M is for Mathematical Monday: Fractions

Look at me... 2 posts in 2 days!  I really wrote this yesterday, but otherwise I'd never get anything posted!!!

I'm linking up with Jess over at I {Heart} Recess for her M is for Mathematical Monday linky party.

For the past month or so, my students have been investing fractions in our 4th unit of 4th grade math.  I saw several awesome posts from Meg over at The Teacher Studio about how she's taught fractions to her own kiddos.  So I decided to buy her fraction concept sorts for my own students and they did such a wonderful job with them! I had my students work with their table groups (groups of 5) to cut and sort the pictures by exactly 1/2 and not 1/2.  Then they had to explain why the not 1/2 weren't 1/2.  We then did a carousal walk to check each other's work. It's a lot of pictures, but I was too proud not to share!

The green flags are in an incorrect sort.  I think it was the only one in the whole class!

I love seeing the mathematical explanations!  This was a struggle for some, but overall they did really well!

Thanks to Meg for creating such a wonderful resource that requires that deeper thinking the Core is known for!

Tried It Tuesday: Sage on the Stage

Oh Happy Tuesday!  The snow and ice around here is finally starting to melt and we are supposed to get up into the 50's by the end of the week!  HALLELUJAH!!!!

I'm linking up today with my BBB Holly over at Fourth Grade Flipper for Tried It Tuesday!

For my "Tried It" I let my student be the teachers otherwise known as Sage on the Stage.  Let me explain.  About two weeks ago now, I taught my students how to measure angles using a protractor.  First I gave them some angles and a protractor and didn't give them any instructions on how to use the protractor.  This was their first experience with this math tool and boy was it interesting!  They tried all sorts of things, most of which were WRONG!  After about 4 minutes, they were frustrated and I couldn't take it any more either!  I showed them the proper way to measure an angle and we did a few examples in our math notebooks with one of Jennifer's foldables.  Then I gave them a simple measuring angles worksheet to complete independently.  Easy enough, right???? SO WRONG!

I graded their papers and it was BAD! I had 3 students who got a 100% and I decided that I would let them be the teachers.  I had a review mini lesson with the whole class about acute, obtuse, and right angles.  The biggest problem on their papers were that they put the wrong measurement, not that they couldn't measure correctly.  For instance, putting 40* when the the angle was obtuse and actually measured 140*.  So we had the discussion about does it make sense that an obtuse angle would only measure 40*? Of course not, and all of my students understood this!

So I made my three students with perfect papers the "teachers" and split the rest of my class up into three groups.  The teachers helped everyone in their group identify their mistakes and correct their papers.  I made everyone stay with their group even when they finished correcting their paper and told them to help the other members until everyone was finished.  I loved listening the conversations in the group.  My students have learned such great questioning techniques, asking "If that's an acute angle, would it make sense for it to be 140*?"  Melt my heart!!!!

After the time to correct, I gave them a second practice sheet.  For the most part, they did a lot better.  I still have a few that I need to work with, but I was pleased with the progress!

Have you ever let your students be the teacher? How did it go?  Make sure to check out all of the other Tried It's for the week!

Math is Real Life: Crockpot Group

It's the first Wednesday of the month, which means it's time to link up with all of my awesome math blogging buddies for Math is Real Life!

A monthly REAL WORLD math blog link-up hosted by

 4mulaFun, Fourth Grade Studio, Teaching to Inspire in 5th, AND MissMathDork,

I love this linky, because I'm constantly trying to stress to my students that math isn't just for school, but that it is all around them!

Ok, so first of all, I have to tell you about two different students who came up with real world math problems in class just with things that were around us.  I was passing out file folders to make our government lapbooks and there were 50 folders in the box and four different colors of folders.  One student says, "Mrs. Webber we can figure out how many of each color there are by doing 50 divided by 4!" Wow!  Then later I was passing out notebook paper for a math problem and I had opened a brand new package of paper with 150 sheets in it.  A different student says, "Mrs. Webber, if you gave each student one piece of paper, then you would have enough for 6 classes if there were 25 students in each class!"  OMG!!!!!  They really are getting it!  Made this math teacher super proud!

On to the actual post at hand... Crockpot group!

My partner teacher has quite the love for her crockpot.  She has been known to make crockpot meals for breakfast, and dinner in the same day!  She decided that she wanted to put a group together that would make crockpot freezer meals (everything you would need for a crockpot meal frozen in a gallon size bag).  This would require getting 10 people together, each person makes one recipe 10 times to share with everyone in the group.  I said, "Sign me up!"  It took us a while to get all 10 people together including some last minute adds and drops, but we exchanged on Saturday and this is the haul I came home with!

We met at a Starbucks (too small for our little exchange) so we went to a parking lot next to the Starbucks and traded bags in the freezing cold drizzling morning! It was a little crazy and VERY cold!

For my contribution to the group, I decided to make Chicken Fajitas from {this} recipe. Seemed easy enough and wouldn't require any cooking before hand on my part.  Now for the math.

