An elf that wishes to remain anonymous shared this with me today. There are 10 word problems that relate to the Polar Express book. Most could be solved with Model Drawing. The teacher changes out the names used in the problems with students' names. This teacher will do one a day the last two weeks before Christmas break. Ten engaging and relevant problems that would be most appropriate for 2nd - 3rd grade. Here are Problem 1 and Problem 9 as a sample:
1) When Kelly got on board the Polar Express, there were 31 seats available. The train has a total of 159 seats. How many seats were already filled?
9) As Santa and his reindeer took off into the sky, they were traveling at 431 miles per hour. The farther away they got the faster they would go. The Sky Officer measured Santa traveling at the speed of 900 miles per hour. How much faster was Santa traveling than when he first took off into the air?
Thank you so much for passing this on!
Monday, November 29, 2010
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Winter Model Drawing Problems for 2nd and 3rd grade
Read it, draw it, solve it!
1. A cup of hot chocolate had 19 mini-marshmallows. 14 of them are gone.
How many are left?
2. A group of friends has four sleds. A friend brings 2 more sleds. How many sleds do they have?
3. During November and December students collect hats to give to others. If 33 hats were collected over two months and 24 of them were collected in December, how many were collected in November?
4. A box has 36 candy canes. Another box has 12 more. How many candy canes are in this box?
5. There are 40 pears in a box of fruit. There are 8 less apples than pears in the box.
a. How many apples are in the box?
b. How many pieces of fruit are in the box?
6. There are 38 icicles hanging from a home’s roof. If the neighbor’s house
has 56 more icicles, how many icicles are hanging from its roof?
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Thanksgiving Model Drawing
Read, draw, and solve the following Thanksgiving math puzzles.
1. At my Thanksgiving meal there are 5 pumpkin pies and 2 chocolate pies.
a. How many pies are there altogether?
b. How many more pumpkin pies than chocolate pies are there?
2. Aunt Betsy brings 3 dozen deviled eggs to Thanksgiving. Great Aunt Linda brings 2 more dozen deviled eggs than Aunt Betsy.
a. How many dozen deviled eggs does Great Aunt Linda bring? How many deviled eggs is that?
b. How many dozen deviled eggs are there altogether? How many deviled eggs are there altogether?
3. At the end of the 3rd quarter of the football game, the Detroit Lions are beating the
New England Patriots 24 to 17.
a. How many total points have been scored in the game?
b. How many less points has New England scored than Detroit?
4. The 2010 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade will feature 25 large floats and 15 giant balloons. How many more large floats than giant balloons are there?
5. A farm has 730 turkeys and ducks. 426 of the birds are turkeys.
a. How many ducks are there?
b. How many fewer ducks than turkeys are there?
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Monday, November 15, 2010
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Kids Playing Math - Differentiating Instruction
Here are some pictures of my kids today playing math! We divided the kids up into 4 ability groups. Our stations were: fact practice (on paper and on computers), independent work on past skills from previous chapter, teacher directed doing practice pages in our current chapter (model drawing), and a game that was in our book. The game ended up going over really well with the kids. They had to pick cards from different tubs. The cards had a "Who" a "What" and a "Number." They had to pick one who & what, and two numbers. They created their own real life story problems on their own. I'm sorry that some of the pics are sideways....not sure why:(
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Real World Math - Movies with Math Activities
The Futures Channel presents a plethora of movies highlighting math in the real world. From kitchens to computers, your students will quickly understand that math matters because math is hands-on - everywhere.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
November Number Bonds
Dear Teachers,
I should have given you an alliteration alert. As we begin November it is a perfect month to add a daily focus on Number Bonds no matter what grade level you teach. A first grade classroom I was in recently was able to give me all the number bonds for the number 4 They told me that 3 and 1 bonded to make 4 just like 1 and 3 because of the Commutative Property of Addition. Wow! Then, theyextended their thinking to let me know that since 2 “ones” and 2 “ones” bonded to make 4 “ones”, 2 “hundreds” and 2 “hundreds” would bond to make 4 “hundreds”. Let me again say, “Wow”!
Tomorrow is November 3rd. If you have younger students, it would be wonderful to review the bonds for one, two and three. There aren’t a lot of bonds for these small numbers to work on. Just 5 minutes to visually revisit the part, part, whole concept, could pay big dividends. A number bond is simply a graphic organizer and is “stickier” for the brain than 2+1=3 which is the abstract concept. It is also a different approach because it helps to start with the “whole” and ask how many different ways can we make 3? Do we “own” all of them for life?
