Who can build the tallest tower?

This week, we have been studying about height focusing on the terms taller and shorter. Today I gave my students a challenge: try to build the tallest tower with only the amount of shapes you can fit in your hands. The students worked in partners to complete this challenge!

Our tallest tower ended up being 11 inches! Our shortest was 4 inches. We figured out that our tallest tower was 7 inches taller than our shortest!

Measurement: Length

This week, we started our unit on measurement! We have been focusing on length.

I started the unit by giving every child one Popsicle stick. I asked them to walk around the room and find one thing that was shorter and one that was longer than their Popsicle stick and record in their math journal.

This activity clearly revealed to me how much background knowledge my students already had on the topic of comparing lengths. 

Knowing this, I decided to focus more on the importance of always measuring with the same tool rather than comparing lengths. 

The next day I wrote the following on the board: 

I asked, "which name is a longer name?" The class was pretty divided between the two but most said it wasn't a fair comparison because I wrote Sam's name big and Emary Kate's name small. I then went back and re-wrote their names the same size. We talked about how that relates to measuring items. We have to always make sure we measure with the same item. After that, each child wrote their name on grid paper and lined them up by length.

To close our lesson, we went through and measured our longest and shortest names with a Popsicle stick and then again with a unifix cube. As a class, we compared the results. I reiterated the importance of always measuring with the same item!

Today, we did a little more comparing lengths focusing on measuring with the same item.  I placed a piece of tape on the floor and asked one child to measure it with popsicle sticks. 

After that, I asked a few more students to measure the same piece of tape with unifix cubes.  This took SO much longer and we were able to discuss the reasons why this was not an accurate comparison. 

Lastly, I posed the following problem for the kids: "My flower is 2 popsicle sticks long.  My stick is 12 unifix cubes long.  Which one is longer?" 

After measuring, we learned that only 2 popsicle sticks is longer than 12 unifix cubes!

Check back in as we discuss height and weight!

Math Addition Workstations

I just wanted to share an update of our current math workstations.

Addition Tic Tac Toe

Domino Parking Lot

Multiple Representations IPad App

Adding with pictures IPad App

Build It

Building their own 100's chart to count to 100

Adding with a number line on the Activ Board

Dunk It Dominoes 

This is a video of two students using the life-sized number line to add.  

What makes a number even or odd?

We started the week by learning all about even and odd numbers. To understand the "why" behind this concept we worked to line numbers in pairs. If every number has a partner, then it is even. If there is an "odd one out" then it is an odd number. We started by practicing making pairs with our fingers and then moved to using skittles!

As I called out a number, the students would place that number of skittles in pairs to determine whether it was even or odd.

"3 is odd!"

"6 is even!"

"10 is even!"

This was so neat because I think it really made sense for the kids and was a concrete way that explained why numbers were either even or odd.