Where Will You Land?

Materials:

            Dominoes

1.     Play this game in groups of four to six.   Take double six dominoes (higher numbers for older students).

2.     Place the dominoes randomly in a rectangular shape.

Using Movement to Help Students With Counts

Body Counts:

1.   Children stand in an area of the room where they have their own personal space.  When moving arms and legs they don't hit another student.

Using the 200 Chart For Division

Comparing and ordering numbers is an important skill for students at any grade level.  But there is more to comparing and ordering numbers than comparing the individual digits in each of the placeholders.  When we teach children to look a the first number, furthest to the left, and then if they are the same, look at the second number, we are teaching children a rote procedure to compare and order numbers.

The goal of this math lesson is for students, using dice,  to create four-digit numbers which become larger and larger.   This can be adjusted easily for older students (add more dice) to younger students (use fewer dice).

Lesson can be downloaded below.

Drop It, is a game to support the building block of compensation.  At true sign of number sense is when you understand how numbers work together when adding and subtracting. 

The attached game - Drop It/Compensation gives more details on the building block and how to play the game. 

Please ask any questions or provide feedback to this activity.

Concept: Part/Whole Relationships

Definition: The ability to reason with numbers and to work with numbers flexibly, to chose the most appropriate representation of a number for a given circumstance.  Example: The number 35 can be represented in many ways using base ten blocks:

            3 tens, 5 ones

This week I am working with a group of fourth graders on capacity.  As I began preparing I thought to myself, how much exposure have they had with these amounts (cups, pints, quarts, gallons, etc..)?  I also wondered, how do I reach all types of learners (visual, auditory, kinesthetic)?  My first thought was I need to know what they know.  In the lesson plan that is attached I have included a pre/post test which will be done quickly on sticky notes that they will hand into me.  I'm using two different colors so I'll be able to recognize the pre and the post test quickly.   Below

As I work more and more with students I have come to the conclusion that the problem is NOT that they don't know their number facts, like we "teachers" often reply.  Not knowing their basic facts I believe is the symptom to a much larger problem.  Kids DON'T HAVE NUMBER SENSE.  If kids had number sense they would know their basic facts because they would understand and have strategies for finding out facts.  For example:  A student might have memorized 4 x 3 = 12 but when asked so what is 4 x 6 they often claim, "I don't know, I haven't memorized that one