I whipped up this game earlier this year to give my students the opportunity to practice calculating area and perimeter of rectangles. I wanted a game that included a genuine use for finding out both area and perimeter and could't find anything. The main skills I aimed to have students build through this game were: … Continue reading Rectetris: an area and perimeter game
Maths
Teaching Measurement using Google Maps
Just a simple activity using a tech tools to enhance student understandings. This week I have been working on area and perimeter with my 4/5s. This has included a lot of estimation. It became clear early on that students were unsure how to estimate common units for measuring length (i.e. mm, cm, m km). To … Continue reading Teaching Measurement using Google Maps
Storytelling to Teach Subtraction
I always advocate for storytelling in maths as a way to engage students and apply some context to the skills being learnt. Last time I posted about this a lot of people were interested as the concept was new to them, so I'm sharing another lesson I did. The What and Why: The skill being … Continue reading Storytelling to Teach Subtraction
Pirate Treasure and Paper Bags: Storytelling in Maths
In my first year of teaching I was sent to a maths PD with Michael Ymer and he stressed that much of maths can be taught through storytelling. I think (but I'm stretching back a bit) that his main reasons for this were 1) It's super engaging for students, 2) It allows for lots of incidental learning. … Continue reading Pirate Treasure and Paper Bags: Storytelling in Maths
iPads as tools, not toys: Teaching fact families
My class has been working on fact families (seeing how numbers relate to each other using addition and subtraction) for about a week. I gave them a task to see how they were able to use what we have learnt so far and put it all together. They were asked to work with a partner … Continue reading iPads as tools, not toys: Teaching fact families
Mrs Fintelman Teaches 