Elapsed Time

We spent a couple of days this week on elapsed time - a skill that always proves to be tricky for students. I'm also noticing that my 4th graders aren't as good at telling time as they should be, but they never have to read analog clocks in real life! They get much less practice at telling time than my students used to.

As I've mentioned before in posts about math workshop, I use blendspace to organize the workshop activities for the kids. I also record the lessons and they watch it on their ipad at the beginning of workshop. This really helps with their attention and also gives me more time to pull small groups.

Feel free to check out the blendspace I created on elapsed time here

So their first tasks were to watch the videos. For this skill I made 2 videos, each one teaching a different strategy for elapsed time. Once they were done with the videos, they worked at their own pace through the different activities over the course of 2-3 days.

I had made some QR code task cards and put at a set in each table group's bucket. (Each table has a bucket where I put any supplies they will need for math workshop that day). I also put some clock manipulatives. I am fortunate to have a TON of hands-on math tools at my school, so I had enough for each student to get their own clock.

They solved the problem on the task cards using their clock, used the QR code to check their answer, and then took a picture of the problem and the clock showing the answer. When they were done, they put their pictures into pic collage.

I did this activity in small groups with students who I thought may struggle.

The QR task cards are part of my Elapsed Time Lesson Pack, available in my Teachers Pay Teachers store - check it out here.

After the QR task cards, they did versatiles. I had never heard of these until I came to  my current campus last year and they had a set in each room, but now I love them! Ours are a little out dated, but whenever I find a page that correlates with our current skill, I love to use them. Find out more about them here.

Then I had another set of task cards taped around the room that they answered. Some students were still using their clock to help them, while others were relying more on strategies such as t-charts or number lines. When they finished these task cards, they had to come check in with me before they could move on.

The last 2 activities were intended to be more of an extension - if you got to it, great! If not, no worries. One was to plan your dream day and to outline the schedule. They also had to write down how much time they spent on each activity.

The last activity in the blendspace was to do some practice problems on IXL. Our school doesn't have a membership, but kids can do 20 free problems in a day. I like the repetitiveness of IXL, so I typically include some type of this practice each week.

Solving Word Problems Part 2

This week in math we finished up our unit on the 4 operations. Again, we focused on word problems. We looked at some specific types of word problems that they will encounter.

We had a short week this week in math because we spent a couple of days on benchmark testing for the district.

Day 1
Monday we looked at interpreting remainders. This was a skill I noticed they needed from our work last week with different word problems. I used an anchor chart that I found on Pinterest to help me create one with my kids. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find the source of the chart.

Here's what mine looked like:

We talked about 3 different types of remainder problems. Times when we ignore the remainder, times when we have to round up our answer to account for the remainder and times when the remainder is our answer.

Once we'd looked at these types of problems. We worked out some problems together, using the CUBES problem solving strategy, and discussed which type of problem it was.

Then I had the students work in pairs on some remainder word problems from our textbook. They were pretty challenging problems. Once they'd had time to work them out together, we went over them as a class.

Day 2
Tuesday, I explained to the kids that so far we'd been looking at a lot of 1-step problems where the main focus was on deciding the correct operation. However, in 4th grade, they're not going to see too many 1-step problems. So for today we were going to sort problems into 3 different categories: problems with extra information, one-step problems, and multi-step problems.

Together we looked at 6 different word problems and sorted them. We talked through how to solve each problem, but the main emphasis was on deciding which category the problem would fit in. (I tried to pick problems that clearly fit into one of the categories)

Then the kids got in pairs and had their own 6 problems to sort (You can see their directions in my picture above). Once most groups were done sorting, I had them choose 1 problem from each category to work through our problem solving paper on. They had to use the CUBES strategy, solve the problem, write their answer in a complete sentence, and justify their answer.

I had several groups who realized they had sorted a problem incorrectly once they began solving it. This just further reinforced the idea that using a problem solving strategy helps the kids read more critically.

Day 3
Wednesday was our last day of lessons for the week since we were benchmark testing Thursday & Friday. I was also out half the day for curriculum meetings so I needed something that could easily be taught by a substitute.

We completed a frayer model on estimation. I forgot to take a picture of mine at work, but you can find a great example at Math Workshop Adventures' blog.

Then the kids worked in pairs to complete some word problem task cards. I tried to choose a variety of word problems (1-step, multi-step, extra info, different operations, remainders, estimation, etc). I also did a mix of problems that gave answer choices & problems that didn't.


I used a lot of partner work and group work during our lessons on problem solving. I think that it is critical for kids to talk out the problems.

I haven't gotten the results of our benchmark yet, but I loved seeing their strategies on their papers. I even had a couple of students raise their hand to share with me that they noticed some important key words in the problems. Yay! : )

Lines Task Cards

Our geometry unit started right after our unit on long division. I had about half of my students who had mastered long division and were ready to move on at the end of the unit. However, the other half still needed some more practice. Our district pacing is pretty set because of the amount of material the state expects us to cover before state testing in April. So I felt the need to move on to geometry, but still needed to work with my students on division.

This led me to the development of task cards. I created different task cards for some of the main topics in our geometry unit. I'm going to focus on the tasks for lines in this post. The way I structured this unit was that the students were all given the same task card to start with. While they were working independently, I was able to pull small groups to reteach division. We spent about a week working on the different task cards. This gave me enough time to help my students reach mastery with division. Some of my more struggling students did not complete all of the task cards because they spent more time working in small groups with me on division. 

Must Do Activities:

Their task card included two must do activities. Every student had to do both of these activities. The first must do was to watch a video that I created using the show me app. This video went over the important vocabulary that they needed to know about lines. This was the direct teach portion of the activity. 

Here is the video:

The second must do activity was to create a foldable for the vocabulary. We do a lot of foldables in my class, so the kids are pretty quick at making them. They had a flap for each vocabulary word and inside the flap they put a definition and a picture. They could use their math textbook as a reference material. When they were finished, they glued their foldables into their math journals.

Can Do Activities

There were 4 choices for "can do" activities. The kids had to pick 2. I tried to come up with activities that appealed to different interests and strengths. Their choices were: 

• Use pipe cleaners to make examples of parallel, perpendicular & intersecting lines. They glued them down on paper and labeled each example. 
• Create their own instructional video using an ipad. They had to explain the different types of lines and how they are different from one another. Some kids used a screen capturing app (like my example in ShowMe) while other kids chose to make an iMovie. They had freedom in choosing which app to create their video in. 
• Complete practice problems on Khan Academy. 
• Draw a map of a town with intersecting, parallel and perpendicular streets. They had to include an explanation of their types of streets. 

Assessment

The last part of the task card was the assessment piece. For this they had 5 different word problems to answer about lines. The assessment piece allowed me to see if they were able to apply their knowledge to word problems. It also gave me data on which students needed additional instruction with me. 

Reflection

I loved this activity. Not only were the kids extremely engaged, but I loved seeing their creativity in the different ways they demonstrated their knowledge. I saw so many kids referring back to their foldables and rewatching the video to ensure they had the content correct. When I wasn't working with a small group, I was walking around talking with kids about their work, answering questions and clearing up any misconceptions. 

After our geometry unit we took a district assessment and 100% of my kids correctly answered the questions over lines! I was amazed at how much learning took place.