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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.

Thursday, October 15, 2015

Order of Operations: I Have/Who Has


During our math class today, we spent a few minutes voting on the Outdoor School plaque entries.  Each team had a few entries turned in and we needed to have the team vote on their favorite.  I used a Google Form and had our results by the end of the day.  I will share the winners on Monday as we will not have math class tomorrow.

Next, I handed out the Countdown to STAAR from yesterday and the kids graphed their new results on their Data sheet.

Once again, our focus today was to "simplify numerical expressions that do not involve exponents, including up to two levels of grouping."  Today, I wanted to spend some time recording all of the steps necessary to simplify an equation.


We began with this expression.  I handed out twenty note cards.  Each card had a single step from each of the four expressions that we were going to simplify.  We recorded these steps in our journal in order for students to have a place to refer to as they work with PEMDAS later.  I reminded the students about the steps to the Order of Operations and we jumped right in.  I asked "Who has the first step to this problem?"  The student who had the step on the notecard read it to the class.  At this point, this game varies from the true I Have/Who Has game.  As I needed to have students focusing on the use of PEMDAS, I was the one who repeatedly asked the Who Has.

The answer to this problem was:

  1. 2 x 4  = 8
  2. 16 - 8 = 8
  3. 8 divided by 2 = 4
  4. 11 - 7 = 4
  5. 4 divided by 4 = 1

We continued simplifying expressions until every student had a chance to contribute.  After spending this time working through this process, I wanted to check their understanding.  So I gave the following prompt to solve individually:


Once students completed the prompt, they worked on today's Countdown to STAAR.  Any additional time was spent working on Khan Academy.

Tomorrow will be a crazy day ... it is Homecoming.  So, we will attend our Friday Campfire meeting, leave to attend the High School pep rally, go to PE, have some students leave to ride the fundraiser limo while the rest of the kids was "Treasure Island," then we will head to Stephenville to see the Tarleton University students present the play "Treasure Island."  Whew!

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