A ship made out of a shoebox?

A last First Fleet project made out of a shoebox. Wow!!

Our blogs and the 100WC

Have you had a look at some of our fabulous 100 word challenge posts on our own blogs. We have begun to publish our writing to our own blogs instead of to our class blog. We are also beginning to comment on 100WC posts on some class blogs from schools around New South Wales and they are beginning to comment on our work. It gives us a huge audience of people interested in our writing. We're not only writing for Mrs Taylor anymore, but rather for a huge audience on-line. Have a look at some of our blogs!

http://jemmat2014.weebly.com/1/post/2014/03/100-wc-night-zoo-keeper-27.html

Parts and Wholes

We opened a brand new box of fraction equipment today that had 30 individual plastic ziplock bags with fractions for us each to play with. It felt like we were just playing a game when we matched up the fractions together. We could see that as the denominator got bigger the fraction got smaller. We remember that the denominator is the bottom half of a fraction because it starts with the letter 'd' that reminds us that the denominator is 'down'. The top half of a fraction is called the numerator.

How do you remember what the fraction parts are called? Do you have a different way of remembering what the top half and bottom half of a fraction are called?

Year 3 looked at equivalent fractions. Here is some information from: http://www.aaamath.com/fra42ax2.htm that tells us a little about equivalent fractions.

Identifying Equivalent Fractions

Equivalent fractions are fractions that have the same value or represent the same part of an object. If a pie is cut into two pieces, each piece is also one-half of the pie. If a pie is cut into 4 pieces, then two pieces represent the same amount of pie that 1/2 did. We say that 1/2 is equivalent to 2/4.

Fractions are determined to be equivalent by multiplying the numerator and denominator of one fraction by the same number. This number should be such that the numerators will be equal after the multiplication. For example if we compare 1/2 and 2/4, we would multiply 1/2 by 2/2 which would result in 2/4 so they are equivalent.

To compare 1/2 and 3/7 we would multiply 1/2 by 3/3 to produce 3/6. Since 3/6 is not the same as 3/7, the fractions are not equivalent.

• Fractions equivalent to 1/2 are 2/4, 3/6, 4/8, 5/10, 6/12 ...
• Fractions equivalent to 1/3 are 2/6, 3/9, 4/12, 5/15, ...
• Fractions equivalent to 1/4 are 2/8, 3/12, 4/16, 5/20, ...
• Fractions equivalent to 1/5 are 2/10, 3/15, 4/20, 5/25, ...
• Fractions equivalent to 2/5 are 4/10, 6/15, 8/20, 10/25, ...

In year 4 we found out what decimal fractions are and how they relate to decimals and fractions. School A to Z is a really great resource to help you at home to. 

http://www.schoolatoz.nsw.edu.au/

https://www.det.nsw.edu.au/eppcontent/glossary/app/resource/factsheet/4005.pdf

Here we are working really hard with our fractions and decimal fractions!

Multiples and Factors

We looked at the difference between factors and multiples today. A factor is any whole numbers that are multiplied together to get a product. The factors of 12 are 1, 2, 3, 4 and 12.

The factors of 16 are 1, 2, 4, 8 and 16.

http://youngteacherlove.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/factors-and-multiples.html

Multiples are the product of any quantity and a whole number. A multiple is when a product is multiplied by any whole number. Multiples can be listed in a series.

The multiples of 3 are 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18...

The multiples of 5 are 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30...

http://youngteacherlove.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/factors-and-multiples.html

We made an 'egg-cellent' multiples egg that listed all the multiples of numbers from 1 to 10. We knew that this was the same as skip counting and practiced skip counting by twos, threes, fours, fives and sixes. We were a little slower skip counting by sevens, eights and nines but were able to use different strategies to work out the multiples of larger numbers with a few handy tricks. 

Persuasive Writing

Today we worked with partners to come up with arguments for and against a topic. We then got into groups of 5 and decided if we were going to write for or against the topic. It was hard to decide which was better, ice-cream or chocolate. We had our friends help us add supporting evidence to our arguments and then it was time to go onto grammar and practicing our contractions...

Predicting helps our understanding...

We are covering the Super Six comprehension strategies this term and will continue to use them throughout the year. They are:

Making Connections

Summarising

Visualising

Questioning

Predicting

Monitoring

We looked at 'making predictions' today. This is a strategy that we have used since Kindergarten. Our teachers often asked us to predict what a story was about from the cover or what we think is going to happen next. We now have a word that explains a comprehension strategy that we've been already using for a long time. Today we made 'predictions' about an article after reading the title and sub-titles. We then had to read the article and see if our 'predictions' were accurate.

The First Fleet

Yesterday we found out the names of all the ships in the first fleet. They were:

Sirius 

Alexander

Charlotte

Scarborough

Friendship

Supply

Fishburn

Borrowdale

Lady Penrhyn

Prince of Wales

Golden Grove

There were 2 navy ships, six convict transports and three supply ships. There were a total of 1420 people that got on the ships in Portsmouth in England and after 8 months, 1373 people landed safely at Sydney Cove.

A few days ago we had a message from a class in England who visited the Captain Cook museum in Great Ayton in North Yorkshire in England. Today we're going to think about our favourite Captain Cook fact so that we can share them with Class 2 and Mrs Monaghan in the UK.

Hi Miss Taylor's Class!
I was interested to read that you are doing some work on Captain Cook - last term, our class visited the Captain Cook museum in Great Ayton, and found his family gravestone in the churchyard there. We enjoyed finding out about his voyages, and even posted on our blog about our learning. I hope you enjoy finding out about his voyages as much as we did! You can see some of our work athttp://aroomwithaview.edublogs.org (Autumn 2013). What is your favourite Captain Cook fact?
I love the way you put your photos on your blog - what do you use to make your photo collages?
Mrs Monaghan
A Room with a View, Class 2 - UK