Fractions Part 2- Problem Solving and Math Talk

Click here to go to the Fractions- Part 1 post!

Once we had learned about the basics of fractions-  denominators and numerators - I wanted to give my students a chance to put their learning to the test and use it in a problem solving situation. My school has been focusing on problem based learning in Math for quite some time now and even though I still considered myself a math newbie I try to integrate this as much as possible. 

This problem was modified from a problem given to me by a colleague and I am very proud of how of turned out! Click on the picture below to see the original problem given to the students. I choose to have my students complete this problem independently, even though I usually have them work in pairs, so I could see their understanding and use this as a formative assessment piece.

Here are some examples of how my students chose to solve the problem. I left it very open-ended (no real correct answer) and you can see my feedback written in green ink. The students who also have a sticky on their sheet were told to be prepared to present their solution to the class.

I think it's important to give students an opportunity to practice before they speak in front of their peers whenever possible. 

Once the students finished the first part of the problem I gave my students this second problem to extend their thinking about fractions.

Here are some student examples.

Once again, you can see my feedback in red ink. I gave my students their work back and asked that they answer any questions I asked in green or red ink and be prepared to talk about the problem the next day in class. One by one I called the students up and displayed their work on the document camera. What I liked most about this problem is that all my students were able to solve the problem and no answer was wrong! How empowering is that?

After we had discussed the different answers and fractions used by my students to solve this problem we switched gears to comparing fractions according to the benchmarks of 0, 1/2, and 1. Since the students used such a wide variety of fractions (from 3/3 to 3/16) to "cut" their pieces this was a fantastic end to the lesson.

This was our previous lesson/anchor chart on fraction benchmarks...

And this is what we created using the pizza fractions from my student's solutions. We ranked them in order from closer to0, closer to 1/2 and closer to 1 and then discussed which pizza party we would rather be at!

All in all, I am pretty proud of how it all turned out....especially for a math newbie!

My Summer Bucket List

What an amazing idea....ohhh summer, where are you? Here in Ontario we will be in school right up until June 29th so thinking about summer vacation this early is a little bit of a dangerous past time but I like to live on the edge sometimes.





So what do I want to get done...hmmm.
1. Knitting- I bought some gorgeous hand-painted wool to knit a light cowl for myself, and just today I bought a new pattern and fair isle patterning yarn to make a sweater for my daughter.
2. Professional Reading- so much!! I have a few books on guided reading and reading responses plus one of my new teaching partners just told me about "The Power of Retelling" so that's going on the list too.
3. Running- my husband and I started training to run a 5k and I am hoping to sign up for a charity run in August
4. Cottaging- we will be at the cottage for 2 glorious weeks in July....the beach, the sun, the food!!
5. Become an aunt!! My sister is due in August and I can't wait to meet the little man.
6. Plan for next year- things are changing and I am very excited to see what the new year will bring.
Head over to link up with this great party!
Miss KindergartenA Modern TeacherA Cupcake for the Teacher

Fractions Part 1- Diagnostic Talking Picture and Anchor Charts

We have started learning about the dreaded fractions in my grade 4 math class....arrrgh! You can practically see the terror on the faces of my students. Nooooo!! Not fractions!

I don't remember being scared of fractions as a kid but I can't say that I am that excited to teach it as an adult either. I definitely didn't help that I was being evaluated during this unit....le sigh. But let's not talk about that shall we?

Except....for my evaluation I needed to show examples of how I give feedback to my students so I thought that I would try the Talking Picture strategy and the GLOW/GROW assessment again. I displayed a chart showing the objectives for our unit on fractions and decimals as well as a vocabulary list. I asked my students too use the objectives chart to draw a "talking picture" showing their knowledge of fractions (mainly) and decimals (if they could). I outlined that I wanted my students to show their knowledge using words, numbers and pictures....AND colour. Other than that anything they wanted to draw was fine with me.

