Math Journal Sundays

It's been a while since my last math journal post.  With my weekends full of dance lessons and soccer games, routine seems to have escaped me again.  But, right now I'm relaxing with a coffee, looking forward to the two hours I have before I take my girls to see a stage show of Annie today!!!  (I may be more excited than them).

So here goes - I have two foldables for you today.  This first one is a place value foldable from the end of our last unit.  I modelled how to make it under the ELMO.  I then wrote all the different numbers on the front for the students to copy.  They had to write the correct place value columns on the inside of the foldable.  This could also be a fun partner activity, where the students take turns coming up with numbers to write on the front.  We took it up the next day so I could check for comprehension before our test.  This one is from one of my grade 5 students, and I can see she is having trouble with the tenths and hundredths columns.

My second foldable for today is from our new unit in Data Management.  I introduced the unit by giving the students a set of data (the percent results from our math last test).  I then posed an open-ended question, "How could you display this data?".  I paired the students up, gave them a sheet of large chart paper, and sat (HA!  Do we ever get to sit?) back to observe.  Every single group made a graph - with about 3/4 of the class making bar graphs (I also noticed I'm going to have to spend a lot of time on intervals - not one group of students organized the data into intervals).  The next day we had our math congress - where the students display their work and explain why the did what they did.  I also have other students explain the thinking they see on the charts.  When all groups finished, I asked them if there were other ways to display the data.  Again, they gave me a variety of answers all about different kinds of graphs.  So then I asked them, "What if I wanted to see what the average was?"  I did have a few students remember about mean, mode, and median, so this was a great lead-in to our foldable for the day.  We made a four fold foldable and wrote mean, median, mode, and range on the outside flaps.  We wrote the definitions on the back side of each flap, and then solved the problem on the inside.  We used the same test data as the day before.  As I had introduced mean, mode, and median earlier in the year (when we had our Oreo day) they were pretty good at it.  I usually try to do a mean, mode, and median activity every time I hand back a test.  I find it's a great way for students to see how their mark compares to the rest of the class (and hopefully may inspire a little goal-setting), and it's great practice for our province testing (which ALWAYS contains a question related to it).

I've uploaded an example of one of my Mean, Mode, and Median assignments to google docs if you would like to take a look.  I left it in Word format so you could alter it to fit the data from your class.  Click on the picture to the right to download a copy.  If you're interested, this is included in my Mean, Mode, and Median activities at my TpT store.  In this activity I have a Mean, Mode, Median, and Range poster, as well as examples of 8 different assignments like the one shown.

Lastly (whew, this is a long post), don't forget about the HUGE sale at TeachersPayTeachers.  Many sellers are offering up to 20% off (with sales already starting), and on Monday you can take an extra 10% off by entering the code at the bottom of the picture below.  All my products are on sale for 20% off until Tuesday.

Happy Sunday!!!  I'm off to get ready for Annie, and you'll have to excuse me if you hear me singing in the shower.  It's been a "Hard Knock Life" lately, but I'm sure "The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow".  :)

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