Solve It! Friday- Task #19

Here's how Solve It! Friday works:
1. Each Friday morning (at 12:00 AM Central Time), I will post one problem-solving task. Note: In some cases, I may post more than one version of the task to reach a wider variety of grades. 
2. Before the next Friday, use the task with your students. 
3. Have students solve the problems individually or with a group. 
4. Individual students or student groups create posters using numbers, pictures, and words to illustrate the solutions. Note: The blank backs of old book covers make great poster paper! 
5. Either via a math talk session or a gallery walk, be sure to have students share their responses with other students. 

I would love to see your students' responses and showcase them on social media. Please post your students' responses to Twitter using the hashtag #RMTSolveIt(week number). For privacy, please be sure that students' names and other identifying information is located on the back of the poster. Be sure to check out other classes' solutions using the same hashtag to filter the Twitter results. 

I look forward to seeing your students' work! Thanks for sharing! 

Solution: The real beauty of this task is in the process. Please emphasize that with your students. It may take some time to solve this problem. Validate their efforts and ask questions to move them in a different direction if needed. For your convenience, I have provided the solution below:

#RMTSolveItWeek18: Albert won the race. The problem specifically asks who won the race, but I will provide all of the finishing times for reference. Brooklyn finished the race in 22 seconds. Dana finished the race in 29 seconds. Cade finished the race in 33 seconds. Albert finished the race in 20 seconds. 

Thursday Tool School: Calculator Challenges- Target Number

Today's calculator challenge involves adding or subtracting by powers of 10 to adjust a number entered into a calculator. The challenge requires students to demonstrate an understanding of how to represent place value in numbers. Using the calculator, students can determine how to make the adjustment, check the answer, and try again as necessary. The challenge is displayed below. 

Through the challenge, students will solidify the concept of place value changes-- that having too many in a place corresponds to adjusting the number by the actual value, i.e. 100, 1000, or 10. 

Sound Off! How do you use calculators in the classroom?

Transformation Tuesday: Menus- 20-50-80 Menu

Today's math menu is called a 20-50-80 menu (as termed in the book Differentiating Instruction with Menus) because the tasks are assigned a 20-point, 50-point, or 80-point value. A sample 20-50-80 menu is shown in the image below. 

This image illustrates the actual 20-50-80 menu.

This image illustrates the product guidelines and requirements.

How to Use It

For this menu, students choose two activities to complete from the list totaling 100 points. The menu includes two 20-point tasks, four 50-point tasks, and two 80-point tasks. Because of its structure, students must choose one 20-point task and one 80-point task or two 50-point tasks. 

Advantages

This menu seems must appropriate for a short period of time. Because the choices are focused on just one unit of study, students may be able to complete it during one school week if they are given dedicated time periods to complete it. 

In addition, because of its structure, students are forced to complete one 20-point task and one 80-point task or two 50-point tasks. This provides you with the opportunity to navigate which activities students complete. For example, in the menu above, all of the 20-point activities are coordinate plane tasks; however, the 80-point activities are graphing tasks. You'll also notice that there is one required 50-point activity. This ensures that students complete at least one coordinate plane and one graphing task.  

Disadvantages

This menu is not as complex as the others and may be limited in the differentiation options and tasks available to students. Because of its structure, unlike the other menus, students will complete, at most, one higher-level thinking activity. Additionally, this menu does not offer a free-choice option. 

To Create this Menu

Using the format described above, create a bulleted list with two 20-point tasks, four 50-point tasks, and two 80-point tasks. 

Sound Off! What type of menus do you use in the classroom?

Solve It! Friday- Task #18

Here's how Solve It! Friday works:
1. Each Friday morning (at 12:00 AM Central Time), I will post one problem-solving task. Note: In some cases, I may post more than one version of the task to reach a wider variety of grades. 
2. Before the next Friday, use the task with your students. 
3. Have students solve the problems individually or with a group. 
4. Individual students or student groups create posters using numbers, pictures, and words to illustrate the solutions. Note: The blank backs of old book covers make great poster paper! 
5. Either via a math talk session or a gallery walk, be sure to have students share their responses with other students. 

I would love to see your students' responses and showcase them on social media. Please post your students' responses to Twitter using the hashtag #RMTSolveIt(week number). For privacy, please be sure that students' names and other identifying information is located on the back of the poster. Be sure to check out other classes' solutions using the same hashtag to filter the Twitter results. 

I look forward to seeing your students' work! Thanks for sharing! 

Solution: The real beauty of this task is in the process. Please emphasize that with your students. It may take some time to solve this problem. Validate their efforts and ask questions to move them in a different direction if needed. For your convenience, I have provided the solution below:

#RMTSolveItWeek18: Katrina paid with a quarter, two dimes, and two pennies.

