Tuesday, November 25, 2014

We Can Achieve (3000)!!

This year, readers at Chets Creek have been working hard within the pages of a new-to-us resource, Achieve 3000.  With initial placement testing in September, each student's independent reading level has been identified, and the program has been tailored to meet them at their own independent reading levels.  Each calendar month, as students read articles and complete comprehension activities success, the program will adjust the difficulty level of their articles up or down, based on their activity scores.  In order to make adjustments, the program needs AT LEAST four completed activities for each month.  For this reason, our students are participating in a weekly small group rotation schedule in which they complete an Achieve 3000 article and activity in class each week.


In order to provide more reading practice for each student, it is strongly encouraged that they complete at least one article with activity at home each week in place of or in addition to their nightly ELA homework.  Each reader has been taught how to dig into the "My Lessons" tab and find articles with activities to complete.

This holiday break, our readers are invited to participate in an optional Achieve 3000 challenge!  Students who complete five articles and activities with a 75% or better on their first try will win FIFTY BEHAVIOR BUCKS and an invitation to a special lunch bunch on Friday, December 5th.


Each student received a copy of the challenge log in class today, but a printable version is also available here.  Challenge logs will not be accepted late, so be sure to take care of them!

I can't wait to see how many readers take advantage of this great opportunity!  You won't want to miss out on the rewards!


Sunday, November 23, 2014

Two Current Approaches to Multiplication

Our work with multi-digit multiplication has certainly made progress in recent weeks. Below are two common approaches that we have been using in class:

Multiplication Cluster

This strategy of decomposing one of the factors has reinforced the concept of multiplication in that one factor represents the size of groups while the other factor represents the number of groups.

Open Array Model 

This model has been fantastic as we have made sense of multiplication with larger factors because it has helped us not lose sight of the value of each factor and it has enabled us to decompose BOTH factors and keep track of finding all of the needed partial products.