Triangle Math, Contaminated Water, and Instructional Writing

November 1

Our BIG INQUIRY is into the, ‘Importance of Clean Water’, through the point of view of, “What can we do to change or help?”

We are reading the following articles, while practicing how to ‘read and research like a scientist’. We hope to be sending these articles home for you to read with your child over the next few weeks.

What is Dispersion?

Dispersion in the Wetlands!

Water is absorption

Groundwater Contamination

How do Wetlands act like a Sponge?

How do Wetlands filter water?

What is Leaching?

What is Water Runoff?

Contaminants

We have been experimenting with how to create water with high turbidity by adding in various contaminants such as: oil, soap, rocks, dirt, garbage, doodoo (fake!), leaves etc.

We are now using the Scientific Method to try cleaning the dirty water using various materials such as: sieves, cheesecloth, charcoal, sand, rocks and moss. Students are making hypotheses about how well each material works to clean their dirty water. They are then making observations around what is cleaned of the contaminants and what is not. They are also assigning a water turbidity number to the cleaned water after each experiment.

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This Week in Math

We have begun to unpack double-digit numbers into “Friendly Numbers” and then use those friendly numbers to add efficiently. We are currently focusing on 10’s, 5’s and 1’s as friendly numbers because they are easy and efficient to count with. We have discussed efficiency as meaning to count quickly and accurately. Any numbers that are too small to break into friendly numbers we call “Extra’s”. Once we unpack our numbers, we begin to add them up using triangle math, tally’s and number lines. Below is some images of our Triangle Math as well as the steps for triangle math:

Triangle Math

First: Find all of the friendly numbers in the equation (10’s, 5’s, extra’s).

Next: Combine all friendly 10’s.

Then: Combine or make friendly 5’s.

After: Combine all extra’s.

Finally: Combine all triangles.

Previous Week in Math

We are currently working on breaking larger numbers up into “Friendly” numbers. Our students are exploring that a friendly number is a number that is easy to count with, easy to find within larger numbers and efficient to count with. We have been practicing breaking numbers up into 10’s, 5’s and extra’s. We are working with the idea that the biggest friendly numbers are efficient and why is it important to be efficient and accurate in math.