For the GLOW/GROW assessment I used the amazing Jen Runde's chart and poster set. Awesome. It was a great complement to the diagnostic assessment.

The second day after completing the diagnostic task we created an anchor chart together in class.

I am pretty proud of how things are going since it is my first time teaching fractions. The majority of my class seems to be following along quite nicely and the formative assessments I have looked over show a good deal of understanding!! Yeah!!

The one thing that I did notice was that even though my students understood that the numerator indicated the parts of the fraction that were counted, eaten, shaded etc and that the denominator represented the total number of parts that the whole had been split into, they were missing the word "equal" in a lot of cases when describing the denominator. So we had a quick mini-lesson to recover this material before we moved on with our study of fractions.

I posted this picture on the document camera...without any of the green circles or X's. The students discussed with their table groups with pictures represent the fraction and why. I am was happy to hear that the students really did understand that the part of the whole had to be equal...and I made sure to specifically ask the students who had missed this vital point on their formative assessment!

I hope this is valuable and interesting for you all. I have a second post in the works involving the problem solving and math talk lesson from my class this past week. If you have any suggestions, ideas or questions please don't hesitate to comment.

An Artful Celebration

It's done! No more observations. No more evaluations. Well, at least for 5 years. It's been a long time coming, a long time preparing and a long week of what felt like jumping through hoops.

On Monday I had my pre-observation meeting where my vice-principal and I went through the 16 competencies that teachers must display. I was required to outline 2 examples from my teaching practice for each of the 16 competencies and give evidence that supports each example. This meeting took about 40 minutes. Then on Tuesday and Wednesday my vice-principal came to observe a language lesson and a math lesson. I wasn't worried about the language lesson because I feel that area is my best as I have almost exclusively taught language for my 8 years as a teacher. However, math is another story. Last year was the first year I had even taught math and then I was only working for 4 months before I went on my maternity leave. So, needless to say I was very nervous about being observed during a math lesson...and a lesson on fraction no less!!

But it's all behind me now and time to think of other things! Like art.. We have been doing all sorts of art in my Grade 4 these days and each project has been building on the previous lesson.

We started looking at value in art works and shading techniques. I took a picture of each of my students, cut it in half and then they drew the other half back in only using a pencil and shading techniques.

Around their drawing they also added in contour drawings of objects that important meaning to their lives. I am very proud and impressed at the quality of work my students created. 

They worked so hard on these drawings!

After our contour drawings of our faces and important objects we moved on and are now studying 3D drawings and perspective. We combined this with our study of shading techniques- lines, cross hatching, stippling- and created these fabulous 3D rectangle drawings with a vanishing point in the middle of the page.

My students and I are now working on 1 point perspective drawings of a city street and I can not wait to see the finished products!!

Math Monday...on Tuesday!

I get some amazing ideas from the Math Monday Blog Hop over at love2learn2day! I just linked up my Elapsed Time Amazing Race.

Check it out and remember to link up your own math lessons.

MIA

Things have gotten...well...crazy around here!
First of all, I am sorry that I have not posted for quite a number of days but hopefully when you hear what's been going on you will understand.

1. I learned last week that my teacher performance appraisal will be taking place from the 30th of April to the 2nd of June. That's right...three days! One day with a meeting with the VP, and 2 days of being observed for a math and language lesson. I've been unit planning, lesson planning, room tidying, assessment binder organizing, etc all in preparation.

2. My husband and I were invited to a friend's wedding in Mexico over next Christmas vacation. We really want to go so we have been crunching numbers and analysing budgets in order to make this decision....not to mention rounding up grandparents to babysit for a week. And, yes we are going!!!

3. We've been in talks lately about selling our house, buying a new house etc. All of a sudden it became more than just talking, we met with our real estate agent, viewed some houses and put in a offer today...what??? Crazy! Now we have to get our house ready to list and be viewed...and of course sell it!!

