I love when kids love math! Today was such a day!
Educators from my school were able to attend the TCEA conference in Austin recently. One of the sites that was brought back, and I fell in love with, was "Would You Rather....". I did find that most of the problems were too advanced for my 5th graders, but there are a few that I am able to have my students explore.
The one we explored today:
Would You Rather....
To begin, I asked each student to make a choice and explain why they thought it was the best choice. I explained that there wasn't really a right or wrong, I just wanted them to explain their thinking. Once everyone was finished writing, I asked them to share their writing with their table. Each person had to share. Then I invited individuals to share with the class.
Once we had a few opinions, I explained that we would be working with these items to see which was the better choice. However, each student would only get one dollar, one candy heart, and one quarter. We spent a few minutes brainstorming how we could solve this problem without the use of "enough" manipulatives.
I handed out the items and let the kids go:
They had a great time determining the number of hearts and the number of quarters that would fit around the perimeter of a dollar! Then using that information to determine how much money both offered! Once they had their answers, they were asked to draw a conclusion. Basically, I wanted them to tell me if their prediction from the beginning of class held true. They were required to use their data to defend their conclusion.
I believe most of my kids forgot they were even doing math today! I LOVE IT!
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