Estimating and Measuring in Inches

 

Over the next four weeks I plan to share four measurement freebies I use with my fourth graders.  Frequent readers know that the district adopted curriculum I teach from doesn't have nearly enough measurement activities.  Students learn by doing.

 

This one-page freebie could be used as a recording sheet for a math station, a small group activity or even as homework.  Students estimate the length of an object in inches and then measure to see how close their prediction was.

To download Measuring in Inches from my Google Drive, please click here.

Happy Friday!

 

 

Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library by Chris Grabenstein

I've read several books for the upper elementary age group that have puzzles interwoven through the story:  Gollywhopper Games by Jody Feldman and the Winston Breen books by Eric Berlin.  My students enjoy them.

Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library is in the same category.  Luigi Lemoncello remodels and reopens the town library and invites twelve kids to a sleepover party at the library.  So begins a contest to find the way out of the library.  

Here is a tool called Elements and Events for readers to create a summary of the book.

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Math Spies: Reclaiming Chaos Compound -- Math Problem Solving

Math Spies is my math problem-solving website where I have posted every Wednesday morning this school year.  Reclaiming Chaos Compound is a series of seven problems where students need to record all of the factor pairs of a number. 

I use problems like these to help my students make sense of problems and communicate completely their answers.  I tell them that if I handed their paper to another teacher who wasn't in the room, that teacher should be able to understand how they solved the problem.

Here are the links to the seven problems:

Reclaiming Chaos Compound Introduction

Reclaiming Chaos Compound #1

Reclaiming Chaos Compound #2

Reclaiming Chaos Compound #3

Reclaiming Chaos Compound #4

Reclaiming Chaos Compound #5

Reclaiming Chaos Compound #6

Reclaiming Chaos Compound #7

Update: I recently expanded this unit so students solve the problems and analyze others' mistakes.  

Math Spies Problem Solving with Factor Pairs is available for purchase here in my Teachers Pay Teachers store.

This product is also available in my Teacher's Notebook store.

Quote of the Week -- May 31, 2015

 

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.

Benjamin Franklin

Have a good week,

Reset Button Writing Prompt

 

If this year came with a reset button, what would you change?

I know many districts are out for the summer, but we still have two and a half weeks left.  Here is a writing prompt with printable stationery you could use at the end of the school year or the end of the calendar year.

I'm also curious what you would change as a teacher.  I know I am always thinking through what I want to do better next time.

The Candymakers by Wendy Mass

Four children are chosen to compete in a candy making contest.  Logan is the candymaker's son and hoping to succeed him.  Miles has had trauma in his past and is allergic to rowboats and pink.  Daisy has a sweet personality and is unusually strong.  Phillip is always writing in his secret notebook.  Each section of the book is told by a different contestant's perspective.

If you like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Gollywhopper Games, and Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library, you will like The Candymakers.



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My Students Love Word Central

This is BIGbot, one of the characters from Merriam-Webster's Word Central.  My students beg to play the word games on this site, and I let them because I know they are building vocabulary when they do.

Alpha-bot looks like a word search, but the students play an audio of a word and then move the letters around to spell the word correctly.

Robo-Bee is really multiple choice where students find synonyms, antonyms, and correct word usage.

Big-bot eats words that are synonyms or antonyms.

Jumble Kids is the online version of the word puzzles published in the newspaper.

I usually have a menu of choices for students to work on independent computer practice.  If I leave off Word Central, someone always asks for it.