Making Math Meaningful

Our math text books are older than our students.  Our standards have changed several times in the six years that I've been teaching.  To say that planning math is tedious and copy intensive would be an understatement.

This year was my first year in five years of teaching a traditional, whole group, seventy minute math block.  It's been a challenge but I've got a wonderful fellow teacher who collaborates with me on a daily basis.  To put things into perspective, it takes two of us roughly an hour and a half to plan each math lesson.  That's two of us simultaneously copying, stapling, sorting, typing, and creating the math plans (and corresponding ppt/smart notebook) to make math meaningful.  I'm not one to have a math block go like this:

1. I say what we're learning.
2. I do two problems by myself.
3. We do a problem together.
4. You do one with your neighbor.
5. Got it? Good. Work quietly for thirty minutes.

That's not fun. That's not meaningful. That's not engaging. But most importantly, that's not good teaching.

We try to make our math block as meaningful as possible.  For our last geometry unit, that meant lots of sorts, hierarchies, and creating lots of polygons with our super fancy manipulatives:

We used maps of our surrounding area to find parallel, perpendicular, and interesting lines.  We got up and made polygons with our bodies and our pipe cleaners.  We had a lot of table team activities.  They had a lot of discussions and gallery walks to critique the reasoning of others.

I just finished grading their tests.  As a class, this was the best unit they've done.

We start coordinate grids next week and we're kicking off the unit with battle ship.  They're ten. School should be fun. School should also include high standards and productive tasks that challenge their thinking, but should still be enjoyable and memorable.

Most importantly, math should be meaningful.

Plenty of Polygons

With our standardized testing right around the corner, we've been doing test prep.  Many of our students are struggling with the geometrical hierarchy of polygons, so we created some sorts and matching activities for them.

They had such a great time figuring out which polygon was being described and I loved that some of my high kids still learned new vocabulary terms (like kite).  Most students are pretty good with matching the polygon to the definition, but when it comes to the classification of quadrilaterals...they get a little stumped.

But these centers really helped them understand not only the individual polygons, but how they interact with each other within the geometrical hierarchy.

I've bundled these centers and they are now available here on TpT!

(On a completely adorable side note, several of them went off on a tangent about how this hierarchy was like the Greek mythology family trees we made in small groups.  Two groups got into it about who would be at the top of the tree: Zeus?  Jupiter? The Titans? Kronos?  They were rather reluctantly wheeled back into the math conversation.  At least they're making connections!)

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!