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!

My Major is Better than Your Major

At least that's my opinion.  But you know, I really feel like being a teacher is what I'm supposed to do. 

In my teacher education program, there are classes I love and classes that I don't...quite....love.  It is interesting, because the classes that I love are the classes that keep me engaged.  We play with play dough, we paint, we dance, we make connections to the world around us.  Our teachers and professors know us, they love us, and they want us to succeed.  They are enthusiastic and excited to teach us.  The classes that I don't quite love, well, it's a lot of listening to lecture.  Which I find kind of ironic because that's exactly what they tell us NOT to do as teachers...  

After spending time in the schools doing practicum/student teaching work, I've seen good teachers and not-so-good teachers.  It just motivates me even more to want to be the best teacher I can be, and to never stop trying to improve myself.  

And just to show you just what we've been working on in my Early Childhood Education Methods class (one of the classes I love!), here are a couple of pictures! :)

We learned how to draw/paint flowers!  Now, I don't really consider myself an artist per se, but I think these turned out pretty well!  It's amazing what a little scaffolding can help you accomplish. 

And of course, what better place to put my amazing painting of flowers than on my fridge, where all of my roommates can see!  Really, I do have the best major!