts more rapidly.  This can also be done at home with flashcards or there are lots of online games.  Being able to recall basic facts quickly demonstrates their fluency with this skill, as well as make them less frustrated when working with larger numbers.  Just like reading, we understand best when we focus on the content, rather than the words on the page. Fluency in reading is measured by the rate and accuracy at which we read.  The same for math.  If we know our facts well, we can better focus our efforts on more difficult concepts and patterns.
His sign says "this is just an upside down stair case" LL is using cuisenaire rods to show many ways to equal 10

Thursday, October 4, 2012

From Concrete to Abstract Concepts

This month, we have been working on place value.  The concept is that digits form numbers, and that each digit has a value based on it's place in the number.  For example, 36 is 3 groups of 10 plus 6 ones.  Our number system is a Base 10, meaning that values increase by groups of 10.  I use manipulatives all the time to help students gain and demonstrate their understanding of this skill.

Today however, the manipulatives changed.  Each partnership was given a bag of blocks of a different base system.  They had to determine the value of the blocks by comparing sizes and determining the pattern to which each block increased.  Without realizing it, the students were patterning, building, skip counting, and using repeated addition (and someone figured out that was the same as mulitplication) to define the value of their blocks.  They were plain wooden blocks with no markings on them. Many went on a and made a counting strip in that base, and could see that in a base 5, you never used the 6, 7, 8, or 9 digits!  This lesson reached out to all levels, and I was very shocked how everyone got it! Be sure to click on the video as AK explains what every child was doing today.

To see how many rods KA needed, he stacked them on top of the large flat piece.


Everyone had their own system to calculating totals.  Repeated addition and counting on were a big part of today, and many had to use calculators for the higher numbers.