There are so many fun activities to be had with money!
This particular one I developed for my third grade group, as one student really wanted the practice. Money helps with skip counting, addition facts, and can even be connected with fractions! It also has so many practical purposes, and can teach good spending/tracking habits. However, the beginning with money takes memorization, which can often be tricky for students to catch on to.
The activity I created involves each student being a food vendor. Every student visits each food stand and buys a good. Then, both students involved in the transaction track their spending. I related this to my own checkbook, and continuously helped them to relate spending money to subtraction & making money to addition.
My students absolutely loved this activity! The only thing I had to constantly remind them to do is track what they've bought.
The whole activity takes about 50 minutes, which I broke into three days (as one day was spent teaching it & visiting the vendor who had the lowest math fluency).
If you are interested, I created a PDF of all the resources, including an instructions sheet. It is offered for free on TeachersPayTeachers.
Visit my store and get this activity for FREE!
I hope your students enjoy this as much as mine did!
Today I worked with my 4th grade students on symmetry! This is covered by CCSS 4.G.3.
I started by introducing it with an anchor chart I created during lunch time. I drew ideas from my mind, as well as some other charts I found online. I also included the standard on it, as I like to keep my students informed as to the connection between what we're doing and what they need to know :)
Well, they were awesome and already knew most everything there is to know about symmetry and lines of it.
I then gave them a quick page from SuperTeacherWorksheets, using symmetry sketching & alphabet symmetry. They absolutely nailed it!
We then did an activity where the students turned their names into creepy symmetric aliens >:] THEY LOVED IT!
"This is great because we're getting to have a lot of fun, while learning math!" -Isaiah
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| Eerie, huh? |
Here are the steps!
1. Fold a piece of paper in half, hotdog style.
2. With the creased side of the paper down, write name in big letters (I recommend bubble letters! The bolder the better)
3. Go to window and trace the letters on the other side of the paper
4. Open up paper and connect all the letters where they meet in the middle
5. Decorate your alien! (I wasn't super clear about keeping them symmetric, but almost every student did anyway. I spoke with the student who didn't to make sure she understood!)
6. Proudly talk about your alien and its different features!
We had a blast, and all this only took about twenty minutes. We then did some different geometry work with the additional ten minutes we had together.
Overall it was a super successful day! :)
-Miss Cole
I love having music playing in my classroom while students are working. However, it kills me to hear advertisements on Pandora or Spotify, especially when I have no idea what they'll be for!
I ended up taking matters into my own hands and created a playlist of my own!
**student tested // teacher approved** is a playlist on 8tracks that is a compilation of the clean Top 40 songs from 2014, plus a few older hits for me. My student have really enjoyed it, and I hope you do, too!
To start with, I must give credit where it's due!
I got this idea for a fraction project from Ashleigh on TpT. I had my students complete her cute little Fraction Avenue worksheet. The worksheet gives students criteria by which to color/decorate the houses using fractions i.e. 3/8 of the houses have red doors.
Let me just say that they loved it! It also tied into teaching equivalent fractions, which I greatly appreciated.
Download Fraction Avenue Worksheet by Ashleigh
At this point, my thought was "why stop there?" So.... I made a giant Fraction Avenue! I drew out all the houses, making sure they all looked similar. Since I have four students, I decided to give them each three. It didn't take too long to create, and my 3rd graders were stoked.
We spent a bit of time coloring, then they got to work writing their own fraction statements. Most did three about the houses they colored and three about the entire avenue. I also made sure that they included some equivalent fractions in their answers. :)
Just in time for the parent-teacher conferences, I present to you...
Happy math'ing, all!
Miss Cole
Hello!
My name is Lynette Cole and I am a math specialist in Somerville, MA. Basically, my job is simple: help groups of third, fourth, fifth and sixth graders catch up with where they're behind and foster a love for math! I do this by compiling all sorts of activities that connect directly to the Common Core Standards.
On this blog I'll be sharing my anchor charts, my students' projects, and giving feedback as to how lessons went. I also am doing this to inspire myself to go beyond worksheets and develop cool new activities/games.
I don't know how consistent I'll be, but I hope that something I share sparks ideas within others to create more comprehensive mathematical classrooms!
Enjoy!
-Miss Cole
