Math
October began with the students preparing for the Harvest Festival. It’s been a tradition for years that the math classes contribute fresh apple juice to the festival. A part of this process is the Apple Investigation. The students chose an apple, made predictions about its circumference, weight, and possible ounces of juice and then figured the actuals. The students recorded their data on a class chart allowing them to make observations and to figure the summary statistics of our data: mean, median, mode, and range. In addition, the students enjoyed making the apple juice for the Harvest Festival in class.
Independent work began in the Key to Algebra series where students have the opportunity to discover key concepts at their individual rate. We began with exploring what we already know about algebra and how it differs from arithmetic. The students brainstormed where we might see negative numbers and then, as a group, practiced adding negative and positive numbers on individual white boards.
The students reviewed differences through story problems where they figured a solution and then shared all the various strategies they had used, highlighting the fact that there are numerous ways to solve any given problem. We then reviewed the standard algorithm for subtraction and played the game Get to Zero, first with the whole class and then with a partner.
We reviewed multiplication in much the same way. Students solved story problems and then shared their individual strategies. Some used addition, others the lattice, and some the standard algorithm. The students enjoyed playing the game Largest Product Wins in small groups where they practiced their problem solving and multiplication skills.
The Quiet Time, transitional activities, have included facts practice with Flip-Overs, Wrap-Ups, and Holey Cards (self-correcting), Weekly Challenges with problems such as, “How many ways can you make 16 cents?”, and solving tangram puzzles. Mental math activities included the logic game of Digits and Place, a whole class game where clues are given to help students figure a 3 or 4 digit number; the Logic Pattern where students use the unfolding clues to figure a number pattern; Find X, a task using the digits 0-9 where students eliminate possible solutions based on a series of clues that finally reveal the value of X; and Beanstix Algebra, a partner activity where students work together to figure all the possible combinations to create a specified number.
The students continued to practice the multiplication facts with the dynamic game of Beat the Calculator where one student is the brain, another the calculator, with the third player creating a multiplication fact that the brain tries to solve before the calculator can figure it. The 5/6 graders have observed that playing this game prior to taking their weekly facts quiz seems to improve most of their scores.