Subtraction Puzzles & Story Structure

Hello, division 4 families!

Today in math we got playful in reviewing multi-digit subtraction and mental math skills. Students shared and discussed their solutions to various challenges (see below). We will have a subtraction practice quiz tomorrow and do a subtraction unit quiz on Thursday.

In Language Arts, I told students about how my three-year-old son loves to make up and tell very simplistic stories—and then he giggles. For example, he recently said, “Once upon a time there was a knock at the door. It was a sausage! The end!”

The class discussed how my son’s sausage story could grow to become more interesting with more sophisticated story structure. Specifically, the story would benefit from more information about setting, characters, a sequence of events, a problem, a solution, and an ending.

Then I invited students to get into groups to make up and tell their own stories that built upon my son’s sausage story. There were wonderfully whimsical stories and lots of laughs! We will continue to build our oral storytelling skills throughout the year with free form exercises such as these.

Next, I read aloud “Little Beaver and The Echo” and we discussed the story’s message about the power of friendship. Then, we mapped the story with the story map framework shown on the worksheet below. I then invited students to use the same framework to map out their own original story to tell. *A fun homework challenge to practice storytelling would be for students to retell the story of “Little Beaver and The Echo” or to share their own made up stories.

In the afternoon, students further refined their “animal paragraph” rough copies, had a writing/editing meeting with me one-to-one, and then wrote good copies.