Needless to say I have been busy, stressed and frantic. I promise to be back very soon with some good posts....you know, when I get my sanity back.

Thanks for understanding,
Beth

Elapsed Time...a race to the finish!

We have been working on elapsed time in math class recently and I have discovered that my students are pretty good at converting between digital and analog time but are struggling with how to solve elapsed time word problems.

So last week I paired (and three-d) everybody up and we played The Amazing Race...Elapsed Time version! I posed 7 different problems around the room with a basket under each problem.

The students were given 45 minutes to race through and complete as many of the problems as possible...but!! They had to leave their work behind in the basket and they had to make sure that every member of their group understood the strategy they used to solve the problem before they moved onto the next one.

My plan was to gather all of the solutions left behind and be able to assess them for my student's current understanding of how to solve elapsed time problems. What I found was that many (too many) of the groups were doing stacked subtraction and borrowing to attempt to find elapsed time. For example:

10:25

-2:57

Obviously this won't work because time doesn't have the same place value as most of the other numbers we worked with. So I put an example problem on the board using the exact numbers I have displayed above. I showed the answer using stacked subtraction and a second solution using a number line.

I once again split of students into groups and asked them to tell me which answer was correct and why....thankfully, this time the majority seemed to see that the stacked subtraction just wasn't working. We discussed place value and what it means to borrow and why we can't borrow 60 minutes across a column of numbers in a time question. 

Each group was asked to come up with another strategy for solving this same problem and I collected their answers and created an anchor chart (which I didn't take a picture of...sorry!)

So then I sent them out to look over the answers from the previous day's amazing race. I had posted them up together with the correct answers on one side and the in correct on the other. Each student was given 2 post-it notes. The pink one was for them to share what they liked about how the group solved a problem and the yellow was for a suggestion of how the problem could be solved differently in order to find the correct answer. 

And that was that...I asked each of the students to pick 2 activities they do during the day and find the elapsed time between them using 2 different strategies in their math journals....here's hoping they didn't use stacked subtraction!!!

Glow and Grow

Jen over at Runde's Room has done it again!!! I originally posted about a self/peer/teacher formative assessment strategy that I learned at a workshop here, but today Jen took the idea and RAN away with it. Right into the land of fabulousness!!

Head over to Runde's Room to check out her anchor charts and 2 column reflection sheet. I LOVE IT ALL!! I am totally going to be "stealing" all these great ideas and using them to beef up my own student's use of the Glow and Grow strategy...I even have the perfect assessment piece! The Money Passports my students have been creating during the money stations I posted earlier today for the Bunny Hop Freebie.

What a great day it has been!

Bunny Hop Freebie

Welcome to Freebie #!

Thinking of Teaching is hopping down the bunny trail along with my fellow TBA authors!! We hope that you join us for this fun celebration.

My contribution to this shindig is a set of math stations I created for my class' unit on money. As I teach in Canada I am using Canadian money as manipulatives for my students but it would be just as easy for you to adapt these stations to the currency used where you live.

There are 11 stations and I had my students meet with me as a 12th station so I could have a one on one conversation with each of my students and assess their understanding using anecdotal observations.

Click on the picture below to pick up this freebie for yourself.

The clipart used in this freebie is from Scrappin Doodles.

The fonts are from: Kevin and Amanda and Sugar Frog Fonts.  

Once you have downloaded the math stations freebie you will need to do a little prep before using these stations in your own classroom. I went to Math-Aids.com to create the money manipulatives and coin/bill counting sheets you will need for the stations! I would have posted mine but I used Canadian money and that won't be useful to many of you! You will also need to collect grocery store flyers, toy store flyers and pizza place flyers. 

Have fun!

Click on Egg #6 to keep on bunny hopping on to the next freebie. Thanks for visiting!

Behind the Scenes Of Thinking of Teaching

TBA is celebrating our first fabulous year with a look behind the scenes of the authors and their blogs! Here's a quick peek into my life...