Spontaneous Problem: Define the word furfur. Students shared their list of ideas and although it really means a case of dandruff, we adopted the special ALERT meaning of "something with a soft texture".
Boundary Breaker: Students were given the movie title Feet First and challenged to come up with a convincing plot line. With the actual one hidden in the mix we shared the responses and voted on the most likely (and most entertaining!).
Next we got to crack open our M^3 (Mentoring Mathematical Minds) text in order to begin unraveling the case of the Moli Stone. This fictitious stone was just uncovered in an archaeological dig in China. Throughout the unit, students will build on their knowledge of place value and number systems in order to decode the symbols and unravel their hidden meaning. Today we counted the change in a Maneki Neko bank and explored the different combinations we could use to total 47 cents using only dimes and pennies. Students practiced communicating their thinking through writing as they proved to a friend how they knew all the possible combinations had been found.
While our old crew plugged away at their museum placards, our new friends engaged more with our year-long theme, Exploration. We read the book, Why Explore by Susan Lendroth and students brainstormed and discussed reasons why people explore, and how there is an innate explorer in all of us. They also were able to share their own curiosities and motivations.
We also had fun using some critical thinking as we took on the computer in a class game of Mastermind.
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