Math Anchor Charts and Ideas

I love great math ideas.

Here's an easy center to make, it just requires sharpies, a plastic bag, some patience and old water bottle lids (yay upcycling!)

This center can easily be differentiated for any grade level depending on the operations that are used.  For fifth grade, I would use parentheses and all operations signs.  This would be great for making algebraic expressions, practicing multiplication and division, finding unknown values and using decimals to show place value.

Students could easily bring in lids to help you collect the supplies.

With the Common Core, fifth graders have to review geometric shapes and classify them into a hierarchy.  This is a great example of an anchor chart that could help students:

Before we go into 3D shapes, I would review 2D shapes on the geoboard.  Most classes have a set of the old plastic boards and rubber bands, but there is a great free app on the iPad that allows students to virtually manipulate geoboards.  As a bonus, you can expand the board from the traditional 5x5 to a much larger 10x10 board, allowing for more room to make shapes.  This app could be used as a formative assessment where you call out a shape (ex, right scalene triangle) and students make one to show you.  

Plus, there are different colored rubber band options with the app :)

This is a great freebie I found on another teacher's blog:

I've used it in my classroom and it's a great center to review number sense.

You can also use cups to review place value:

For a review of area and perimeter, you can use graph paper, markers and dice for this easy game of war.

Students roll the dice, then create the corresponding array.  Students must strategically place their array on the grid and try to stump their partner.  I like that this is a nice model of how repeated addition and multiplication are the same.

This can easily be differentiated for lower grades by having students add the dice rather than multiply them. 

This is another great (priced) TpT center that my students enjoy:

Plus, it's pink and polka-dotted!  Grab yours here for a buck! 

Happy math time!