Math Strategies for multiplication and division

My class has been working on multiplication and division for several weeks now.  At times this has been a very painful standard.  Multiplication and division are major works of the fourth grade Common Core Standards.  Although students were exposed to basic multiplication facts in the third grade most of them do not come to 4th grade with mastery of basic facts.  My grade level is working on an incentive program to help the students master the basic facts before we begin our fraction unit.  

Each week students will be provided an opportunity to pass a test on their basic facts.  We are working on facts in a specific order starting with those that are doubles.  Last week we tested them on 2's and 4's.  Those who passed with at least 90% accuracy will get their name placed below the bowl at the far left of the bulletin board.  Those who didn't pass will attempt the 2's and 4's again on Friday as we work on 3' and 6's in class.  The goal is that all students will master their facts by the end of the nine weeks.  Here is a picture of our bulletin board.  

As you can see from the picture we are working on a sundae party.  Students have the opportunity to earn various parts of an ice cream sundae each week as they master the facts. The goal is that everyone will get two scoops of ice cream and sprinkles by the end of the nine weeks.  

We have also been working on division.  Unlike when I was a 4th grade student, students are required to master multiple strategies for what once was called long division.  My favorite strategy is to teach students the partial quotient method.  This strategy actually requires more higher level thinking as students really must understand place value in order to be successful.  

I had such a great lesson with one of my students last week involving this strategy.  This student is not on grade level in math and basic operations are often difficult for the student.  I pulled this student to a small group and we worked on two digit by one digit division using the partial quotient method.  I brought out a hundreds chart to assist the student in writing down the multiples needed for the division problem. This student also is allowed to use a multiplication chart to assist with the basic facts.   Students are required to write the needed multiplies along the side of the paper before beginning the actual division. I was so happy and proud that we were able to complete several division problems with the additional supports I put in place.   Here is a copy of our completed sheet.  

Have you tried the partial quotient method in your classroom?  Leave a comment and let me know if you had success with this strategy.

Save Fred!

Today was the second day of school and I decided that a little team building was in order.  I found this activity on the Internet several years ago but this was my first attempt at.  I found this blog post over at Growing a STEM classroom and it triggered my memory about this great activity. 

Fred is a gummy worm and his boat (the clear plastic cup) has capsized.  His life preserver (a gummy lifesaver) is still on his boat and he can't swim.  The students must use paper clips only to save Fred by getting his life preserver and putting it on him.  

I allowed my students to work with a partner for about 15 minutes to see if anyone could save Fred.  Several people dropped him-oh no he drowned!  Students were allowed to try again if they let Fred drown.  

Our wonderful Math/Science coach was also a partner for one of my students.  Here they are trying to get the life preserver from in the boat.  

After about 15 minutes I allowed the students to work in groups of four to see if that would be more successful.  This did help several groups.  

Fred has been rescued!

The students really enjoyed this activity and everyone was engaged.  They recorded their steps on a sheet of paper and wrote a description of how they saved Fred or what happened when he drowned.  

Here is a link to a free power point presentation that will allow you to explain this activity to your students.  Thanks to Karre Nevarez at Teacher Pay Teachers for this great product.  

We had a great time with this activity and not only does it teach problem solving it is also a great team building activity.  

Monday Made It!

Today was the first official teacher workday.  Although I had a meeting all day long I am still so excited to link up for my first ever Monday Made It.  I actually have two projects and can't wait to share them with you.  

This first one is actually a modified version of a blog post I read about over at Mrs. D's Corner.  It was actually her Monday Made it post dated July 28th. Click on her blog post above to see the original one.   I was super excited to try it but since I don't have a color printer I needed to modify it for myself.  I recreated her template and used colored card stock for the yellow one and a piece of chevron ( my classroom theme is chevron and school colors are orange and black) scrap book paper for the orange one.  Here is how mine turned out.  I am sending the yellow one to my best friend Nancy for her classroom.  

