Place Value Detectives

We started our first math project of the year today.  After covering several concepts in place value over the past month, it was time for the students to put their knowledge to the test and apply what they have learned.

The project is called Place Value Detectives.  Students become "detectives" and have to use their knowledge of place value to solve "crimes". Because of copyright I can't post the project on the blog, but your child should have their project in their binder if you would like to review it with them.

We will do several of these types of projects over the course of the school year. While there is a lot of math being done in these projects, there is also a lot of reading. Students are required to read all directions and follow them explicitly to be able to complete the work.  Students are able to use each other and myself if they get stuck at any given time.  Any time we are working on these types of projects, most of the work will be done in class, with the understanding that if the students still has work to complete before the due date, then it will need to be completed at home.

After working on this project today, I can tell you that the students were so excited!  They told how much fun they were having doing math and how much better it was than doing practice problems!  Always a win in my book!

Rounding around the room

Today we finished an activity that we started last week, called Rounding Around the Room.  There were total of 28 different rounding questions that students had to answer.  Some were multiple choice,

 while others just gave a number to be rounded to a certain place.

The questions were "around the room" and students were up and moving while they were answering questions.  (I and they love to get to move while doing math!)
This activity was one way for me to see what students know and still need help with when it comes to rounding.

When students finished they completed an extension activity that involved estimating and adding.  We are continuing to hone those estimating skills!  One way you can help your child at home, is by having them estimate in real life.  About how long did it take to get to school? About how much money did you spend at Wal-Mart? About how many noodles are the box? Etc.

Estimation and Rounding

In unit one of 4th grade math one thing we focus on is reasonableness in problem solving.  This week, to help students understand how to judge the reasonableness of an answer we are working on estimation and rounding.
Yesterday we created this anchor chart in class

Then students worked in groups to create posters of examples of using estimation in the real world.  One of my goals for this year is that students see math in the world around them and understand its usefulness.

Here are the posters some of the groups created.  (IRL = in real life)

Then we took a gallery walk around the room to see what the other groups wrote about.  Each group rotated together and discussed each poster when they arrived there.  After all of the groups had a chance to look at each poster, we had an intelligent conversation (no raising hands) about what we saw, we discussed similarities and differences in their ideas.

Today,we reviewed our work from yesterday by completing our first Frayer Card in our math glossary.

Then we built on our learning from yesterday and took some rounding notes and did a few rounding problems after we took notes. We discussed two ways to round.  1: Thinking about a number line and which number is the number in question closest to. 2: A rounding chant with the "rules" of rounding. Here are the notes for today.

Finally we wrote our first blog post today in Kidblog.  It was a simple four sentence post, but the kids were so excited to be on the laptops!