Can MCAS Math Prep Be Fun? Yes!

“This is a fun way to do morning work!” “Can we do the same thing again tomorrow?” Believe it or not, these were some of the comments made by the members of our class after a lesson introducing them to the style of questions found on the MCAS math test. What made the difference? A [...]

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Power Polygons: Trapezoids, Triangles, and Hexagons

Students have been actively engaged in our current math unit: Size, Shape, and Symmetry. The unit began with investigations using U.S. standard units (inches, feet, and yards) and metric units (centimeters and meters). Currently the class is studying the characteristics of quadrilaterals and other polygons using colorful transparent manipulatives which when put together, form other [...]

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Logo Paths

Our new math unit, “Size, Shape, and Symmetry,” has an interesting software program called “LogoPaths.” In LogoPaths, the user controls a turtle character through complex mazes by typing in commands such as “FD 50” (forward 50 grid spaces) or “RT 90” (Turn right 90 degrees). This is a great opportunity for students to learn their [...]

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Time For Tessellations

After successfully completing our graphing unit this week, the class was very excited when Laurie Link, our math specialist, dropped by for a lesson about something new-tesselations.  ”A tessellation is created when a shape is repeated over and over covering a plane without any gaps or overlaps, ” she told the class.  After showing the class [...]

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Our Geometric Town

A light blanket of snow covered the streets this morning, but that didn’t stop our hardy group from heading out on a geometric scavenger hunt.  After a swift train ride into town, we divided into five groups to search for examples of geometric shapes and angles, all found on buildings. Some geometric discoveries [...]

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LogoPaths

Our new math unit, “Size, Shape, and Symmetry,” has an interesting software program called “LogoPaths.”  In LogoPaths, the user controls a turtle character through complex mazes by typing in commands such as “FD 50” (forward 50 grid spaces) or “RT 90” (Turn right 90 degrees).  This is a great opportunity for students to learn their [...]

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Math Fact Fluency

Although this isn’t a favorite topic of the students in the class, it’s a necessary one.  This year it will be important for all students to master their addition, subtraction, multiplication and division facts.  Currently we are working on long division and although the students are learning several strategies to solve computation problems, it’s time [...]

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Mathematical Lanterns Light the Way

We are very fortunate to have a Math Specialist in every elementary building this year.  Today, Laurie Link, our math specialist visited our classroom to work with the class on an interesting activity: creating Chinese paper lanterns to learn the associative and distributive properties of multiplication.  After carefully cutting out the lantern from construction paper, [...]

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