#halfwaythere

The last week has been crazy.  Between trying to squeeze in a division test, a water cycle test, a spelling test, a Christmas party, a Christmas drama skit, Christmas sing, and a bajillion other things, I am more than ready for break.  However, when my kids leave me little notes on the board, I can't help but remember that I really do have the best job ever. #beststudents

Sally has HOW many jellybeans???

One thing I didn't know until I became an education major was there are different kinds of story problems!! I had no idea that teachers could write story problems in different ways to make them easier or more difficult for students to solve!  Who would have thought?? Now that I'm a teacher though, I wanted to see how my students responded to various story problems.  Let me show you what I'm talking about.  For this, I'll use examples from my Addition Scoot game (click HERE for the link) to show the different types of problems.

Easiest: Joint Result Unknown (JRU)
This is the most standard type of addition story problem.  You have both parts of the puzzle, and you just have to join them together, without knowing what the result is.

Medium Difficulty: Part-Part-Whole, Result Unknown (PPW)
This is partially down the spectrum.  You know what the two parts of the whole are, and are looking for the result.

More Difficult: Separate Start Unknown (SSU)
In these problems, the number at the start is not given.  We are given the second number, or the change, as well as the result.  Instinctively, we would think subtraction at first.  In order to solve this, addition is arguably a more efficient way to find the answer.

More Difficult: Compare-Quantity Unknown (CQU)
These questions involve thinking about who has what, and how those numbers compare to each other.  In the problem below, we know how many athletes China sent, and we know how many more than China the USA sent, but we do not know how many the USA sent.

There are other types of story problems, especially when you get into subtraction, multiplication and division.  These are the types of problems that use addition to help compute the answer.  If you have any questions, leave me a comment and I'll do my best to help clarify!

Thanks!

How to Talk to Girls

One of my boys checked this book out during our library time last Tuesday.  It then made its way around to some of his friends in our class.  I'm not quite sure that 4th graders need to worry about this yet, but it cracked me up!

Scoot Over!

After a rather long hiatus from blogging (during my internship), I'm back! I'm excited to be able to share more ideas about what is going on in my classroom as well as learning more from you!

One of my favorite activities to practice math skills is Scoot. This gives my students a chance to practice individually while still having the chance to move. My kids really enjoy this activity! So far, I have 2 Scoot games available in my TPT shop.  Follow me, and I will let you know when I have more products available!

I tried to create these Scoots with differentiation in mind.  My students are at all different levels.  In some task cards, there will be 3 different options.  This allows students to choose which number set they want to use to solve the problem.  This has worked really well with all of my students!

The first one I created was based on division.  This game does have some factors and multiples questions, but the majority are division problems.

Click HERE for Division Scoot.

This Scoot focuses solely on factors & multiples.  There are a few story problems, but the majority are straight math problems.

Click HERE to access this Scoot.

Thanks for stopping by!  I'm just getting into this whole blogging/teaching world, so if you follow me, let me know! I would love to return the favor!