Thursday Tool School: Calculator Challenges- The Power of the Order

Today's calculator challenge involves using four 4s to create expressions that simplify to a value of 0 - 9. The challenge requires students to use their order of operation skills to determine which operations to use and in what order to complete the task. Using the calculator, students can check their expressions for accuracy or use more sophisticated calculators to input the expression as is and obtain the simplified value. The challenge is displayed below. 

The picture below shows an interactive display that I created in my classroom for my students. As they completed the “May the Fours Be With You” activity, I asked them to check their expressions with me. 

Then, I asked the students to add their expressions to the posters displayed around the room. (The posters in the photo are a polished example of the students’ responses that I reworked in order to share this photo with you. However, these are the expressions they created.) 

This became an excellent activity– one that totally had the students engaged! They all wanted to create an expression for numbers that did not yet have an expression written on the poster. I left the posters up for a few weeks so that the students could continue to add to them. 

The activity also made a great fast finisher challenge. As an added bonus, the students enjoyed checking the other students’ responses to be sure that they did in fact equal the number at the top of the poster. This provided a rich opportunity to review the order of operations and how to simplify expressions. 

Note: This challenge also appeared in my "Order of Operations Math Detective Pack" at my Teachers Pay Teachers store. Pick-up a free copy here. 

Sound Off! How do you use calculators in the classroom?

Teachers Pay Teachers Site-wide Sale!

It's a great time to grab those products that you've been wanting to get! 

Check out my top three most wish-listed packs below. 

Click the product name below to check it out in my store!

Operation Situations: Visual Math Word Problem Strategy Posters

Problem Solving on the Farm: Problem Solving Strategy Posters

Math Journal Rubric & Scoring Guide

And, check-out my newest products: 

Click the product name below to see it in my store!

Tools for Organizing Math Stations

TEKSas STAAR Masters- Grade 5: Numerical Representations and Relationships

Transformation Tuesday: Math Menus- List Menu

Today's math menu is called a list menu (as termed in the book Differentiating Instruction with Menus) because the tasks are presented as a list and students select the tasks they would like to complete. A sample list menu is shown in the image below. 

How to Use It

For this menu, students choose which activities to complete from the list of eligible tasks with the expectation that they obtain a pre-determined number of points. Like the menus shared previously, the list menu also has a free choice option where students present an idea and agree on a point value upon approval. 

Advantages

This menu seems must appropriate for a short period of time. Because the list is focused on just one skill or concept, students may be able to complete it during a school week if they were given dedicated time periods to complete it. 

Additionally, because the tasks for the list menu seem to be more practice oriented, it is much easier to compile. In fact, it would be a great final assignment for a specific unit, such as comparing fractions. In the menu above, you'll notice several tasks designed to review and practice using the comparison strategies included in the lesson. (For more teaching ideas related to using a variety of strategies to compare fractions, click here to check out my Comparing Fractions series at my Teachers Pay Teachers store.)

Disadvantages

This menu is not as complex as the others and may be limited in the differentiation options and tasks available to students. In addition, if the menu represents more than one skill, students may be able to complete the menu without completing tasks for all of the represented skills.  

Freebie Alert! Download a copy of this list menu by clicking on the image below. 

To Use: Insert the image into a PowerPoint slide and add a textbox for each menu task. 

Sound Off! What type of menus do you use in the classroom?

Math Matters Monday

Math Matters Monday is my new bi-weekly series to highlight some of the products I offer at my Teachers Pay Teachers Store in order to provide you with standards-based products that support the effective teaching and learning of mathematics. The best news-- each product that is featured will be discounted in my store until midnight (CST) on Wednesday of the featured week. 

This week I am featuring my newest product-- TEKSas STAAR Masters: Numerical Representations and Relationships for Grade 5 (Reporting Category 1).

Click the product cover to see it in my store!

TEKas STAAR Masters is designed to support your students’ mastery of the new STAAR eligible Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) through interactive notebook activities, cooperative learning, and assessment tools. The included learning materials can be used for review and/or intervention. In accordance with the new state assessment standards, the mathematical process standards are embedded throughout the learning materials to enhance the effectiveness of the tools. The learning activities may be used to support student learning of specific content in a whole class, small group, or intervention setting.

The skills in this pack are based on the TEKS for Reporting Category 1: Numerical Representations and Relationships. Each skill includes an interactive notebook activity with a communication through writing task, cooperative learning activity, and five-question formative assessment.

The TEKS included in this pack are listed below: 

* 5.2 A- Represent the value of the digit in decimals through the thousandths using expanded notation and numerals (Supporting Standard)

* 5.2 B- Compare and order two decimals to thousandths and represent comparisons using the symbols >, <, or = (Readiness Standard)

* 5.2 C- Round decimals to tenths or hundredths (Supporting Standard)

* 5.4 A- Identify prime and composite numbers (Supporting Standard)

* 5.4 E- Describe the meaning of parentheses and brackets in a numeric expression (Supporting Standard)

* 5.4 F- Simplify numerical expressions that do not involve exponents, including up to two levels of grouping (Readiness Standard)

Through Wednesday, you can grab your pack for $10! After Wednesday at midnight CST, the product will be $12.50. Read more about the product and pick-up your copy here. 

