Squares and Square Roots- Math Journal

This week we’re starting our math unit on squares and square roots and believe it or not, not everyone is excited about it… This can be an extremely difficult concept for some students to grasp because there’s a tendency to want to just multiply the exponent. I remember some of my students struggling with these last year so I thought I’d nip it in the bud with a fun math journal activity.

After a brief overview of what squares and square roots are and how to find them, I passed out this worksheet I made for them to create squares and see visually how they can be expressed. The idea is that all squares have equal sides, right? That means if you are using a grid, you can make different-sized squares pretty easily without needing a ruler, and learn your squares accidently in the process. This really seemed to help my kiddos grasp the concepts we talked about in class.

 

I have attached a copy of the worksheet here if you want to use it in your class as a task board or supplemental activity. Hope they enjoy it!   

Candy Averages

What a busy week it’s been already! We’ve jumped right in after break and I did a really fun math lesson, so I thought I’d share.

We’ve started our unit on averages, and to bribe ease the kids back into the swing of things, we did candy math! Ok, so this is SO not part of the New Year’s resolution, but hey, you gotta do what you gotta do, right? This is such a fun lesson, but it can be a costly one if you’ve got a big class. Keep in mind that you can adapt this one into group or partner work to cut back on the cost though. Here’s how it works:

1)     Pass out a data collection sheet to each student (or student group). Click here to snag a copy of the one that I made for this lesson.

2)     Get a small bag of M&M’s for each student (or student group) and tell them to estimate how many candies are in the bag before touching or opening them.

3)     Of their estimated total, have them then guess how many of each color will be found in their bag.

4)     Once all estimations are made, have the students open their bags and record the actual amounts.

5)     Then, have them review their percentage and graphing skills to put their data into a pie chart and/or bar graph.

6)     Lastly, enjoy a tasty treat… even if math is at 8am, you won’t hear any complaints.

I will snap a picture of the bar graphs that we created in our math journals with this data and post it later. Until then, happy humpday!

Geometry, Shapes and Nets, Oh My!

We’ve been studying the basics of geometry over the past week and doing some fun activities with 3D shapes and nets. Unlike other areas of math, working with shapes and nets are generally seen as more fun by most younger students, especially when you get to draw and build things during math time… and that’s exactly what we’ve been up to. If you’re looking for a creative way to jazz up geometry in the classroom, here are a few ideas.

Activity 1- Building prisms and pyramids

I got this idea while I was looking through our Hong Kong math book a few weeks back preparing for the first unit of geometry. I was looking for something that was hands-on and that allowed my students to practice and create the 3D shapes we’d just learned. This one’s great for the kinesthetic learners in the classroom, but fun enough to engage all the students.

Divide your students into small groups or let them work independently if you have enough supplies for each student. Give them a small ball of clay (about the size of a bouncy ball) and a handful of toothpicks and tell them to build basic 3D shapes. What I did was have them build the shapes then draw and label them in their math journals so they could refer back to them in the future. Another extension could be to list the number of edges, vertices and faces of the shapes. I would be willing to bet that this little activity has helped my students remember the vocabulary more than any other that we’ve done in this unit and it was fun. What a bonus!

 

Activity 2- Isometric Sketching

This year I’ve been trying to do as much journaling as possible with my kids because it’s such a great tool for enhancing learning. I just love the outside-the-box thinking that happens when you do a journal activity for math. This week, one of our journal activities was to use isometric dot paper to create something in 3D. I let them draw whatever they wanted on the dot paper and then asked them to write a short description explaining what they made and what shapes they used to create it. I was pretty impressed with the results. Just google “Isometric Dot Paper”, copy & paste it into a Word document, resize it and you’re good to go. Here’s a couple of pics of what ours look like.

 

 

Activity 3- 3D Shape Mobile

  Ok, so I totally used this as our art project for last week, but it could easily fit into a math lesson. I printed out a bunch of nets of 3D shapes here then we colored them, cut them out and made a pretty hanging mobile for our classroom. What I loved most about this activity is that it took little to no preparation on my part and the kids enjoyed it. I’d say it was a win-win. I’ll be sure to snap a picture of our finished product tomorrow. Until then, I hope you’re having a great week!