Converting percents and decimals is easy as PIE… especially around Thanksgiving! But seriously, practice makes perfect. For me as a young student, this was just something that eventually clicked one day; the more practice, the better. Here’s a page of practice with equivalent percents and decimals with a Thanksgiving theme.
Click here to download the page: Thanksgiving Pie Number Matching – decimal percent 2
Here’s a simple idea that one reader submitted. Cut out a bunch of paper fall leaves (or any seasonal shape, like snowflakes for winter, hearts for Valentine’s Day, etc.) and laminate them. Then attach a magnet to the back.
Then put an array up on your white board. Ask your students what equation is depicted. There will be more than one way to write the equation.
Then discuss the answers as a class. For younger grades, the answer could be “4+4+4 = 12″ or +3+3+3+3=12”, but for upper grades the answer could also include “4×3=12” or “3×4=12”.
This would make a great warm up for math lessons. Have any great ideas for building number sense? Send them to me at squareheadteachers at gmail dot com. 🙂
Still working on matching numerals with word form numbers? Check out this simple page for kindergarten or first grade. Students write the numerals in the pie with the matching word form number. Enjoy!
Click here to download: Thanksgiving Pie Number Matching – younger grades
I was TOTALLY inspired by this picture:
Yes, it’s an adorable paper Thanksgiving craft. But it could be SO MUCH MORE! Imagine doing this with your 5th or 6th graders. You first tell them to make a turkey, using any shapes.
Then after they’re done putting the shapes together (and BEFORE they glue on the turkey’s body), they have to figure out all the math characteristics of their project. Including:
Anyway, I thought this would be a cool way to merge math and art. Know of any other great Thanksgiving crafts or activities for kids? Let me know!
I recently learned about a cool free resource for teaching! It’s called Khan Academy. It provides tons of free educational content-based videos, with topics ranging from math and science to humanities and economics. With a log in, students (or anyone) can complete learn by watching videos and then complete tasks to earn badges. Teachers can track the data for their students and use the materials in lesson plans. You may also want to refer parents to this site if they’re looking for supplemental materials for helping their child. What’s not to love!?! I wish I had learned about this when I started teaching!
There are many ways to organize subject journal. Here’s one way to separate a spiral notebook into sections, or a single notebook into two different subjects.
Here’s a sample of how you can format your page: anchor chart tab for math journal. You can type whatever you want on the tab. Print and cut into strips. Glue anchor chart/show my work tab in middle of spiral notebook math journal. When you are making an anchor chart with the class, have each student copy what you are doing into their journal. Or when you pass out math definitions, examples, charts, or whatever that you want students to glue in their journal for future reference, have them start writing and gluing at the beginning of the book. When the student is just showing work or writing different ways to write a number or story problems, etc., have them go to tab and then start that sort of work there. That way, your student has the more pertinent information in the front of the journal and it will be easier for students to use their journals as a reference.
Here are some printable math flash cards that I made using the Microsoft Word 2013 templates. (Can you tell I’m a big fan of the new Office suite!?)
Click below to view the free printable math flash cards:
Addition Flash Cards- back side
Addition Flash Cards- Front side
Division flash cards – back side
Division flash cards – front side
Multiplication Flash Cards- Back side
Multiplication Flash Cards- Front side
Subtraction flash cards – Back side
Subtraction flash cards – Front side
I was recently working with a student to help them remember shape words (quadrilateral, pentagon, hexagon, etc). When we got to “octagon,” we somehow came up with this drawing and it seemed to really click with him. So I snapped a (rather lame) picture of our drawing in hopes that this idea might also help another student out there somewhere.
How do you help your students remember these shape names?
Squarehead Teachers 