Introducing Money

I started off by using a familiar model... the base ten blocks.
I had the kiddos journal about what they thought each base ten model might represent.

We came to the consenses that a hundred block could be a dollar.
A dime could be a ten rod.
A ones cube could be a penny.

Then we discussed how we would show a quarter, or a nickel.

Then it was time to make our money books!

Money is a great way to tie in fractions, and decimal points to a concept they're already familiar with.

The kids did a great job with their money books and I hope they made connections between the shaded part of the grid, the decimal point, and the fraction.
We made special note of the way 1/10 and 10/100 was the same amount when we looked at our dime.

 

Rounding

I based my lesson plan on a great idea I saw on another blog.

The vocabulary words we introduced today were
Round and Estimate

We started off by watching a short video about rounding.

Then we talked about what rounding really means.

I showed them my anchor charts.

Then I put the kids in pairs. Each pair got a sentence strip, a half sheet of paper, and a sticky note with a number already on it. They had to make a number line and place their sticky note where it belonged. Then on their half sheet of paper they had to write the sentence:

If I round (whatever number they had) to the tens place, the estimate will be (whatever the rounded number is).

This way they were practicing those new vocabulary words!

I also made this rounding flower visual for the kids to glue in. They just glue the circle part so they can fold over the numbers.

Underneath the petal is what each number rounds to.

 Here is my rounding pack from teacherspayteachers. :)

Expanded Form

I must be honest... part of the reason I keep a blog is to help me remember all the cool ideas I've done/want to try.

We technically finished our place value unit HOWEVER, we will be continuing to practice those skills all year.

So, here are some of the ways I taught expanded notation this year.

Styrofom cups

Match the standard form to the expanded form games

And this fabulous visual.... see how you line up the numbers and bring them down? Then you just add the zeros? I love it.

This ammmmmmazing freebie from TpT.



Time Lines

Ahhhh measuring time... every teacher's favorite section in math.

I got a fantastic idea from one of the other fourth grade teachers to make timelines with my students. So that's exactly what we did.
The big purple jumps are one hour, the littler green jumps are ten minutes, and the smaller pink one is five minutes. Then you add up all the jumps.

I loved doing this but next year I want to make each bump something different.... so like hour would be triangle, ten minute squares, and five minutes round.

As a teacher I'm constantly adapting and changing my lessons to better fit the needs of my students. I'm so thankful to the people on my campus for always sharing ideas with me!

These were the problems we worked on....

Jessica goes to the park at 5:30pm. She leaves the park one hour and forty-five minutes later. What time is it when she leaves the park?

Cassandra’s baseball game ends at 9:15. It started at 7:45. How long was her game?

Kennedy started jogging at 4:20. She finished at 6:05. How long was she jogging?

Cooper started school at 8:15am. He ended school at 2:50pm. How long was he in school?

Julie’s music class ended at 5:10. She was in class for 4 hours and 25 minutes. When did her class start?

Robert went to the store at 2:50. He left the store at 4:25. How long was he at the store?
 
Joey went to the mall at 3:15. He left the mall after one hour and a half. What time was it when he left?

If Vanessa’s mom tells her to go to her room for three hours and twenty-five minutes, and she goes to her room at 1:45, what time can she get out?

 

 

 

 

We're so proud of our hard work!

This week I would also like to do these elapsed time questions found for FREE on TpT.

Bundle Two

The first two weeks were really about place value.
Now we're moving on to Bundle Two which is all about Addition, Subtraction, and Financial Literacy. This bundle is three weeks.

Big Idea
The students are expected to use their knowledge of place value to estimate sums and differences as well as add and subtract whole numbers with regrouping. 

Guiding Questions
Why are estimating and rounding helpful strategies?
How do you add and subtract whole numbers up to the billions place with regrouping?

What real world applications would you use addition and subtraction for? (perimeter, profit)

The vocabulary words for this unit are:

• Sum
• Difference
• Estimate
• Round
• Compatible numbers
• Intervals (of time)
• Perimeter
• Profit
• Expenses

I want to have several problems about elapsed time. That one is so tricky!
For example:
Karyme wakes up at 7:45. She gets to school at 9:15. How long has she been awake but the time she gets to school?

To teach perimeter I definitely want to use tape and make different shapes for them to measure.

Marshmallows

I did this last year with my second graders but only to the hundreds. This year, teaching fourth grade, I went to the hundred millions!!!
Check out last year's post here.

We spent a while talking about NOT eating anything and using these as math tools, not food.

The lesson is pretty simple and SO MUCH FUN.
What you need:
Marshmallows
Tooth picks
Fruitloops
Construction paper

I cut out strips of construction paper to put the marshmallows on and I had my students put the commas between every group of 3 marshmallows.

Then we talked about what each marshmallow represented (ones, tens, hundreds, thousands, ten thousands, hundred thousands, millions, ten millions, hundred millions)

Each pair of two got one strip of construction paper, 9 marshmallows, a handful of fruit loops, and 9 tooth picks to put inside the marshmallows. They also got a whiteboard and a whiteboard marker.
I stood up at the front of the room and said the number and one person had to write it down on the whiteboard. Then they both had to use the fruitloops to show me that number.

We practiced with some easy ones first. I had them show me 1,420 and 5,303.
Then we moved up to the harder, more complex numbers.
The most challenging was 521,000,312. They kept showing me 521,312,000. The only difference is saying the word THOUSAND.

I think it was helpful for those kiddos who need to hear it, see it, touch it.
Definitely it was helpful to get the students excited about math!
Who doesn't love touching squishy marshmallows??

First Week

We all survived the first week!
I have to say, fourth graders may be bigger/taller than second graders, but they certainly don't have any less love to give! I was a bit nervous about making the grade level change but I am so in love with all my new students, I have no worries about it anymore!
Sure…. some of my students are taller than me, but they're still a bunch of sweet, fun-loving kiddos, ready to learn!

This week I really just focused on classroom management and setting up how we will be using our math journals.
Our school uses CHAMPS as a school-wide system.
For those of you who don't know….

Conversation: Can students converse during this activity? About what? With whom? For how long? 

Help: How do students get your attention for help? How do students get questions answered? What should they do while they wait for you? 

Activity: What is the expected end product of this activity? What is the task or objective? 

Movement: For what reasons can students get out of their seats during this activity? Do they need permission to do so? 

Participation: What behavior shows that students are participating or not participating? 

Success: There are no questions for this one. When CHAMPs expectations are met, students will be successful. 

I have a CHAMPS board in my classroom to remind students what the expectations are for a particular activity. It's a great tool and I love that no matter what classroom they walk into, the CHAMPS are the same.

As far as setting up the math notebooks…. it's all about problem solving skills.
I don't want my students to just write down the answer to a problem and move on. I want them to really dig deep!

I have six steps to my problem solving.
1. Reading the problem.
2. Underline the question.
3. Representation (picture, graph, tallies, ten frames, chart, etc.)
4. Number sentence.
5. Answer the question in words.
6. Explain your thinking, step-by-step.

About 3-4 times a week I will give students a short word problem to glue in their math journal. They then have to follow the six steps of problem solving in their journal. I walk around and give help as needed and take notes.
I was very impressed with how fast my students picked up on the steps and how easily they filled up a single page. :)

Overall, first week was WONDERFUL.