Helping Your Child with Bar Modeling in Math

Many parents have asked me about how to help their child with math homework.  The trickiest part seems to be the real-world problems, which use the bar modeling strategy to solve them.  Although it may seem tricky at first, drawing bar models really helps clarify the information in math problems by pictorially representing the math.  For example:


Seeing the picture helps you show what information you are given, what you need to find out, and develop a plan for solving. 

Have you checked out the math textbook online?  If you go to my website, you'll find a link with information on how to log into the Math In Focus online materials.  Once logged in, you can go to "My Library" to see interactivities for your child, the online textbook (in case the hard copy was left at school), and a collection of videos which focus on each chapter as well as videos designed for parents to help their children with homework.  It's awesome!  If you need help getting to it, please let me know and I will do my best to help you. 
Click this link to get started:
http://www.claytonschools.net/site/default.aspx?PageType=3&ModuleInstanceID=11762&ViewID=7b97f7ed-8e5e-4120-848f-a8b4987d588f&RenderLoc=0&FlexDataID=21053&PageID=9730
Good luck and keep us posted with how we can help.  I am always happy to provide a little crash course in bar models for parents before or after school sometime. 

Cahokia Mounds Field Trip

We were so fortunate to have a gorgeous day for our field trip to Cahokia Mounds!  We learned about the Mississippian people who lived in Cahokia thousands of years ago.  After going to the top of Monks Mound and doing some writing in their notebooks, the students searched through the Interpretive Center to find evidence that the Mississippians were a highly developed culture.  This goes against what Europeans believed when they first encountered Native Americans in the New World.  We will be exploring this further in our social studies work.  Here's a glimpse of what we experienced today: