Links to Multiplication Fluency Games

Below are links to some fun fluency games:

clear it multiplication

math lines multiplication

product blocks

multiplication blocks

math bingo

number trails multiplication

kakooma

multiplication snake

Gr 4 and Gr 2 Math Morning Pictures

The Math Morning was a great success with many families joining us for the fun.  It was great to see everyone enjoying the math stations.  Check out some pictures from the events:

GRADE 4:

GRADE 2:

Reminder - Gr 4 Math Morning this Wednesday March 8th!

Grade 2 Math Morning and "Tangy Tuesdays" at Jefferson

Hello,
Just a reminder that the Grade 2 Math Morning is coming up.  We hope that you can join us next week Thursday, February 16th from 8:45 - 9:30.  If you are not able to make it feel free to send in an adult representative - grandparents, uncle/aunts and other members of your family are all welcome!

Please RSVP to your child's teacher if you have not done so already.

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TANGY TUESDAY'S HAVE ARRIVED TO JEFFERSON - We recently purchased a subscription for each grade level to Greg Tang's "Tangy Tuesdays" math puzzles.  Students at Jefferson will now have additional opportunities to practice computational, reasoning, fluency and number sense skills that are fun and engaging.  These puzzles will be used as resource to provide extensions throughout the school year.

Greg Tang has also written many math books including some great puzzle ones. 

 He also has other additional resources that are worth checking out.  Greg Tang Math

Tangy thinkers in Mrs. Winterroth's first grade class who are working hard on these puzzles.

Happy Mathing!

Ms. Saldana

More Fun Educational Apps for itunes and Android

Hello,

Below are more suggestions for fun Apps for different skills and grade levels. I provided links to most of them. Some are easier to just search since they have more than one server that offers the game.  If you would like to see what is out there for educational apps sorted by age group for all areas of study follow this Link to Best Kids Apps.com.

Third and Fourth Grade

Wings- Practice mental multiplying and estimation with Motion Math: Wings! This fun math game helps children ages 4 and up develop a conceptual understanding using six different visual forms. It's simple to play – you just tilt your bird to the bigger number.  Multiplication representations include equations, arrays, and “groups of”. Link 

Zoom- Motion Math Zoom's zoomable, stretchable number line is missing some numbers - it's up to the player to put numbers back where they belong. The new game uses animals to represent abstract numbers: from dinosaurs in the thousands down to amoebas in the thousandths.  You can alter the level of play from within 20 to within 100 all the way to ten thousands.  The app also offers decimals on the number line! Link

Slice it- ONCE YOU SLICE IT!…YOU CAN’T STOP.  Fast Fun with a Geometric Flair!  "Slice It!" is all about slicing shapes into pieces that are equal in size.  Sound easy? It may start out that way, but soon you'll be cutting shapes that will puzzle you like never before.  Brainteasing puzzles: over 200 Basic Stages and a five-star rating system so you can play until you get it right!  Time to start thinking and slicing! Link

MT. Multiplis- Developed by teachers and experts in children’s cognition and learning, Mt. Multiplis is an engaging game that teaches multiplication through the commutative and distributive properties. While most multiplication apps focus on drill with digital worksheets and flashcards, Mt. Multiplis scaffolds learning to promote conceptual understanding, efficiency with multiplication strategies, and fact fluency. Link

Problem Solving - ALL Grades

KenKen-  A Little KenKen History: KENKEN was developed in 2004 by (no, not two guys named Ken) acclaimed Japanese mathematics educator Tetsuya Miyamoto. His goal was to improve his students’ math and logic skills. And what better tool than a puzzle? So he developed one that would be understandable, fun, and challenging for people of all ages and skill levels. Most importantly, he wanted the puzzle to encourage independent thinking, emphasizing logic, reasoning, concentration, and perseverance. His puzzles immediately met with unbelievable success and are now used the world over for kids, adults and the elderly. KenKen has proven to be one of the world's best brain exercises for people of all ages, and can now be found in over 200 publications worldwide.

Hanoi Puzzle-  The Tower of Hanoi is a mathematical game or puzzle. It consists of three rods, and a number of disks of different sizes which can slide onto any rod. The puzzle starts with the disks in a neat stack in ascending order of size on one rod, the smallest at the top, thus making a conical shape. The object of this puzzle is to move all the disks to another rod following two rules: One disk can be moved at a time and bigger disk can not go on a smaller one.
Move the disks onto the basket called ‘target’ as soon as possible. Your record will be registerd .

Set- Each day the Daily SET® Puzzle app generates a new puzzle so players can have fun and compare their rankings with other players around the globe playing exactly the same puzzle. The goal is to find all six SETs as quickly as possible. A SET is 3 cards in which each individual attribute (color, shape, number and shading) is either all the SAME…or all DIFFERENT on each card. SET® is the most highly awarded visual perception card game in history.

Engel’s Enigma- Engel's Enigma is a circle puzzle invented by Douglas A. Engel. In terms of difficulty, the puzzle lies somewhere between the 15 Puzzle and the cube puzzle of Ernő Rubik. Like those puzzles, the goal of Engel's Enigma is to first scramble the puzzle and then return it to its initially well-ordered state. Players can choose from three variations of varying difficulty. Link

Check out these Apps for Math Facts - ALL Grades

Hungry Fish- Your fish is hungry for numbers. You can make delicious sums by pinching two numbers together – instant addition! Keep feeding your fish to win a level and unlock new colors and fins.  Link

Sushi Monster- Strengthen reasoning strategies for whole number addition and multiplication by helping monsters make a target sum or product. Earn points with each correct answer… but watch out for distractions! To be successful, plan ahead and strategically select numbers from the sushi counter.

Link

Maths Bingo- Practice math facts (addition, subtraction, multiplication or division) to earn ice cream flavors and topping to feed to the squeezables.  Facts are random not by strategy or number. Link

Math Duel- Math Duel is a split screen mathematics game that pits two players against each other on the same device! Change settings for each player to level the playing field. New single player mode is great for fun math practice! Link

Scratch Collaboration Gr 3 Mr Chelman's class and Gr 2 Mrs. Roy's class

Our third graders in Mr. Chelman's class created a scratch math game and invited Mrs. Roy's second grade class to try it out.  This is a great example of how technology and curriculum blends together. In collaboration with their third grade counterparts, the second grade students had an opportunity to practice addition using the place value strategy.  

What is scratch? 
Scratch is a programming language and an online community where children can program and share interactive media such as stories, games, and animation with people from all over the world. As children create with Scratch, they learn to think creatively, work collaboratively, and reason systematically. Scratch is designed and maintained by the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab.  Check it out - click on the links below.

SCRATCH - Scratch is geared towards ages 8-16.  

SCRATCH JR - Scratch is geared towards ages 5-7. 

Reminder! Bottles and Cans this Friday January 6

Let's beat the record in January of the most cans collected!

Making Math Count in the New Year!

Making Math Count in the New Year!

“Math is a language of logic.  It is a disciplined, organized way of thinking.  There is a right answer; there are rules that must be followed.  More than any other subject, math is rigor distilled.  Mastering the language of logic help to embed higher-order habits in kids’ minds: the ability to reason, for example, to detect patterns and to make informed guesses.  Those kinds of skills had rising value in a world in which information was cheap and messy.”  Esther Cepeda, Daliy News, 2/23/14.

This excerpt is from an article “Why math? Why not?” from the Daily News and it makes a very important point: math teaches your child much more than just how to add and subtract, math teaches your child how to be a logical adult with strong reasoning skills.  Math is an intricate part of our everyday life.  Think about your daily routine and how many times you have had to problem solve a difficult situation or make reasonable deductions.

Here is a problem for all ages from Bed Time Math - http://bedtimemath.org/   if you haven't had a chance to check this website out I would highly recommend it.  There are many quick "thinker" problems that you can add to your bedtime routine.  