My second project comes from a post I found at More Time 2 Teach.   I found this blog post way back in December of last year and saved it so that I could create my own during the summer.  This is a Twitter board that students can use post it notes to respond to questions or discussions.  I use lots of exit tickets so I thought this would be a great place for students to place their post it note exit ticket at the end of a lesson.  I plan on using mine in a variety of different ways and think that the students will enjoy tweeting their answers.  

A big thank you to my wonderful hubby who made the straight lines for me.  I am  not good at making straight lines!  In each square there is a picture of a bird with a number-I use a number system for everything and then can reuse the board each year since student names are not in the squares.  The little bird clip art in the middle of each square came from Teachers Pay Teachers and was created by The Class of Joy.  Click on The Class of Joy to download your free copy. 

Hope you enjoy both of these Monday Made It projects.  

Organization

I was not born an organized person.  In fact when I began working at the age of 40 I realized that I probably suffer from adult ADHD (never officially diagnosed) as I recall all the projects I would begin during a day at home with my kids yet never manage to finish any of them.  I used to make lists but couldn't find them when I was ready to start working on something.

Therefore when I began my teaching career I had to work hard at becoming organized.  I believe that I have grown tremendously in this area and since moving to a new school last year I have attempted to keep only those items that I will truly use at school.  Hence, the reason the garage now looks like a disaster area.

Imagine my happiness when I found this great post over at Mrs. D's Corner.  She created a forever FREEBIE on her Teachers Pay Teachers page to go along with her Monday Made it craft.  I used her idea to create my own version since I don't have a color printer and am currently obsessed with chevron.  So I created my own template to use that I could put on the colored cardstock that I had, I also got a piece of orange chevron scrapbook paper given to me by a friend and used it to create my own plan, copy, prep and grade clipboard.  I followed Mrs. D's directions as I created my own. This was my first attempt at Mod Podge and I think it turned it pretty darn good.

Here is my final two clipboards.  I am going to send the yellow one to my best friend Nancy.  She doesn't read the Internet too much so I hope when it arrives it is a surprise!

 I am so excited to use this product.  A big shout out to Stephanie at Mrs. D's Corner for allowing me to post about my own version.

Summer is over!

Summer Schedule

At the end of the school year I posted my summer schedule.  It worked well and I have logged lots of miles on my Fitbit this summer.  I was able to keep to my schedule for the most part, with the exception of when I went to visit my beautiful granddaughters.  

Summer is almost over and I can't believe it.  I go back to work tomorrow to set up my room.  I have two days and then mandatory teacher workdays begin.  I am moving to a new classroom this year-literally next door to the one that I was in last year, but seems to have more space.  I am excited to get in there and get my things put together.  

Weekend plans

                         

Before the weekend is over I plan to see the new movie The Giver with hubby.  I am so excited to see this movie as the book is my favorite of all times.  I hope that the movie is close to the book I am always disappointed when the movie doesn't follow the book.  

Currently                   

Linking up with  Oh Boy 4th Grade for this month's August Currently!  I have not linked up every month but I love the idea and hope to do more of them this school year.  Check out Farley's blog if you want to link up with your Currently.

Random thoughts for the end of the year!

#1

The school year is finally over and I am starting to feel human again! This was an amazing year and I loved my new school.  I taught fourth this year after several years in a third grade classroom. I wasn't sure about 4th grade but really enjoyed it!  My students were awesome and I love the atmosphere at my new school.

I took a few days off after the last workday to decompress and am now in full swing with my summer schedule.  First thing I did was ordered myself a new school bag. While I was waiting for my new bag to arrive I cleaned out the old one.  I must have a hoarding problem because I found tons of pens in my bag.  Along with a large number of post it notes.

I don't know how to stop buying pens.  I actually ask for them for a birthday present.  Here is my new bag  from Thirty One gifts.  I love that it has my initials monogrammed on it and holds my laptop.

