New Math WEbsites

Math Zapper is a nice flash based website to review fractions, decimals and percents. Very clear with step by step instructions.



Time for Time resource for teaching kids about time.

Geometry and Fractions

Our units are flying by! In our Daily Math time I'm introducing geometry terms including parts of a circle, types of polygons, types of lines, and angles. The kids are taking it all in while we continue on working with fractions.

We've learned parts of a whole, parts of a set, comparing fractions and ordering fractions. I showed the students how to think of fractions in relationship to 0, 1/2, or a whole. We learned the smaller the denominator the larger the part or group. We successfully reduced fractions and added and subtracted fractions with like denominators! All this in just three days as Alice Jr. at the middle school and our trip to the Alliance Theater prevented us from meeting on Wednesday and Thursday.

Next week more on Geometry including finding area and perimeter!

fractions!

The class is loving learning about fractions! A great first few days were spent on parts of a whole, parts of a group, equivalent fractions and reducing fractions. This is a breeze! I'll start introducing geometry terms and concepts over the next two weeks.

A lot of you have asked for ideas to support your children's math skills. I'll try to post more links over the next few weeks.

The Armor Games website has a number of great games including:

Light Bot - move the robot and turn on the lights using functions.

Liquid Measure - move the capacity takes and fill them with a given about - don't waste a drop! Great for spacial reasoning.

Demolition City - place dynamite to blow up a building below a certain level. Great for logic, spacial reasoning and cause and effect. I like this one.

Enjoy!

Measurement

Over the next few weeks we are switching gears again and will focus on customary and metric measurement. We will continue to review operations and graphing skills as we proceed. I'm excited to apply our multiplication skills with converting units of measurement. I think the class will welcome the shift.

The Epic Division Test

This week in math has certainly been a challenge! Long division is more of a marathon than a sprint, and we finally crossed the finish line! I'm pleased with your students' hard work and their determination - after much encouragement - to thoroughly check their work. With the holiday Monday and a field trip Thursday we didn't have a very fluid week to finish our test. Come Friday we were ready to have some fun! A new DynaMath plus a data collection activity and a 100th Day of School Challenge was a great way to end the week.

Next week we will begin data collection and analysis. Through a number of different examples including rolling dice and flipping coins, we will examine probability. We will create surveys and present our data through different visual charts including pictograms, bar graphs and tally charts.

I think we are all ready for something different, but division won't be left behind! We will review through mini-quizzes each week.

Happy New Year!

My math resolution is to keep this paper better updated. This month is division and statistics. We will continue to practice division daily while working on data collection, data reading, finding the mean, median, mode and range. Should be a good change for 2010.

Multiplication and Division

It seems like the whole month of November has been all about multiplication!

Students are making good work of the different steps involved with multiplying 2 and 3 digit numbers by 2 digit numbers.

The month of December will be all about division. Students will first learn to estimate answers, how to look for a close answer and then all the steps in the algorithm of long division. I'll teach the mnemonic of Does Mcdonnalds Serve Cheese Burgers Regularly to remind them to:

Divide
Multiply
Subtract
Compare
Bring down
Remainder.

We will continue problem solving with charts, pictographs, bar graphs. We will learn to find the mean, mode, and range of a set of data. We will comparasion shop and find unit prices. To help with this we could really use some cans and jars (spreads, jelly, beans, etc) that still have a label with the number of ounces on them. If you remember the price, you can write that in sharpie or I'll make it up! These will be used December 16-18.

Taking multiplication to the next level

Over the next few weeks we will begin multiplying larger number (3 and 4 digit numbers) by one and two digit numbers. Our problem solving will include looking for patterns, multi step problems and making graphs. Students will explore functions and create function charts, graph functions and write expressions to represent their function charts. Welcome to Algebra!

I'm still working on making math groups work for the kids so they can work at their own level and have success.