Week of November 10-14

This week, the 5th graders were introduced to our final project: designing carnival games that are slightly unfair.  After all, we carnival owners have to make a profit!  Students must be able to calculate the theoretical and experimental probabilities of winning their games.  Once the games are designed, we will invite our classmates in to play the games.  Hopefully, they won't notice that the odds are stacked against them!  Check out the site below to play some carnival games that involve probability.
http://mrnussbaum.com/probfair/

HW: research probability games from around the world (directions are on a separate piece of paper, not in books)


In fourth grade, we continued to work on creating advertisements for our stores in the class mall.  Instead of listing the prices of the items we are selling, we turned the items into variables that our shoppers must solve for.  We tried to create equations and systems of equations that will be appropriately challenging for our shoppers (other 4th grade G&T students across the district).

HW: p. 59


Classes 3a and 3b learned about surface area today.  We figured out that you must find the area of each surface of a rectangular solid and then add those areas together to find the total surface area of the figure in square units.  We talked about how much frosting it would take to cover the 4 sides and the top of a whole cake compared to individual pieces of the cake once it is cut up.  We realized that it would take a lot more frosting to cover each individual piece's 5 sides.  After all, when the pieces are part of the whole cake, the pieces have only one, two, or three sides frosted.  The video below give an explanation of how to find surface area if anyone needs clarification:
https://learnzillion.com/student/lessons/1222-find-surface-area-of-rectangular-prisms

HW: p. 71

Class 3c learned about the volume of rectangular solids this week.  The volume is the amount of space occupied by a three-dimensional object often measured in cubic units.  We learned that, in addition to the dimensions of length and width, we also need to consider a 3rd dimension of height when figuring out volume.  We used connecting cubes to make pieces of cake and figured out how many pieces would fit into cake pans of varying sizes.  The video below gives a clear explanation of what we learned:

HW: p. 67