Thursday, January 26, 2012

NEW LITERACIES FOR NEW TIMES Ch. 1 BLOG


The resource most useful to me was under the heading Teaching With the Internet: Venita Rodriguez's Eighth-Grade Team ENC Online hyperlink, http://www.enc.org/ .

Our district is currently beginning the switch for the 2014 change in standards.  The new CCSS, short for Common Core State Standards, will take the place of the Connecticut Mastery Test.  Our district does not have a Curriculum Specialist, so teachers are responsible for creating the units that correspond to each standard. I found many lessons that address various learning styles.  For example, my third grade students did rather poorly on an area and perimeter portion of our latest assessment.

I discovered they keep getting Area & PERIMETER confused.  I found the following link, which provided the perfect lesson which I utilized immediately to reteach the concepts.  In small groups, they filled pre-measured different sized rectangles with Wheat Thins.  Then they counted each Wheat Thin to record the area and added the sided to record the perimeter.  For extension I showed a few how multiplying two different sided can give you the area as well. Following the lesson they were able to eat their Wheat Thins.  They loved the lesson and had a deeper understanding of area and perimeter. 


Does anyone know of any other lessons in math that uses food as a manipulative?  I've used an M&M graphing lesson and a marshmallow fraction lesson.  Any other ideas?

Thanks!

2 comments:

  1. My fourth grade students get area and perimeter confused as well. It is difficult to teach them the differences between the two and how one focuses on the distance around a shape and one focuses in on the area inside a square. The wheat thins seem like a great way to help students understand the concepts.

    As far as foods go for math manipulatives, I have used raisins in the past with empty egg cartons. I use these for place value. I draw in a decimal point on the carton, and then I put in the number of raisins that represent each digit in a number. It works great! The kids love it!

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  2. I guess I could use goldfish, or other small edible snacks. Thanks, we're doing place value now.

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