First I I had to write out my recipe.

·       2 peppers 

·       1 onion

·       1 1/2 pound chicken breast

·       1/2 cup chicken broth

·       taco seasoning packet

·       1 tsp. chili powder

·       1/2 tsp. paprika

·       1 tsp. salt

Then I had to multiply each ingredient by 10!

For most of it, not too hard.  1/2 tsp of paprika = 5 total tsp of paprika.  I actually didn't really even need to worry about that too much because I had to measure out 1/2 tsp for each bag as I put them all together.  Let me say that I have never used that much paprika at one time!

There were a couple of tricky math conversions for me.  1/2 cup of chicken broth = how much of a can???  I had no idea, so I went to Google to verify my conversions that 4 oz = 1/2 cup.  Well, each can had 14.5 oz in it, so I could do almost 4 freezer bags with one can.  Which meant I would need a total of 3 cans, which were sitting in my pantry!

Next was the taco seasoning.  We don't buy the individual packets, because they really are a rip off.  We buy the giant 20 ounce seasoning from Sam's Club.  I didn't know how much seasoning was in an individual packet though.  Again, I went to Google.  I packet has 1 ounce, which is actually 2 tbls!  Ok, easy enough!

I did all of this math before I went to store.  Here are the groceries before we got started! Sorry for the blurry picture!

I had to write the directions for the fajitas 10 times as well.  Each bag has the directions for my meal

The hubby did a great job of cutting the veggies while I added the seasoning to each bag.

Here are 10 of my bags before they went into the freezer.

I kept one bag and got 9 different bags in return.  I'm so exicted to have 10 different meals ready to put the crockpot over the next month!

One of the most fun parts of this experience was sitting at Starbucks sharing our stories of converting measurements, cost cutting measures, and time it took to put the bags together.  I was getting a kick out of the frustrations and loving hearing all the math talk!

Don't forget to go check out all of the other Math is Real Life posts to see where math is in the real world!

Mathematical Monday: Literacy in Math

I've been wanting to join Jess over at I {heart} Recess for her Mathematical Monday linky party for a while now, but I haven't ever been able been able to get a post together!  But today I actually have something to share!

My educational and teaching background is ESL.  When I had a class of 21 ELLs I did everything possible to incorporate reading and writing into each and every lesson I taught. I have really slacked off on that part of teaching since moving schools.  I really see the value in showing my students that reading and writing is in every subject.
As part of our geometry unit, we got out the geoboards, which the students LOVE, and I told them we would be writing about math today.  Any time I use the geoboards,  I always make sure to give a couple of minutes to play with the boards and rubber bands so that during our lesson, they maintain their focus.
For this lesson, first I made a shape on my geoboard, but I didn't show my students.  I wrote a description on my Smartboard of my shape using geometric vocabulary.

After I wrote my description, I had my students create my shape on their geoboards.  They had a really hard time with this.  They were getting frustrated and some just gave up and made a square.  I had a few students who nailed it and they were so excited!

Next, I had my students create a polygon on their geoboards without showing everyone.  I told them it was important that they keep their shape a secret. After they created their shape, I gave them a sheet of geodot paper with writing lines where they had to write a description of their shape using correct geometry terms.

After they had some time to write, I had them switch tables and draw the shape described for them.  I gave about 5 minutes for this part and then I had them turn over the geoboard to see how close they were!  They got so excited when they got it right or were at least close.  Here are some of their excited faces!

The easier the shape the more likely it was to be drawn correctly.  I was so proud of how hard my kids worked on this activity!

Tried It Tuesday: Foldable Assessments

I'm super excited to share what something new I tried in my classroom last week!  In math, we've been working on geometry concepts by watching Learn Zillion and Jennifer Findley's Foldables.  After all my students had finished their geometric terms foldable, the angles sort, the types of triangles, parallel and perpendicular lines foldables, I told my kids we would be having a quiz the next day! 

I knew I didn't want this quiz to be a "normal" quiz.  I wanted them to have to apply what they had learned from the past week.  I used this foldable from Jennifer's fourth grade Geometry foldables set to assess their understanding of parallel and perpendicular lines in 2-D figures.

 They had to cut out 9 different shapes and sort them based on the presence of parallel and perpendicular lines. I told them that they were allowed to use any of their notes but not their table mates.  

Cutting out all the shapes.

Gluing the shapes where they think they belong.

This was a very informative quiz for me a teacher.  Overall, the grades were not that great.  Even some of my higher students got poor grades.  We spent quite a bit of time going over the correct answers the next day.  I did take these grades, but I do plan on giving them some other opportunities to show me that they can identify parallel and perpendicular line in 2-D shapes.  

What are some unusual ways you assess your student?

I'm linking up with Holly over at Fourth Grade Flipper  today for Tried It Tuesday!  

Make sure you go head over there to see what everyone tried this week!