Week of October 31- November 4

This week the 3rd graders were asked to use their knowledge of liquid measurement to be smart consumers and decide which brands of lemonade the class should buy for their party. We learned that in order to compare the brands, we needed to calculate the cost per unit (or cup), and we realized that when you buy in bulk, the price usually goes down. We also started to talk about the volume of solids by building pieces of cake for our party out of connecting cubes. We realized that while area deals with the space inside a two-dimensional figure, volume is about how many cubes fit inside a 3-dimensional shape. In order to find the volume of the cake, we could count each cube, or we could multiply the lenght x width x height.
Watch this video for a reminder of how to calculate volume!

In 4th grade, we discussed what it means for a game to be fair. We realized that the theoretical probability of each player winning has to be equal in order for it to be a fair game. We then played a game involving spinners and learned that we needed to calculate the theoretical probability of each player winning in order to be sure if it is a fair game. Our experimental results varied from group to group and were not reliable.

In 5th grade, we are continuing to work on using the design recipe to write contracts, examples, and definitions of functions. We are learning about how variables are used in these functions and how programming is closely related to algebra. For example, students came up with a definition for a funtion called "average" that would take in two numbers (our variables) and calculate the average by adding them and dividing by two. We learned that each variable must have a unique name since it represents a different value.