Five for Friday~Measurement Fun

 

Hi, Friends! Did we make it? Is it REALLY Friday? I think this may have been one of the longest weeks in history!  While enduring the changes that come along with securing the campus for testing, we managed to make a little noise and shake things up with some hands-on fun in math. Wanna see what we did?


I couldn’t be one bit prouder of the way my kids rock morning work. Using this time as a quick review and for problem solving has been really helpful in making sure they have a good understanding of skills we’ve learned this year. As promised, with each passing month a gradual release of support has been had in order to foster independence and thinking. We’re beginning to turn into quite the little story tellers {even, in math}!



Early this week, we reviewed what it really means to be an equal sign. We rocked it with hands on learning. No paper on the first day, just our Mimio and unifix cubes and LOTS of chit chatting. Students were split into pairs to work to solve one problem at a time after we had a quick discussion at the carpet. The left and right hands were drawn to help guide students. After presenting a set of numbers on each side of the equals sign, students had to solve in order to prove if the statement was true or false.

The student sitting closest to the green left handprint on the desk tags was responsible for building the number on the left side of the equals sign. The student sitting closest to the red right handprint was responsible for building the number on the right side of the equals sign. After each partner built their tower, they placed them standing next to each other in order to answer ‘true’ or ‘false’. The tower served as their proof! It was a little confusing at first, but after a couple of tries it all clicked and we were off and running. 5 + 5 = 10 was obvious, but they got progressively harder to include problems with 3 addends on one side of the equals sign.



After we got the hang of it, we moved to recording our work by taking a 12 x 18 sheet of construction paper and folding it into fourths. We stapled it twice along the left side and trimmed the top folded edge to form a blank book. Students then worked in pairs to prove statements as either true or false that were listed on the board as I walked around to check for understanding. Build. Illustrate. True or False? That was the gist.

Our standards are changing in math. This is one of the newer concepts that we’re going to be responsible for. It’s been fun doing something new, going a little deeper. Now that we’re working with numbers more, building them, taking them apart, talking about them, justifying our positions and having to provide proof, students are gaining a greater understanding of math symbols and what they truly represent. LOVE!



By Wednesday, we were ready to introduce our skill for the last six weeks of school:  measurement. I try to work in listening and following directions as much as possible. I’m kind of sneaky because it usually takes on the look of directed drawings. To get our little booklets ready for our introduction to measurement, students were each given a booklet that I cut quickly from a folded 12X18 size sheet of construction paper with 4 sheets of printer paper in between. 3 booklets were cut from each stapled set of pages.  Students listened and followed directions to decorate their booklet to look like a pencil and then….



….pulled one {real} pencil from their desk to use both as a measurement tool and writing instrument. They were to walk around the room to find two items that were shorter than their pencil and two items that were longer than their pencil.  We practiced double-checking to make sure our items were lined up correctly, illustrated them and wrote a sentence to describe the length of the item in comparison to the pencil.  Walk around the room, you say? Find items to measure, you say? Yep! They had fun with that!

Here’s a little freebie, if you’d like to do a little pencil measuring of your own! Next week….we’ll be using Jack and the Beanstalk to really get crackin’ at non-standard measurement! Stop by next week to see what we’ll be up to!