WMS: Math Update

Dear EdVenture Families,

Just a note to welcome you to the new week (unfortunately a day late, but both of my children are now fever-free. YAY!).

Finishing up Circles? Not quite yet.

We are not yet "done" with the circle stuff. In fact, we have a quiz tomorrow on circles. Practice problems went home on Monday (yesterday) and they answers were on the back of them. They were to be done as homework and are due back today to be checked in. We will see circles again on the unit test.

Transitions to 3D!

We're transitioning from talking about 2D circles, parallelograms, and composite shapes to talking about 3-dimensional shapes. In 6th grade we will focus on describing the surface area and the volume of prisms (boxes made of rectangles, triangles, etc). Today we picked up a new book from the library (Filling and Wrapping) that we will be using as a resource for these learning targets:

• LT: I can relate a rectangular prism to its net.
• LT: I can calculate the surface area of rectangular and other prisms.
• LT: I can find the volume of a rectangular prism and explain why my strategy works.

Write your answer "in terms of pi?"

• So, pi is an idea, really. It's more of a concept: what is the ratio of a circles circumference to its diameter? As long as we are strictly talking about the idea, we can leave it as a Greek letter, π. So, if we want to find the circumference of a circle with a diameter of 3 m, I could simply write:
  C= π x d
  C= π x 3
  C= 3π m (now, this is tricky because our students aren't yet familiar with algebraic notation of variables and coefficients) 
• But if I replace π with an estimate of its value (either 22/7 or 3.14), then I am finding just an estimate of the circumference.
  C= π x d
  C≈  3.14 x 3
  C≈  9.42 m
• So that's all that is meant by "in terms of pi."