by Bruce Deitrick Price  "Latin Lives On" is news you can use in English, Latin and History classes: every day your students use words that have remained entirely unchanged for 2000 years... Almost 15 years ago I was riding the New York subway and chanced to read a sign about rapid transit. It struck me that this word transit must be pure Latin, that is, unchanged in a single letter in 20 centuries. Nero wrote this word, and spoke it! I was astonished. Were there other such s

By: Peter Waycik This is an interesting letter that I wrote as part of the requirements of a Reading Specialist course. If you aren't familiar with Ontario curriculum, a level three is given to a student who is meeting the expectations; a level four is given to a student who is exceeding the expectations. The letter describes the characteristics of an ideal candidate for a literacy improvement co-ordinator position. I.M. Needed Box "Read By Grade 3" Where All Children Read and W

By: Peter Waycik In the first two parts, representing, adding, and subtracting numbers using base ten blocks were explained. The use of base ten blocks gives students an effective tool that they can touch and manipulate to solve math questions. Not only are base ten blocks effective at solving math questions, they teach students important steps and skills that translate directly into paper and pencil methods of solving math questions. Students who first use base ten blocks develop a stronger

By: Peter Waycik In part one of this article, you read about representing and adding numbers using base ten blocks. Once these two skills are mastered, it is time to move onto many a child's nightmare: subtraction. Subtraction, as you may have heard, is essentially addition in reverse. It can be an arduous task on paper, but it can be quite easy with base ten blocks. Recall that there are four different base ten blocks: cubes (ones), rods (tens), flats (hundreds), and blocks (thousands). Gr

By: Peter Waycik Base ten blocks are an excellent tool for teaching children the concept of addition because they allow children to touch and manipulate something real while learning important skills that translate well into paper and pencil addition. In this article, I will describe base ten blocks and how to use them to represent and add numbers. The numbering system that children learn and the one most of us are familiar with is the base ten system. This essentially means that you can on

By: Peter Waycik Adults use rounding and estimation in their everyday lives. They approximate the temperature, the cost of items, the time, and even their age. Consider this conversation: "How much did it cost to fix your car?" "Six hundred bucks!" Without any words such as: about, approximately, around, roughly, or nearly, it can be assumed that the second person rounded the actual cost. Before they had their car fixed, they probably received an estimated cost of th

By: Peter Waycik It may not sound like a difficult task, but constructing hexagons and other polygons can be a frustrating and daunting task for children and adults. A sketch of a square is fairly simple to make as the corners are familiar right angles that most people have no trouble creating. Every other regular polygon from equilateral triangles to dodecagons and beyond can be a challenge without a highly developed ability to recognize and construct a variety of angles. Thankfully, there

By: Peter Waycik More than likely, when you learned how to add, you started on the right and moved to the left. If you were adding whole numbers, you added the ones, "carried" if necessary, and repeated for the tens, hundreds and so on. This works well on paper, and it is the most efficient paper and pencil method; however, adding in the other direction has several desirable advantages: the left to right method promotes a better understanding of place value, it can be done mentally