NO Pizza this Friday

We are working toward pj's and some free choice on Friday.  We are thinking about making our best choices ALL the time, even though it feels difficult to stay inside all day...

We will keep working towards a "Pizza Party Friday"  for another time this winter... This will include pizza as a choice but students will still bring their own healthy snacks/lunches as well.

Ask me about base ten blocks, counting by tens, adding and subtracting:

When I count forward I am _______?
When I count backward I am ________?

Ask me if I know a way to get from 77 (our number of school days) to 100 day!  Do I have a mental math, quick, or skip counting way to figure that out?  (we looked at the difference between 75 and 77, as well as what it means to count by 10's and how that can help us solve problems)

In grade one, we like to think about how to use ways of counting and look at the relationships between numbers, as well as patterns we see in a 100 chart.  However, our "math facts" we want to master are between 1 and 10, initially to support developing math facts up to 20 eventually, and our ability to use number sense and thinking and counting strategies to add and subtract is expected between 1 and 20 in grade 1. 

We think about 1 more
We think about 1 less
We think about 2 more
We think about 2 less

    ...than any number from 0 to 20...

And we're always coming back to "base 10" or how to get to 10 from any direction between 0 and 10; this includes moving forward and backward!  This is supported by our ability to count forward and backward, starting anywhere between 0 and 20 in grade 1 (0 and 10 for Kindergarten last year)

Ask me if I know a reciprocal equation for any addition or subtraction up to 20?  For example, we have practiced noticing:

           19-3=16
then    19-16=3

Which also means...
           3+16=19
then    16+3=19


These kinds of connections can be practiced at home using any kind of materials to see and show why the problems are related to each other and to support "thinking about number relationships"!

At school we try for "mental math" thinking, but we also use:
    -fingers and materials or counters of any kind
   - making 10 facts
   - 100 chart
   - number line
   - ten frames
 And we are starting to use the base 10 block sets as well