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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, May 14, 2014

Titanic Day 1: Building A Ship



As we prepare for our 1st Class Titanic Luncheon scheduled for Tuesday, May 20, I have decided to use our next few math classes to work with Titanic facts.  Today our focus is the building of the Titanic.

I did not want to reinvent the wheel, so I found a few websites that helped me with facts and questions:




I took the information and questions from these two sites and turned them into a Hollywood Squares game using a template, created by Mark Damon,  that I also found on the web:



We played the game with two teams.  I did have large groups, but each person had to show their work on notebook paper and turn it in.  By working together, they were able to think aloud and explain their thinking to each other to justify their answers.  It was very interesting to listen to!  


I found one misconception when it came to converting gallons to cups.   I had students who were convinced that this was a division problem!  The reasoning was that you are pouring one gallon of water into 16 cups so you are dividing the water....  I explained that that was true, BUT you are pouring all of the gallons into a plethora of cups.... how many cups?  That was when they realized they needed to multiply.  INTERESTING!



We also worked with finding the area and perimeter of a First Class Suite and a Third Class Double-Berth room.  We used the information to compare the luxury of the two rooms.  Most would prefer the First Class Suite!  We also found out that there were only two bathtubs for Third Class Passengers to use (one for men and one for women).... there were 1000 Third Class Passengers! 

I found this activity on Teachers Pay Teachers:


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