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Welcome to my math blog! The purpose of this blog is to help you stay informed about our learning and experiences that have taken place during our math class. I have also included links your child (and you) may want to use in order to supplement math learning in 5th grade.

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Computer Day (say it like a camel!)


Every Wednesday is our math computer day.  Since there isn't much to tell you if I just let you know we went to the computer lab, I decided to remind you about our daily warm up.

We always begin the class by completing our warm up.  Each day hits specific skills that are important for 5th graders to understand.  As a reminder, this includes working with the number of days we have been in school.  As of today, we have been in school 41 days.  



  • We turn this into a decimal (.41)
  • create an equivalent decimal (.410)
  • create our fraction (41/100) 
  • go find the factors of 41 (1, 41)
  • We determine if 41 is prime or composite (prime)
  • We name its prime factor (41)

  • We locate the greatest common factor of 41 and 100.  (1)
  • We create an equivalent fraction.  Since we cannot simplify 41/100, instead we create an equivalent fraction by using multiplication.  So, if we wanted to multiply by 4, our equivalent fraction would be 164/400.
On Wednesdays, we find area.  However, in order to find the area of our square today, we had to use its given perimeter (24 cm) to determine the dimensions of the sides.  We chose to use the formula for perimeter to help us:
  •  P = s x s
  • 24 = 4 x ?
  • so the side = 6  
Then we used our formula for area (A = L x W) to find the area of the square:
  • a = 6 x 6
  • so the area is 36 square centimeters
Our final warm up activity was to use our 5th grade graph to work with range, mode, mean, and median.



  • Range is the difference between the largest and smallest number:  13-2 = 11
  • Mode is any number that has a repeat:  13
  • Mean is the average, so we added (54) and then divided by the number of pieces of data (7) and got a quotient of 7 remainder 5.  We then had to determine how to round our answer.  Since the remainder (5) is more than 1/2 of the divisor (7), we knew to round the mean to 8.
  • Median is finding the exact middle number of making out the least and the greatest numbers.  This left us with 7.

Before heading to the computer lab we answered our new graphing question:  

What is your favorite part of Halloween?
  • costume
  • trick or treat
  • carving pumpkins
  • eating candy
  • Halloween party
  • other

Finally we headed to the computer lab.  We began by completing an xtramath exercise.  Remember, once your child has passed the multiplication portion of xtramath, he or she is finished with xtramath as homework!

Next, the kids worked with khanacademy.  I like this program.  It allows your child to work on closing any gaps in their math and then allows them to progress at their own speed!

Tomorrow....long division!

Homework:  NONE

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