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Here's your nightly math! Just 5 quick minutes of number fun for kids and parents at home. Read a cool fun fact, followed by math riddles at different levels so everyone can jump in. Your kids will love you for it.

KING OF THE GARBAGE CAN

December 12, 2016

By Laura Overdeck   |   Animals, Daily Math, Science and Nature

You probably know that it isn’t a great idea to eat out of the garbage. But for animals like rats, goats, and cockroaches, it’s a yummy treat. The smartest of these guys may be the raccoon. Raccoons, known for their funny black masks and poofy ringed tails, love breaking into people’s garbage cans and flinging leftovers everywhere as they snack. And they’re really clever about it, as we’ve seen here ourselves: the neighborhood raccoon always finds a way to undo the latch, tip the can over, and pop off the top.  In fact, studies have found that raccoons are smart enough to open 11 out of 13 different complex locks, and can also remember tricks 3 years after learning them. We hope we can do that, too!

Wee ones: A raccoon has 5 claws on its front paw. Is that more than, less than, or the same as the fingers on your hand? Count to check!

Little kids: If a raccoon starts breaking into your garbage at 8 pm and succeeds 2 hours later, when does he get in there? Bonus: If you put 13 locks on your garbage can and the raccoon can open 11 of them, how many locks are still stopping him?

Big kids: If a raccoon opens the 12th lock in a giant row, then the 16th, then the 20th, what lock does he open next to keep the pattern?  Bonus: If there are 42 houses on your street and the raccoons break into half of them, how many people’s garbage cans do they invade?

Wishing you a Happy Math Year!

Victoria Saldana

Math Specialist/Instructional Coach

  

Answers:
Wee ones: The same number as your 5 fingers.

Little kids: At 10 pm.  Bonus: 2 locks.

Big kids: The 24th lock.  Bonus: 21 houses.

Save the Date! K and 1 Math Morning

We hope to see you!   Please RSVP to your child's teacher if you haven't already done so.  Watch for these reminder flyers to come home via your child's backpack.

                                    Kindergarten Math Morning - Monday, December 5th  8:45 am

                                             Grade 1 Math Morning - Tuesday, December 13th  8:45 

Turkey Math

It is hard to believe that December is just around the corner but first let's talk Turkey, turkey math of course.  Think about all the math you have to do to put a meal together.  Involve your kids in these types of decisions.

1. How big of a turkey to get to serve all the guests, how many pounds of potatoes you need to make 8 servings of mash?   
2. For the younger ones, ask them to figure out how many place setting, spoons, forks and so forth are needed for all the guests.  
3. You can also estimate how many oz or gallons of beverages will be consumed and then see if you were close after the holiday. 

Here are some fun facts to impress your family and friends -

• According to the National Turkey Federation, 88 percent of Americans have turkey on Thanksgiving. So if our math is correct, that leaves 12 percent of people who don't eat turkey on the holiday.
• A lot of cranberries are needed to accompany all that turkey on Thanksgiving. In all, 768 million lbs. (350 million kilograms) of cranberries were produced in the United States last year. Two states — Wisconsin and Massachusetts — were responsible for most of the production, producing 450 million and 210 million lbs. (200 million and 95 million kg) of cranberries, respectively.
• Turkey was the first meal enjoyed by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin when they were on the moon. Now you can be the talk of your dinner table this holiday — a perfect turkey tidbit to impress holiday dinner guests.

                                                             -from http://www.livescience.com/41506-surprising-thanksgiving-facts.html

Happy Thanksgiving!

Jefferson Problem Solving Board is in full swing!

Jefferson Problem Solving Board

I am very excited to see so many students at my board every morning this week.  I already had to empty my basket twice because it was filled with returned work.  New problems will be posted Monday, November 14 (about every 2 weeks).

A notice was sent home last week via your child's backpack, in case you missed it below is a description of how this program works.  If you have any questions please call or email me: saldanav@

What is the Jefferson Problem Solving Board? - This program gives students extra practice with critical thinking skills in grades 1-5.  Who should participate? Everyone! Due to the fact that this program is leveled by grade level cluster and the problems themselves are leveled, students of all math abilities can participate.  This set up allows for remediation and enrichment.

How does this work?
1. Student selects a problem set from their grade cluster.
2.  The problems themselves are leveled.  Each problem has a star next to it.
     1 star is easy - 4 stars is difficult.
3.  The student completes these problems on their own time, no deadline.          
     He/she doesn't have to complete all the problems, if the 4 star problems are  
      too challenging for example, then they can be skipped.
4. Once the student completes the problems, then he/she can bring the  
     problems back to the math specialist to be corrected.

For every twenty five stars that the students earn (25, 50, 75 and 100) they get their name on the Math Super Star board, their name is announce in the morning announcement, and they get a special prize from the math specialist.

What kind of problems will the kids get to work on? The problems are a mixture of word problems, math puzzles, basic number operation reviews and most importantly they are fun to do.

Math Happenings Around Our School

There is a lot of great math learning that is occurring  everyday in our classrooms.  Students are engaged in problem solving, critical thinking tasks and collaborative learning.

Here are some snapshots -

Mr. Chelman's 3rd Grade class working on division and multiplication word problems - video

Grade 1 Students in Mrs. Marks class working on counting collections

Gr 4 Students in Mrs. Doherty's class working on place value

Gr 2 Students in Mrs. Roy's class working on Comparison Problems

Jefferson Bottles and Cans Blog

Check out the NEW Jefferson bottles and can blog.  Click on the link below

http://jeffersonbandc.blogspot.com/

Merging "Gaming and Math" and "Mysteries and Math"

Check out these books - great math puzzles and math mysteries for your child


Copied from Math Is Fun - link to more resources and games

Below is a link to a game that I came across recently that looks like a regular adventure game but the characters have to solve math problems to advance through the game.  For example, do you need your character to enter an elevator?  Solve 7 x 3.  Check it out!

Big Brainz - link to their website
Article about this game - link

Easy games to play to help foster Fact Fluency and other Basic Math Skills

MATH GAMES

(click on the links in purple)

VIDEOS - Below are links to short videos that have some fun and quick to make fluency games.  Having kids practice these a few times per week and over vacations will help your child tremendously.

• Target Game - gr 1-5 basic facts game for all operations
• Adding Large Numbers using Base Ten Blocks - gr 1 (after January) and gr 2
• Math Operation Game - gr 4 and gr 5
• Coin Game - gr 1-3

Board Games- Battleship, Blink, Checkers, Chinese Checkers, Concentration, Dominos, Mastermind, Othello, Parcheesi, Connect Four, Simon, Stratego, etc.

Ø Many board games will advertise the thinking skills they help with, such as memory, visualizing, patterns, etc.

Ø As you play with  your child, discuss best strategies.

On-line Resources and Games- most of these games are apps too.

• Dice and Card Game to Practice Fluency - games with direction and materials that are ready to print (all grade levels)
• Free On Line Fact Game - ABCya
• Fun 4 the Brain - Fact Practice Games
• Sum Dog

End of Year Fluency Expectations by Grade Level. 

Kindergarten- Add/subtract within 5

1st Grade-       Add/subtract within 10

2nd Grade-      Add/subtract within 20            

3rd Grade-       Multiply with factors up to 12

                        Add/subtract within 100 (mental math)

4th Grade-       Multiply/divide with factors up to 12

                        Add/subtract within 1000 (mental math)

Math is Everywhere - Mrs. V's 4th grade Art Class

I was invited by our wonderful art teacher Mrs. Vulfovich to see her integration of math and the arts in her lesson.  Students in fourth grade can be seen below designing a board game and dice to go with it.  The students were learning about cube patterns and practicing math skills such as measurement and skills.  Mrs. Vulfovich also integrated math vocabulary (parallel, horizontal and vertical) within the art lesson.