#2

Although I am happy to have summer break I am not good at unstructured time.  I made myself a summer schedule and put it in a table so that I can check off each item as it is completed!
Here is a picture of my summer schedule:

I have little boxes on the right hand side to check off each of my items.  It really helps me keep myself busy and stay on task.

Hope everyone is enjoying their summer break.

Compare and Contrast with vocabulary words

Finally a blog post about reading!  This past week we read a portion of a story called, Riding Freedom.  My school uses Houghton Mifflin Journeys and the stories are incredible.  Each week we ask the students questions where they have to refer to the text to find or infer the answers.  The question was about vocabulary:    Based on paragraph 2 and 3 which word is similar to the word route?  Two of the choices were road and highway.  All the students chose the word road but I was curious to see if they could tell me the difference between the two words.  So we created a Venn diagram to compare and contrast the two words, compare and contrast was our skill for the week.  I would love to use this strategy with vocabulary words, I will need to create a list of words that I could use for this activity.  I was amazed at what they were able to come up with to compare the two words.

Here is our completed Venn diagram.  Let me know what you think.

Modeling Mixed Numbers

We have been working diligently on our fraction unit despite all the recent snow days we have experienced!  One recent lesson was adding two fractions with the result an improper fraction.  We needed to change our improper fractions into a mixed number.  My students really struggled with this lesson and I needed to find a way to help them visualize how the two fractions would form a mixed number.

After some thought I decided to create a worksheet with pictures that were rectangular arrays.  My colleague  suggested that the students color each portion of the fraction with a different color to help them visualize how the mixed number is made.

Here is a picture of the original sheet I created.  At the time it was quicker to hand write the sheet than to use the computer and make it look good.

Students were much more successful with the assignment once they could visualize how the mixed number was created by the two different colors on their worksheet.  I was very happy to see how well they did on the assignment.  The addition of color helped them to cement the concept of the mixed numbers.

Hope everyone is enjoying their Sunday afternoon.

Fraction Review

I saw this great post on the blog http://www.teachingwithtaskcards.com/2014/02/using-task-cards-in-interactive.html and decided that this would be a great way to use the worksheet that was to be independent practice for one of our fraction lessons.

I used the worksheet and retyped each question or problem into a table so that students would have eight small problems to glue into their math journal.  I hoped that the eight little problems would look less daunting to my students than a full worksheet page.  I guided students as to how to place and glue the "task cards" into their notebook and then explained how they would record their work. This is what they looked like after they completed each "task card".

Students worked with their partner to complete each task card.  Once again I heard some great math talk.  The problems on the left hand side of the notebook were comparing and ordering fractions.  The tasks on the right hand side were word problems.  I quickly realized that many students did not understand how to do one of the problems so we took a break and worked on that problem as a whole class.

This was a great way to use a worksheet in a new and more engaging way.  Thanks again to Mary from http://www.teachingwithtaskcards.com for the great idea!

Currently

I have finally figured out how to post the Currently status that everyone else appears to already know how to do.  I am linking up with Farley to join in on the fun.

Listening:  This is our second round of snow in eastern North Carolina.  We had four days off two weeks ago.  Went to school for a week and then a Monday and now we are on day three of this round of snow days.  We are supposed to have off for six days at Easter for our spring break and I am getting worried.  I think that we will most likely make up the days on Saturdays.  (Not too happy about that-but better than loosing our spring break).  This is our first big snow storm in our new house and I am loving it!

Loving:  Hubby works for the school district as an HVAC (heating and air conditioning) technician so he is also home.  We have spent time just hanging out, doing laundry, cooking and cleaning. Plus lots of Hallmark Channel movies!  If we have off tomorrow we will be together all day for Valentine's Day as well.  I already bought his card and a box of candy so that is probably all we will do to celebrate due to the weather.  

Thinking:  I have done some school work but at some point you just need to veg out!  Does writing my blog post count as school work?

