Math for the Common Core and More!

"We didn't learn that as a kid"! How often have we said that? As you know from taking a look at the math worksheets and class work coming home, our little ones are being asked to do much more in the area of math than we ever learned in second grade! Not everything we do in school can be sent home, so here is a look at some of the hands-on activities we have done recently and those completed in our notebooks.

With both the new Common Core State Standards and the Grade Level Content Expectations to cover this year, we have been spending a large portion of our day on these very important math skills! Our students take a math MEAP test in the fall of third grade.The window for testing for district assessments has opened and we are gearing up for the big test!

This was a fun activity we did a few weeks ago to introduce the children to telling time to five minute intervals!

The students used their little Judy clocks to practice setting the hands for a given time.

 You can continue to review some tricky times like 7:50 or 4:45 at home in preparation for the test! The students frequently get mixed up when the hour hand is near the next hour but hasn't gotten there yet!

This card activity was to help students to add two numbers using a ten frame. A ten frame is an arrangement of dots within a rectangular grid. This is a way of visualizing a number. In second grade, we put two ten frames together when working with sums to twenty. Our facts need to be memorized by the end of the year, so keep working on fluency! Please have your child log in to Xtra Math and Dreambox on a regular basis!

We had some sweet shape fun with this candy sorting geometry activity and our introduction to solid shapes. Students need to know the names of these shapes and be able to talk about faces, edges and vertices. The students also need to identify plane shapes and know the names of shapes like pentagon, hexagon, rectangle and more. Sides, angles and corners are vocabulary terms they should know!

I made a PowerPoint to help the students to see real life examples of each of our 3-D shapes. Here are a few of the slides:

We have been working on numerous problem-solving strategies and multiple representations. The children were asked to record different ways to show that 56-18=38. You've seen a little bit of this in our nightly practice pages where the students are asked to use words, numbers or pictures to explain their thinking. They are getting really good at this!

Now that we know how to do an algorithm with and without regrouping, the students are moving on to demonstrating two-digit addition and subtraction using patterns of skip counting and counting by ones on a 120 chart. We used Unifix cubes as manipulatives for the introductory lesson.

The students learned that a two-digit number can be broken apart into tens and ones earlier in the year with our place value unit. Now, they can see how place value can be used to add or subtract using this chart as a math tool. 

Moving up or down rows on the chart is a way to add or subtract groups of tens. Moving across within a row is how we add ones.We begin at the greater number when adding because we know about the commutative property of addition. The kids call it a flip-flop!

We use lots of color as a strategy for better understanding. This is a color-coded 100 chart activity showing the same concept.

Notice how this student used an open number line to show adding tens and ones. They used a small "math mountain" to break apart 28 into 20+8 to add it to 53. Blue marks the starting point. Red is where the student moved down two tens and across 8 ones. This child also checked their answer with a vertical problem.

This is some pretty amazing math for second graders!

What can parents do to help with these skills at home? Here's a list of important skills to continue to review for the upcoming assessment. We'll be doing the same here in the classroom!

counting coins~ then determining how much more money is needed to make $1.00
writing money amounts using a dollar sign and decimal point
shape names (solid and plane)
skip counting with higher number starting points like 532, 542, 552...
telling time to five minutes
quarter past, half past and quarter to
even/odd
word problems for addition, subtraction and money, key words like "altogether"
adding/subtracting on a 100 chart and open number line
expanded form~ 300+70+3
standard form~373
fractions~ halves, thirds and fourths
line plots, bar graphs and tally charts
base ten models (draw to show a number)
basic math facts to sums of 20
fact families to sums of 20
arrays to show multiplication
adding/subtracting three digit numbers
greater than, less than, equal to
partitioning a shape into equal parts
ordering numbers to 1000
borrowing across zero

There are so many great online printable practice pages and websites. Just type any of the above keywords in your search!

Thanks for helping to encourage this very important math practice!