by Lara Francisco
Even though I don't have a classroom, I still felt the Valentine's Day love last week at school. I received a "sticky sweet" My Little Pony card early Thursday morning, before school started (with special permission from the principal), and a hand written (and delivered) note by a 5th grader. On Friday I found a tulip plant on my table along with a card from my Academic Support cohort. Then yesterday as I was going through the students' Math Challenge #8 entries, I found these sweet little words:
Thank you girls - what a great way to wrap up my week!
Now ... moving on to the last challenge - #8
Our Math Champs are:
Primary Champ -Samara in Ms. Shaw's class! Samara actually worked on ALL four challenges and did an amazing job!
Intermediate Champ - Dominique in Ms. Goldman's class! Dominique was one of the very few who attempted Level D this time!
The Classroom Winners are:
Ms. Smith
and
Ms. Goldman
Congratulations to all of you - Well done!
As you have probably figured out by now, I LOVE sharing student work with you. This week is no exception.
Level D was hard. Level D is always hard. I do not have the answers to these problems, and sometimes Level D is not within my personal realm of understanding, no matter how hard I try. I knew there had to be a "mathematical way" to solving the most recent one, but I had to literally draw it out: 1 time line showing all 3 clocks by minutes, marking when each would chime. I am a pattern seeker, so after many tick marks of only 2 clocks aligning (now and then) and seeing no possible pattern for the 3 of them to align, I stopped (maybe after 100+ or so ticks). Then while looking through the student entries, I noticed that a few of them said, "Yes, they will align after 207 ticks." WAIT ... WHAT?
Very few students even attempted Level D for this last challenge, and 4 of them had the same answer. That meant I needed to go back to my time line and continue trying - I must have stopped too soon. Sure enough - they were right!
Now ... moving on to the last challenge - #8
Our Math Champs are:
Primary Champ -Samara in Ms. Shaw's class! Samara actually worked on ALL four challenges and did an amazing job!
Intermediate Champ - Dominique in Ms. Goldman's class! Dominique was one of the very few who attempted Level D this time!
The Classroom Winners are:
Ms. Smith
and
Ms. Goldman
Congratulations to all of you - Well done!
As you have probably figured out by now, I LOVE sharing student work with you. This week is no exception.
Level D was hard. Level D is always hard. I do not have the answers to these problems, and sometimes Level D is not within my personal realm of understanding, no matter how hard I try. I knew there had to be a "mathematical way" to solving the most recent one, but I had to literally draw it out: 1 time line showing all 3 clocks by minutes, marking when each would chime. I am a pattern seeker, so after many tick marks of only 2 clocks aligning (now and then) and seeing no possible pattern for the 3 of them to align, I stopped (maybe after 100+ or so ticks). Then while looking through the student entries, I noticed that a few of them said, "Yes, they will align after 207 ticks." WAIT ... WHAT?
Very few students even attempted Level D for this last challenge, and 4 of them had the same answer. That meant I needed to go back to my time line and continue trying - I must have stopped too soon. Sure enough - they were right!
Here are examples of the students' work:
(Notice the difference between their solving process and mine?)
(Notice the difference between their solving process and mine?)
Kudos to everyone who worked on this challenge! Impressive work!!
As always, it is a great privilege to look through every child's work on these challenges.
There will not be a Math Challenge this week, but look for #9 to be posted next Monday.
Thank you for all of the Math Love everyone!
As always, it is a great privilege to look through every child's work on these challenges.
There will not be a Math Challenge this week, but look for #9 to be posted next Monday.
Thank you for all of the Math Love everyone!