Wanting:  I want to know if there is school tomorrow.  I love taking afternoon naps but can't do that if I have to work the next day. With no kids at home we can do this whenever we like!  I like long naps and then I can't get to sleep at night.  Hopefully we will know soon.  

Needing:  We finally have a treadmill in our fitness room and I have been using it each day.  I have also started "running" on it.  I am not too confident with this yet.  

2 truths and a fib:  

Truth-I met my husband when I was 14.  He was a volunteer in a nursing home that my mother worked at and she volunteered me to help the nursing patients go on a trip to the local mall.  I thought he was the cutest guy I had ever seen.  We just celebrated 31 years of marriage!

Truth-I want to apply for the math instructional coach position available in my building next year so I need to learn the standards for math K-5!

Fib-I don't drink coffee or any caffeine.  I haven't had caffeine for about 3 years now.  

Be sure to join the party and link up with Farley from Oh' Boy Fourth Grade!

Equivalent Fraction and a great review strategy

Happy snow day!  Believe it or not this is our fifth snow day this school year.  Here in eastern North Carolina we rarely get snow days just an occasional hurricane day every couple of years.

Since we have had so many snow days we are really behind in our fraction unit so I decided to review equivalent fractions with a great review strategy that I found at my friend Mandy's blog at http://the4thgradejourney.blogspot.com/.  

I used a previously created worksheet to review equivalent fractions.  It is designed in a tic tac toe board and I chose this particular worksheet because it begins with pictorial representations and ends with abstract examples where students have to apply the math skills taught to identify equivalent fractions.  As you can see in the picture they did have fraction bars if they needed that concrete manipulative to help them solve the problems.  Students worked on the assignment independently and as they worked I passed out red and green algebra tiles for the review part of the lesson.  

Once students completed the task we reviewed each problem together on the Elmo.  As we discussed the answer to each problem they placed a green tile on the problem if they got it correct and a red tile on the problem if they got it incorrect.  Once we reviewed the whole sheet they were required to write the fraction for the number of problems they got correct at the top of the paper.  I went around the room and checked each students fraction to make sure that they wrote it correctly. If they did I gave them a piece of candy!

The students really enjoyed the activity and the self-check and immediate feedback was a hit!

Now if we ever get back to school we can continue on our fraction journey.

Equivalent Fractions

We started our fraction unit a week late due to a rare four days off for snow.  We don't get much snow in Eastern North Carolina so just 2-3 inches caused students to have off for four days!

We began the week by discussing whether or not 1/4 and 2/8 were the same.  We used paper folding to determine if they were the same number.  During our next lesson we used a Meaningful Math Task created by our district curriculum specialist.  The task was:

My students sit with a partner throughout the day, partners are grouped according to abilities so that students can learn from one another and get support as needed.   The lesson began by displaying the Math Task on the SmartBoard and students were given fraction bars to assist them in visualizing how to determine which person had the best plan for sharing the brownies.  The math talk was very interesting and diverse.  Just from listening to the students talk with their partners it was clear who had a grasp of the concept and who would need additional support.   Several students struggled with the fact that denominators were not the same or that there were more pieces in the brownies that were cut in sixths and twelfths.  
I heard one of my students clearly tell his partner that the fractions were all the same because the fraction bars all lined up so therefore they had to be the same or equivalent.  Here are pictures of how the students worked out the problem with their partners.

Students spent about 10 minutes working with their partner to determine if the fractions were equivalent.  We then discussed how many brownies each person would get for each of the three plans listed in the task.  This discussion allowed us to generate a list of equivalent fractions and students recorded these in their math journals.  

This was a great way to introduce students to the concept of equivalent fractions.  The use of the fraction bars gave students the opportunity to visualize what the pieces of brownies would look like. Allowing students to begin with a concrete representation before moving to a pictorial and eventually abstract representation is the best way to engage students in math concepts that can be very difficult to comprehend.  

We ended the week by playing a great game called Take Away game with smartie candies.  The students enjoyed the game.  

Hope you enjoy this activity with your students.