Math examples
During my PS3 Practicum, I used many different teaching styles to let kids learn mathematics in a multitude of ways. I made it my goal to make math relevant and fun, and so I based my professional inquiry project around the application of Math games in a Grade 5 classroom. Below is a link to view this PD Project.
MULTIPLES The 100 chart was completed over a few days both as a class and individually. This chart was used as a reference for students to reflect on for the rest of their unit on multiples, including prime and composite numbers. Students started at 2 (leaving it blank), and worked their way up the 100 chart making a mark every time they counted up by that number. When they were done with the 2's they would turn to the 3's and so on. Each time they hit a square that way already marked up, they had to find a new way to mark it up. By the end of the project, all the non-shaded squares exemplified prime numbers, and squares with many markings meant that they had that many multiples! |
beginner Division
I introduced the idea of division by using many visual/ manipulative examples. This first picture below shows a word problem I had given on the Smartboard. There was 18 tickets left for the fair that night, and it took 3 tickets for each person to ride the Ferris wheel, so how many people can still ride the Ferris wheel tonight before they are out of tickets? I had students come up to the board and drag 3 tickets to each person until we ran out of tickets, and then we counted how many people were holding tickets. The kids loved being able to come up and give tickets to people!
Another strategy that I used to teach division was the division by "halving" strategy. I made the template shown below so that students could physically manipulate macaroni noodles (something they would be less tempted to eat!) to try halving the piles again and again with each question we tried.
And finally, my last example shown here was a bit further in the unit once we had learned about 'remainders'. Students had a dice and card game that they could play as an anchor activity when they were done their worksheets, or when we had extra time. The point of the game was to do long division while finding remainders, but doing it through a friendly and fun competitive game!