Thursday, November 5, 2009

A Suggestion from a class mate

One of the websites I use is www.mathfrog.ca. I use a game called Railroad repair under the grade five heading to teach decimals. The activity is popular because students root for the train and they are given many opportunities to discover decimals while having a representation that they can drag. I was introduced to it by a retired highschool teacher who works at the University of Waterloo. There are follow-up activities to be printed off. The curriculum requirement that this activity fulfills is: demonstrate an understanding of place value in whole numbers and decimal
numbers from 0.01 to 100 000, using a variety of tools and strategies . It's a great introductory lesson for my grade 5s and works on understanding for my grade 4s.

In regards to calculators, I've used them with success in many of my lessons. My favorite activity is the broken calculator key that I got from a Marilyn Burns book. In this activity, you are not allowed to use specific keys and you are forced to experiment to create working equations. These kind of scalable puzzles always go over well with my class.

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