Arithmetickles

On Wednesday, March 27th, Proctor Elementary School's fourth graders were treated to a special math enrichment program from Arithmetickles.  Arithmetickles is an interactive Math Game Show that uses audience participation and comedy in fast-paced math segments to capture the attention of students.

Data Collection Through Class Challenges

Essential Question:  What is the best way to display data?

While learning about bar graphs, line graphs, and picture graphs Team Gibbas students experienced some fun, hands-on, and authentic opportunities to collect and display data.  Students participated in two class challenges.  The first was a dice challenge where students and teachers balanced as many dice as they could on a popsicle stick that they held in their mouth.  The second challenge was a time test to see how long students could hold a wall sit in the gym.

After collecting the data, we decided as a class how best to display our data.  Students chose to display the dice challenge data with bar graphs.  

A line graph was chosen for the wall squat data as the number of students holding the squat changed over time.

Graham Cracker House Architects

The Great Graham Cracker House Challenge

Before winter break Team Gibbas architects were tasked with the challenge of designing then building graham cracker houses that met specific building codes.  

Building Codes:

• The area of the floor plan must be 5 graham crackers or less.
• The structure can use no more than 25 graham crackers in total.
• The structure must have walls and a roof. 

Materials Acquisition:

In order to receive building materials students had to submit their blueprints to the building commissioner, Mrs. Gibbas for review.  The blueprints were required to have the structure's base traced and the footprint's area and perimeter accurately calculated in centimeters.

The Building Process:

Once the blueprints were approved students began building their graham cracker houses.

Design Challenges:

Some students faced challenges along the way.

Two students learned why homes in snowy New England have slanted roofs when their roof began to cave in when piled with snow icing and decorations.

Completed Graham Cracker houses:

Grade 4 Common Core Standard:

4.MD.3  Apply the area and perimeter formulas for rectangles in real-world and mathematical problems.

Data Collection through Class Challenges

Essential Questions:  How can we create line graphs and bar models from data that we've collected?

Team Gibbas has been learning about bar graphs and line graphs as part of Chapter 4 in Math in Focus.  To give students some fun, hands-on, and authentic opportunities to create a bar graph and line graph students participated in two classroom challenges.

To generate data for a line graph, which displays data that changes over time, students were challenged to see how long they could stay in a wall squat.

To generate data for a bar graph, students participated in a dice challenge to see how many dice each student could balance on a popsicle stick held stable in the student's mouth.

Massachusetts Math Standard 3.MD  Draw a scaled bar graph to represent a data set with several categories.

Bar Modeling Video

Essential Question:  How can we solve multi-step word problems by using bar models?

To learn how to use bar models watch the video below!  On Friday, November 6th, Mrs. Steinberg, our math specialist, led a group of parents in the discovery of how fun and useful bar models can be when solving math problems.



Bar Modeling from Mrs. Klipfel on Vimeo.

Grade 4 Common Core Standards: 4.OA.A.3  3. Solve multistep word problems posed with whole numbers and having whole-number answers using the four operations, including problems in which remainders must be interpreted. Represent these problems using equations with a letter standing for the unknown quantity. Assess the reasonableness of answers using mental computation and estimation strategies including rounding.

Math in Focus Long Division

What better way to start the day than with long division the Math in Focus way?

Many parents started their day on Friday, October 30th practicing long division the Math in Focus way with Jen Steinberg, our math specialist.  Mrs. Steinberg led parents and some students through a few long division problems using the Math in Focus method and language which emphasizes place value.  Click on the video below to watch Mrs. Steinberg work through a division problem.

Helpful tip for long division:  Use your hand to cover up the numbers that you are not dividing so that you see only the place that you are dividing.

Massachusetts Grade 4 Common Core Standard
4.NBT.B.6  Find whole-number quotients and remainders with up to four-digit dividends and one-digit divisors, using strategies based on place value, the properties of operations, and/or the relationship between multiplication and division. Illustrate and explain the calculation by using equations, rectangular arrays, and/or area models.

The Math in Focus website is ready for home use

Did you know that the Math in Focus program offers students and parents a way to view the math textbook and other math resources online?

Accessing these math resources from home is simple.

1.  Go to the thinkcentral website
https://www-k6.thinkcentral.com/ePC/start.do

2. Select the state:  Massachusetts (from a drop down menu)

3. Select District: Supervisory Union 58, Boxford, 01921 (from a drop down menu)

4. Select School: Proctor Elementary School, 01983 (from a drop down menu)

5.  Then enter your User Name: first initial last name (all one word all lower case)

6.  Enter your Password: mathisfun

Geometry Street Maps

To showcase students' knowledge of and skill at drawing parallel and perpendicular lines, students' created Geometry Street Maps.  

4th Grade Common Core Standard:

The Gibbas Book of Class Records

Before our Thanksgiving break, Team Gibbas was learning about bar graphs, tally charts, line graphs, and picture graphs in math.  We were working on Chapter 4:  Tables and Line Graphs in Math in Focus.   To give students some fun, hands-on & authentic opportunities to create tally charts, tables, bar graphs and line graphs we had some classroom challenges.  Using Minute-to-win-it type activities students competed in four challenges then used the data they collected from the challenges to create line graphs and bar graphs.

Challenge 1:  Wall Squats

Students (and teachers) were challenged to see how long they could maintain a wall squat.  We started with 17 students and 2 teachers and as time progressed through 2 minutes more and more students dropped out.

Students then created line graphs to display the data.

Challenge 2:  Balancing Dice

Long Division the Math in Focus way

Here is a video that I created that shows how to divide a 4 digit number by a 1 digit number the Math in Focus way.  I hope this helps!

http://safeshare.tv/w/PwMHgYVuKK

The Geometry Street Maps have arrived!

It was so exciting to see all the Geometry Street Maps arrive at school today!  Students worked really hard and came up with some fun and creative town names such as Animal City, Mountainville, Dessert Town, and High Tide Town.  Great job guys!  You should be proud!