Need a little more convincing?? Pick-up a free sample of this pack here. It's an example of a complete lesson, including an interactive notebook activity, "Sum it Up" writing task, cooperative learning activity, and five-question formative assessment. 

Grab your sample today!

Click the product cover to see it in my store!

One Good Thing

This week, I began participating in the 2016 MTBoS Blogging Initiative-- a weekly blogging challenge. The first challenge is to write a post about "One Good Thing" that occurred in your day or week.  My post today is about some news I received recently.

Last school year, I served in a grant-funded role where I mentored first and second year teachers. Over the course of the school year, I had the opportunity to work with ten teachers from a variety of elementary grade levels. One of the first-year teachers with whom I worked taught in an upper elementary grade level that was completely unfamiliar to her as she had worked previously in a pre-kindergarten classroom. During our first interactions, she shared her biggest concern with me-- teaching math. 

This was immediately saddening for me. After all, I am The Routty Math Teacher! But, teaching the math lesson each day was HER biggest challenge and caused HER a ton of grief. I can remember going into her classroom during her math lesson to support her and she would look at me with the biggest "Help Me" look, begging for me to intervene. Over the course of the year, we worked together to look ahead at the upcoming units, plan activities, embed problem solving, and integrate stations. I even organized all of the math manipulatives that had been left to fend for themselves in a very disorganized bookshelf. Even after all of that, she still said that teaching math wasn't for her. As the year came to a close, she requested to be moved to a lower, "easier" grade level where the math was easier to understand. The principal granted her wish. 

When the school year began again, she reminded me of her dislike of mathematics and desire to team teach so that she could eliminate her worries altogether. Well, team teaching wasn't really an option so she was forced to teach math again. Then something happened. Two weeks after the new school year began, I moved into a secondary math instructional coaching position, a promotion of sorts for me. That was it. I was gone and she was left to teach math all by herself. But then, something remarkable happened. 

Two months later, she and I met up for Happy Hour and she had BIG news. She said, "I know that you won't believe this, but my favorite subject to teach now is math." She was right, I didn't believe her. However, when she began to talk to me about the great things that she was doing and I could see the big grin on her face, I started to believe that all of my hard work had paid off. Then, she said it-- the magic words. She said, "I've even started doing Number Talks." That was it, she had me at "Number Talks." I was so proud! Another teacher with whom I had worked was also at the table and confirmed the news-- she was doing them too. 

I couldn't contain my excitement. Just when I thought that everything that I had done with that teacher had been for nothing, she surprised me. Even better news-- she recently presented a professional development mini-session about using number talks in the classroom to her colleagues. How's that for icing on the cake! I feel like such a proud momma! One down, millions to go!

Solve It! Friday- Task #17

Here's how Solve It! Friday works:
1. Each Friday morning (at 12:00 AM Central Time), I will post one problem-solving task. Note: In some cases, I may post more than one version of the task to reach a wider variety of grades. 
2. Before the next Friday, use the task with your students. 
3. Have students solve the problems individually or with a group. 
4. Individual students or student groups create posters using numbers, pictures, and words to illustrate the solutions. Note: The blank backs of old book covers make great poster paper! 
5. Either via a math talk session or a gallery walk, be sure to have students share their responses with other students. 

I would love to see your students' responses and showcase them on social media. Please post your students' responses to Twitter using the hashtag #RMTSolveIt(week number). For privacy, please be sure that students' names and other identifying information is located on the back of the poster. Be sure to check out other classes' solutions using the same hashtag to filter the Twitter results. 

I look forward to seeing your students' work! Thanks for sharing! 

Solution: The real beauty of this task is in the process. Please emphasize that with your students. It may take some time to solve this problem. Validate their efforts and ask questions to move them in a different direction if needed. For your convenience, I have provided the solution below:

#RMTSolveItWeek17: This problem specifically asks about the penguin population. However, I will provide the polar bear population for reference. There are 18 penguins and 8 polar bears. 

Thursday Tool School: Calculator Challenges- Calculator Corrections

Today's calculator challenge involves correcting an incorrect number that is entered into a calculator. The challenge requires students to demonstrate an understanding of how to represent place value in numbers. Using the calculator, students can determine how to fix the mistake, check the answer, and make adjustments as necessary. The challenge is displayed below. 

Through the challenge, students will solidify the concept of place value changes-- that having one too many in a place corresponds to adjusting the number by the actual value, i.e. 100, 1000, or 10. 

