Introducing strategies and vocabulary to support subtraction

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A Magical Pot makes for Math Magic

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Today we used a fabulous book called Two Of Everything by Lily Toy Hong as our focus in our math lesson. This book retells a Chinese Folktale with great humour. The story is about Mr. Haktak who digs up an ancient brass pot and brings it home to his wife. While the Haktak's can't find any particular uses for the pot, they discover it has magical powers. The magical pot doubles everything. In the end, the Haktaks find a way to wield the magical pot powers. After enjoying this book and discussing items that we would love to have doubled, we used the concept to practice double addition facts. For example, When Mr. Haktak accidentally drops his coin purse containing 5 coins in the pot, the 5 coins are transformed into 10.  The grade one practiced their double facts up to 6+6, and then 10+10 as an added challenge. The grade two's practiced their facts up to 10+10 and then an added challenge of any number up 50 using addition with regrouping when required. 
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Black History Month

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One of our students brought in two lovely books to help us extend our learning with regards to Black History Month. The students were fascinated and quite taken aback when we discussed the importance of recognizing Black History Month.  It has opened a lot of doors for further exploration and conversation regarding our past and the importance of showing acceptance, tolerance, kindness and appreciation. Today we learned about Viola Desmond and why she has earned her place on our Canadian 10 dollar bill. We will continue to learn about other significant and impactful men and women who deserve to be honoured and recognized today and every day of the year. 
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Using old photographs to find clues about our past

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As we continue to explore the history of Calgary the students were given some wonderful old photographs. Their job was to work together as a class and decide where they feel the photographs fit in on our timeline. When asked what were some clues that helped them decide the final location on our timeline they indicate the following; "If the picture is in color it must not be from that long ago" "I can tell by looking at the cars because we know they cars came to Calgary after the horse and buggies" "I can tell by looking at the powerlines because Calgary did not have electricity a long long time ago". " I knew by looking at the people's old fashioned clothes" "I knew that the Calgary tower was built for Canada's birthday but not it's birthday that long ago". "Calgary did not always have the stampeded so that must have been after Fort Calgary was built" "When we watched the video I learned that they only...
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