Various Bits of Info

Safety Patrol:
Your child should have brought home a schedule for safety patrol. But in case you did not receive one or need another copy, here is a link to download a copy for yourself.

School Planner / Calendar:
Today, your child received a planner / calendar. The planner should remain in your child's backpack so they can bring it back and forth from school. Each week we will add important dates including the due dates for various assignments. These same dates will be included in the calendar posted on our blog.

Scholastic Book Order:
Online Ordering Information
Due Date: 9/16/11
Web address: scholastic.com/bookclubs

Class Activation Code: GPY4P
I am sending out Scholastic Book orders. You will be able to order books online using the web address and class activation code OR you can return the book order slips Remember, any book orders you make online we earn a coupon for a free book. Thanks!

Inquiry into Dice:
It has been a busy and intense couple of weeks. As you may have heard, we started off the year with an inquiry into dice. You may be asking (or thinking) what could we possibly learn from working with dice. We begin each day with explorations, and in that time, students play a variety of dice games. These games include Farkle, Doodle Dice, LCR, Yahtzee, GeoDice, and several other games. Each game involves a certain knowledge of probability, strategy, adding and subtracting large numbers, and a little luck. Based on these games, students have decided to make their own dice games. This has involved understanding the probability of rolling certain combinations of dice, creating rules which make sense, and articulating those directions on paper in a clear and concise manner - creating a dice game isn't as easy as it may sound.

We spent some time researching information on dice such as the dots on the side of dice are known as "pips." More important, they discovered their very brief research into dice involved science, history, mathematics, and even meteorology.

We dove pretty hard into collecting data using dice. We wanted to investigate if different surfaces influence the roll of the dice. We understood when you roll two dice, there are 36 combinations of rolls you can roll with 7 having the most combinations (6) and 6 & 8 have the next most combinations (5). We wanted to know if we rolled on different surfaces (i.e., carpet, tables, concrete) would you get similar results? I have included the results here in case you are interested. By the way, rolling the dice on the table resulted in different results. We are not sure why but students believe the hard surface of the table caused the dice to bounce much more thereby affecting the outcome of our roles.

We are continuing to investigate probability by looking at dice outcomes using 1 - 4 dice. We are taking these outcomes and converting them into fractions, decimals, and percentages. For instance, there is a 6 in 36 chance of rolling a 7 (there are 6 combinations of 7 using two dice). Writing it as a fraction would be 6/36; .167 as a decimal; 16.7% chance of rolling a 7.

As we continue to inquire, I will continue to share what we are learning. THANKS!

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