Note: Part of this challenge is included in "Using Calculators to Explore Mathematical Thinking" by Kathleen Lynch-Davis which appeared in Teaching Children Mathematics (March 16, 2015). 

Sound Off! How do you use calculators in the classroom?

What I'm Reading Wednesday: Making Number Talks Matter- Final Thoughts

Over the past few months, I have been reading Making Number Talks Matter by Cathy Humphries and Ruth Parker. What an amazing journey! I enjoyed the book immensely and am now an even bigger proponent of using number talks in the classroom than was before-- in all classrooms. Read about my journey here. 

The first three chapters of the book set the stage for understanding the purpose of and process for using number talks in the classroom. The next four chapters discuss how to conduct number talks involving all four operations across all grade levels. The final chapters present ways number talks can spark additional investigations and how to manage challenges that emerge. 

As I reflect on the conclusion of the book, my final thoughts include three big ideas that I will take away with me. They are listed in the illustration below. I encourage you to read this book and implement number talks in your own classroom. I promise it is a worthwhile venture! 

Sound Off! What is your experience with number talks? 

Transformation Tuesday: Math Menus- Game Show Menu

Last week, I began a new series of blog posts about using math menus to re-energize your math classroom. I also introduced a math menu called a choice board that requires students to choice a path of learning tasks to complete. 

Today's math menu is called a game show menu (as termed in the book Differentiating Instruction with Menus) because students choose tasks based on their "category" and earn points based on the difficulty or challenge level of the task. A sample game show menu is shown in the images below. 

This image illustrates the actual game show menu.

This image illustrates the product guidelines and requirements. 

How to Use It

For this menu, students complete one activity from each column and accumulate a target number of points. Note: I adapted this menu to support my students who worked hard during the grading cycle to complete the menu but struggled to complete the target number of points on time. To support them, I lowered the target number and made the decision that the students could obtain the points with any combination of tasks. Meeting the modified goal gave the students a smaller reward but allowed more students to "complete" the menu. 

Advantages

I love the variety here! This menu has plenty of room to include a variety of projects and tasks that you may not normally have the opportunity to complete during your regular math block. 

Like last week's menu, you'll also notice the free choices at the bottom. This allows students additional choice and opportunities to demonstrate their own creativity in the selection of tasks that are of interest to them. Note: I typically determine the point value with the student's input based on the difficulty of the task. 

While I will use this as a disadvantage below, this menu is great because it takes the students a long time to complete. You'll notice that just completing the first row (easiest tasks) does not give students enough points to complete the menu, so they have to venture into the more lengthy tasks. 

Disadvantages

Compared to last week's menu, this menu requires more time to create. In addition, the menu requires a wider variety of tasks so that you can offer tasks to match the various point values and challenge levels. 

Also, because the goal is to obtain at least one task in each column, this menu takes students more time to complete. When I gave my students roughly nine weeks to complete this menu, some students needed more time when the nine-week grading cycle came to an end. For this reason, I added the additional opportunity to complete the menu with less accumulated points and any combination of tasks. 

Student Work Samples

This is a graphing board game. 

These are order of operations cubes.

This is a picture of class data, a magic square, and a word search.

This is a free choice task-- a comic strip about finding the rule for an input/ output table.

Freebie Alert! Download a copy of this game show menu by clicking on the image below. 

To Use: Insert the image into a PowerPoint slide and add a textbox for each menu task. 

Sound Off! What type of menus do you use in the classroom?

Solve It! Friday- Task #16

Here's how Solve It! Friday works:
1. Each Friday morning (at 12:00 AM Central Time), I will post one problem-solving task. Note: In some cases, I may post more than one version of the task to reach a wider variety of grades. 
2. Before the next Friday, use the task with your students. 
3. Have students solve the problems individually or with a group. 
4. Individual students or student groups create posters using numbers, pictures, and words to illustrate the solutions. Note: The blank backs of old book covers make great poster paper! 
5. Either via a math talk session or a gallery walk, be sure to have students share their responses with other students. 

I would love to see your students' responses and showcase them on social media. Please post your students' responses to Twitter using the hashtag #RMTSolveIt(week number). For privacy, please be sure that students' names and other identifying information is located on the back of the poster. Be sure to check out other classes' solutions using the same hashtag to filter the Twitter results. 

I look forward to seeing your students' work! Thanks for sharing! 

Solution: The real beauty of this task is in the process. Please emphasize that with your students. It may take some time to solve this problem. Validate their efforts and ask questions to move them in a different direction if needed. For your convenience, I have provided the solution below:

#RMTSolveItWeek16: The boys made a total of 60 snowballs. Wednesday- 6 snowballs made; Tuesday- 9 snowballs made; Monday- 12 snowballs made; Sunday- 15 snowballs made; Saturday- 18 snowballs made.