Today's Math Check-in

We had a Math "check-in" today which is a little bit like a quiz. Check-ins help me assess where we are and where I need to focus my instruction. The boys and girls wrote it independently, with minimal assistance from me. It wasn't scored, although I did read them. 
  
I reviewed the problem (pictured below) with students prior to having them start. 

The purpose of this activity is for me to see where we're at in terms of our subtraction and problem solving skills. We have been talking a lot about flipping the question to check our work and I wanted to see if students could apply this skill to a word problem. I was really pleased with how the boys and girls highlighted the key information in the question. 

After everyone was finished, we took the problem up together. Students were able to see where their own strengths and needs lie. We're going to focus more on subtraction with regrouping next week and try our hand at word problems later, after we've had more practice with the operation itself. I want to first make sure everyone has this regrouping thing down pat before we shake it up again with word problems.  

I may send home extra practice pages for students to complete as homework next week. I think we just need that extra work with respect to regrouping and quickly calculating single-digit subtraction. 

For your own reference: a "Level 4" response to the question is: Mrs. Linse has 105 more points than Mrs. Mihalides. I know this because I flipped the question and added 178 and 105 and it equals 283.

I posted this video earlier in the week. Please watch it with your child, as it goes through the problem solving process step-by-step.