Estimating and Measuring in Centimeters

I'm in the process of sharing measurement activities I have developed for my classroom.  To see all the posts for teaching measurement for upper elementary, click the tag for measurement at the bottom of the post.

Last week I shared Measuring in Inches.  This week's one-page freebie could be used to teach estimation and careful measuring.  You could also run the two pages back to back and have students compare results between metric and customary measurement.

 To download Measuring in Centimeters, click here.

Happy Friday!

You can order 12 meter sticks from Amazon, buy clicking the affiliate link below.

Brixton Brothers Series by Mac Barnett

The Brixton Brothers aren't really brothers.  In fact only one of them, Steve Brixton, is obsessed with being a detective.  He constantly reads the Bailey Brother books, studying their techniques to use in his own practice.  By copying his fictional heroes, he becomes a famous detective while still in the seventh grade.

I love mysteries and found these entertaining.




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Find me at Goodreads.

What Are Your Summer Plans?

This post isn't entirely school related.  My house and yard are so out of control right now, I struggled to find a photo I was willing to post publicly.  I gave up.  The overflowing dishwasher above is symbolic.

This is my summer plan...get more organized.

So far all I've managed to do is organize my pins on Pinterest.  I humbly share them with you now. 

Follow Mary Bauer's board Household Projects on Pinterest.

I think the next step is to pick one or two realistic projects and start there.  

What's on your summer to do list?

Quote of the Week -- June 7, 2015

Outside noisy, inside empty.  Chinese Proverb

 

Have a good week,

 

 

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.