Thursday will be November 4th. Number Bonds for 4.( Kindergarten might want to start by focusing on recognizing a set of, for example, 3 items without having to count 1, 2, 3. Our 1st -5th Math in Focus trainer taught us that this skill is called “subitizing”. Recognize 4 items, 5 items. Play “I Spy”. I spy 3 items. I spy 4 items, etc., perhaps even try a few very small number bonds.) First grade, you have been working on mastery of the number bonds up to 10. This is a great time to reemphasize these bonds. You will be working on number bonds to 20 in Ch. 7 and addition facts in Ch. 8, so having more and more of the bonds to 10 mastered will
be worth any extra time you can find.
2nd -5th grade teachers: any extra help your students are given on mastery of these number bonds would greatly benefit them. Whether it is mental math or paper and pencil calculations, we can help our students by making these bonds with numbers, bonds for life. The 2nd grade teachers were all sent some 1st grade reteach materials to use as a supplement during warm up time or during a time when you want to differentiate to each learner’s needs, etc. I know the 3rd -5th grade teachers are working with students who do not have bonded that 5 and 3 make 8. Next Monday is the 8th.
It would be an opportune time to help students make these connections. What are all the ways to make 8? Working on 5 through 10 on Monday,
Tuesday and Wednesday, you could then proceed to 11-20 the next two weeks.
If you feel your own background knowledge on number bonds could use some help, that is understandable. This is a link from a Blog
that explains the concept well:
If you would like an interactive online number bond game that is free, check out the following:
In this game students can work on bonds to 5, bonds to 10, and even bonds to 100. You can set the game to work on the bonds for the
number you choose. You could use this game with your students on the Mimio to work on this together.
Number bonds for five minutes a day, try it! See if you can find the time during the transitions. Lining up to go to recess?
Work on the number bonds for 5. Coming in from lunch? Have the game on the overhead as students enter to set the tone for academics after lunch. Use individual white boards for students to write the number bonds and show you. I am sure you have even more ideas that would allow you to find those teachable moments to creatively sneak number bonds into November.
As always, please let me know if I can help in any way.
Respectfully,
Lorinda
My Hero, Zero!
Teachers,
I've seen some amazing seasonal themed lessons this week: predicting the number of pumpkin seeds, using pumpkin seeds for number bond manipulatives, estimating pumpkin weight, etc. If you are looking for a mathematical theme for tomorrow consider, Zero. Why Zero? Did you know that zero has a scary past? Zero is so unusual and interesting it has its own "biography", Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea, by Charles Seife. Seife states, "as natural as zero seems to us today, for ancient peoples zero was a foreign - and frightening - idea." The Greeks banned it!
Zero doesn’t' behave like other numbers. Add a number to itself and it changes. Not with zero,
0 + 0 = 0, no change. Zero is neither positive or negative. It is the only number separating these two number realms on the number line. In our decimal system zero is the only number that can act as a placeholder and not as a number. In fact look at your computer keyboard, your phone - where is zero? It isn't before the one; it's after the nine. This is a remnant of viewing zero as a placeholder only and not as a number itself. Does zero matter? Start counting. 1, 2, 3, looks like we don't need it, but wait, 8,9, 10. There it is as a placeholder. We can approach infinity with 0 as a placeholder. Place value is all about the power of zero to allow us to only use 10 digits to represent numbers as large as we need. But, sometimes zero as a number acts as if it doesn't matter at all. Add 0 to 7,
still 7, The Identity Property of Addition. But multiply 7 by 0. Ahh! Zero is suddenly very powerful as a number. Poof! Zero is all that is left, The Multiplicative Property of Zero. Zero can by scary - we wouldn't want to multiply any student by zero because we like them, right? :) When zero becomes a multiplier it destroys everything in its path - Wow! Wait, there's more, what about division? 7/0, what is that? Well, we can check division by multiplication, correct? Let's see, what if 7/0 =0, 0 times 0 would have to equal 7. But, 0 times 0 = 0 and the last time I checked 0 was not equal to 7, so we have a huge problem. Dividing any number by 0 throws our mathematical system out of whack. ERROR - is what your calculator tells you. But, divide by a number that approaches but is not quite equal to zero and we approach infinity. Crazy, isn't it?
Dress zero up in a hero costume and you have a 3 minute classic on Zero as a place holder from Schoolhouse Rocks, "Zero, my Hero, how wonderful you are": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nvc2PPTlW7k
So, zero ... hero or ...?
Happy last weekend in October,
Lorinda
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