Math in Thanksgiving Diner

      Planning before a break is always tough. The kids are excited their minds are dreaming of turkey and potatoes and sleeping in. Oh wait, that's me.  Well I'm sure they are just dreaming of not coming to school for five whole days! So, using their excitement for break I created some Thanksgiving math activities.  It's always ideal to bring in the real world application of math so they understand that what we do is purposeful and they will use it! This is no different.  I am trying to incorporate more three-act math into my workshop.  You can see in previous posts that I love inquiry based teaching, so this is perfect.

     The first act is to show a picture and the kids brainstorm questions about the picture.  Since they are familiar with this their questions are naturally in the direction of math.

    Then once they are thinking of their question we will work to solve it.  Now, I am planning on them asking about how much it costs for these groceries or a Thanksgiving diner in general.  I have gathered up some ads we will look at and created a differentiated recording sheet where they can track their thinking.   This is an example of the "hardest" version.  For my other children I have changed the numbers of servings to "friendly numbers" or made alterations to the final question and required number of dishes.  I  also am providing my struggling math students with items that are already priced out to numbers that will be easy for them to work with.   (GLEs 4.OA.3, 4.OA.2 4.NBT.4)  (MP1 MP5 MP6)

     Differentiated learning is a building goal of ours and is quite easily attainable when you think about your learners and their needs.  Changing the numbers to those "friendly numbers" or changing the amount of problems that a child has to complete can change their attitude about math, especially when they struggle. Now, no it is not always so simple as in this task where my struggling students have a completely different set of materials.  If you want to learn more about creating a differentiated classroom you need to read this book by the "guru" of differentiation!

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Math & Literacy

The past few weeks I have been trying to tie in more books into my day. Math is one of the easiest places to bring in text.  I have often challenged my kids to find a book that you can't use math in...they've still never found one!  The books are short, but create a context for the kids to use when solving problems.
We are working on NBT 4.5  and NBT 4.6, these focus on multiplying and dividing.  The books I chose for various lessons were:

All three of these books lend themselves to multiplying and dividing as well as other areas of math.  

    With the first book, The Doorbell Rang, we investigated how to share cookies among different numbers of children.  This is so easy to differentiate for those that may need more of a challenge or those that need to work with simpler numbers.  Some children needed to use our beans, from Bean Thirteen math to help them split up the cookies.  These types of practice help kids to see when we would use division in our own lives.    

   If you wanted to extend the book further you could bring in a recipe for cookies and work on doubling, or halving fractional amounts.  You could work on area and perimeter as they create a table to hold all the children.  The possibilities keep going! 

    The other book we used this week was another of my favorites, Minnie's Multiplying Diner. In this book the McFay family comes to the diner and continues to order more food- doubling the amount each time.  Doubling would be great for younger kids, but we are ready to move to double digit multiplication.  So I created a menu based on the items in the story and posed questions about how much it would cost to buy combinations of certain items or 32 of everything on the menu. To make it more complex, some problems were multi-step where they calculated the total cost and then change from a given dollar amount.  

    

Lastly, yesterday we read 365 Penguins .  This book is full of math, it would be great for adding, money, measurement and many other areas.  We used it again to work on multiplication.  Using the information in the text I just constructed questions that related to multiplication and caring for penguins.  I only created one version of this activity as I was looking specifically at the strategies they are using to solve the problems.  

Building a Catapult

Looking back through past standards and the new NGSS we weren't finding where students were introduced to simple machines, we need them to really have a good grasp on what they are in order for them to complete 4-PS3-4.; Design a simple device using stored energy that will solve a problem.
So we began by examining three different types of simple machines, the lever, inclined plane, and the wheel & axle.  The challenge was for them to build a catapult, which is a type of lever, then classify their lever as a type 1, 2, or 3.
The students worked in teams and  were given a baggie of materials to study for 3 minutes, during this time they were to think of a design that would launch their marshmallow the farthest.  The materials included:
 - one jumbo marshmallow
 - three paper clips
 - a straw
 - two Popsicle sticks
 - a wad of clay
 - a length of string
 - a plastic spoon
 - masking tape

Once they examined their materials they had 25 minutes to construct their design.  It was amazing to hear their conversations and the way they decided on a design and even how to rework their design if it failed. Talk about using good engineering practices!!! Did I mention I love science...! Here are few examples of their work.

We brought back in our measurement standards by then measuring the distance of how far their marshmallows flew- converting it between feet and inches to yards.  We also then had to find the average distance they flew in each trial (we did 3).  

Upon exiting they had to fill out a reflection sheet about how their design worked, what they would change etc.  It was a great learning experience for all!

~Junior Architects~

     I really love this unit.  It encompasses so much math that we have building upon throughout the first part of the year.  The original lesson can be found on the Illuminations site through NCTM.
     We have spent the week learning about the metric system through our study of multiplying by 10s etc.  So today we moved into the standard measurement of inches and feet.  The students in this project are to design a clubhouse to certain specifications.  The original lesson has them create a 3-D model of their clubhouse, but we will not be hitting those concepts until later- so possibly we will do that part during that time.
     Each child received a sheet of graph paper with the instructions to create a design to scale of a clubhouse that is not more than 48 feet in perimeter or 150 square feet.  We created a class chart of what common symbols we might find in our designs and spent a great deal discussing and measuring objects around the room so we understood scale relationship.  For their project one square on the paper (1/2 in graph) was equal to 1 foot. This proved to be the biggest challenge as they often found they did not have enough room to walk around all the furnishings they threw inside.
    I did get some fantastic designs, like Gryfindor common room, a pet spa, some sort of Boy's Only house, all in all some really great ideas and designs!

Tomorrow we will be doing some problem solving regarding how much paint we will need to paint our clubhouse and where is the best place to buy this paint.  

See, you can bridge creativity and learning!!!