Welcome Back!

Great to be back, I am looking forward to my second year at Jefferson Elementary. Over the summer the teachers in the district added some wonderful math lessons and projects to our curriculum that promote critical thinking and strengthen problem solving skills.  We are looking forward to a lot of great math learning. 

The Problem Solving Board is slated to start this year in late October.  I will talk more about this during our curriculum night on September 15th.

I am including a link to some "must have math apps" for you and your child to try out:

Free Must Have Apps for Elementary Math

Wishing everyone a great start to the school year! 

Summer Math and Fun Ways to Avoid Summer Brain Drain!

Fun Ways to Avoid Summer Brain Drain!

During the fun summer months children tend to forget some of the academic skills learned during the school year.  Helping your child avoid the summer “brain drain” can be easy and lots of fun. Math games are a great way not only to occupy your child but also to keep their skills sharp in the summer. Read on for ideas!

Resources for you Going Home with Report Cards: Every student will get a calendar where they color in a sun for every problem that they complete over the summer.  We are asking that students complete at least 15 problems each month (July and August).  The problems cover most of the skills that they learned this year.  We will be collecting the calendars (and reading logs) in September.  

Fluency: You will also receive a fluency letter from me (blue paper) with tips and fun resources on how to support this skill over the summer. Your child's latest results will also be attached to give you a starting point.  Teachers have been working all year to build up fluency and we would like to ask you to help continue this practice to ensure that the kids retain what they learned and practice facts that they are still working through. 

District link to the summer math and reading logs if you need to replace a copy:

Math and Reading Logs

Recommended Daily Math Activity Time

Students entering Pre K, K and grade 1 = minimum 5 minutes

Students entering grade 2 = minimum 10 minutes

Students entering grade 3 = minimum 15minutes

Students entering grades 4 and 5= minimum 20 minutes

Summer Blast Math Books

At your local library there are many great picture books that teach various math skills.  Below are some great titles separated by topics:

.

Chance, Probability, Graphs, and Data

Ø  Do You Wanna Be? You Chance to Find Out about Probability by Jean Cushman

Addition

Ø  Addition Annie by David Gisler

Ø  Imogene's Antlers by David Small

Ø  Math Potatoes: Mind-stretching Brain Food by Greg Tang

Ø  The Mission of Addition by Brian Cleary

Division

Ø  Amanda Bean's Amazing Dream by Cindy Neuschwander

Ø  The Little Mouse, The Red Ripe Strawberry and the Big Hungry Bear by Audrey Wood

Ø  The Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog! By Mo Willems

Money

Ø  The Big Buck Adventure by Shelley Gill and Deborah Tobola

Ø  Once Upon A Dime by Nancy Kelly Allen

Ø  Sold! A Mothematics Adventure by Nathan Zimelman.

Subtraction

Ø  The Action of Subtraction by Brian Cleary

Multiplication

Ø  Anno' Math Games by Mitsumasa Anno

Ø  The Best of Times: Math Strategies That Multiply by Greg Tang

Wishing you a Wonderful Summer!!

Happenings and things.....

The Problem Solving board has come to a close for this school year.  I am planning on continuing this next school year.  Thank you for your support with this program by encouraging your child to participate.

Next time you visit the school, stop by J13 and check out our "Caught Doing Math" bulletin board. I have been taking pictures of students throughout the school year demonstrating their math skills.  I will continue to fill the board in the next couple of weeks.

The Barnes and Nobles fundraiser was a great success and they have a lot of great math books.  If you are looking to vary your library at home a bit, check out my suggested book list from the previous post.  

Mr. Barrett performing for the event:

Money Confident Kids - Great Resource for Parents

Check out this great free resource from scholastic to help your kids understand important financial topics such as money, savings, even retirement.  Activities are kid friendly, there are even a couple of great on line games that teach these concepts. http://www.scholastic.com/mck/parents/