Factor Connect Four
This week students continued their exploration of visual representation of numbers through a fun game from youcubed.org. Students used their knowledge of factors and strategy to play Factor Connect Four. They drew a card from the deck and identified what larger number(s) their number could belong to. For example, when a student draws 4, it is a factor of 8, 12, 16, 20, etc. Students were asked to be skeptics of others’ answers, which required giving specific reasoning and evidence for their decisions.
Some discussion questions that we asked students were:
How did you decide which numbers a picture might represent?
How did you then choose which of those numbers you would mark?
What made the game hard?
How would you mod the game to make it more challenging or interesting? Which numbers were easiest to capture and which were the hardest?
Some students noticed that 1 was the easiest factor to use on the game board, as it could be used with any number. Others shared that 2 was the easiest because it was a factor of all the even numbers. One student shared that 1 was important as it was the only number you could use to capture a prime number. Many students shared they would change the possibilities of the deck, as several numbers were repeated. Overall this game helped students continue to identify patterns, recognize factors of numbers, and explain their thinking with reason and evidence.
Clubhouse Week at a Glance:
Communications Literacy
Completed Story Pirate Stories
Finished reading short biographies and discussed elements of informative writing.
Book Groups - focus on fluency, intonation, and identifying new words and word meanings
Completed Blackout Stories - Peer-reviewed focusing on capitalization, spelling, punctuation, word choice, paragraph structure, and typing mechanics
Played Quandary - focus on problem solving, taxonomizing, and discussing differences between facts and opinions to help us in our informative writing
Patterns and Modeling
Played Factor Connect Four to practice identifying factors, prime numbers and number patters
Revisited YouCubed graphic representing number visualizations and strategized ways to identify number patterns in preparation for factor taxonomy
Math games: Racko, Factor Connect Four, Clumsy Thief, Math Pit, and Multiplication War
Theme
Continued research and development of cereal product
Developed marketing strategies and established brand identity for cereal companies
Began designing a cereal box for the product
Misc
Wrote a letter to their pen pals in Sierra Leone describing their happy place
Digital literacy lesson #3: The Power of our Words on the Internet
Paige’s Group’s Week at a Glance
Communication Literacy
Book groups
fluency and intonation
punctuation and capitalization
Typing Club
Practicing paragraph structure by turning our persuasive outlines into a fluid paragraph
Identifying why we read biographies and what we can learn from them
Collaborative imaginative writing for Story Pirates
Patterns & Modeling
Making predictions when collecting data
Review of mode, range, minimum, and maximum in a data set
Defining the median in a data set and exploring how to find averages
Identifying patterns in number representations and determining how they help us find factors and prime numbers
Theme Time
Forming groups for cereal companies and defining roles within each group (ex. CEO, graphic designer, etc.)
Begin research and development of cereal product
Misc
Beginning a new read aloud book, The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles
Visit from parent John Tompkins to explore the central nervous system and neurotransmission
Book groups
fluency and intonation
punctuation and capitalization
Typing Club
Practicing paragraph structure by turning our persuasive outlines into a fluid paragraph
Identifying why we read biographies and what we can learn from them
Collaborative imaginative writing for Story Pirates
