Multiplication, Factors, and Multiples for Number Sense Intervention Group

I finally had time to take pictures of my Number Sense Intervention tasks and wanted to share with you today. In an earlier post, I told you guys:

I have been on a journey this year to ensure that my 4th graders master their multiplication facts. When I use the term "master," I mean with fluency and automaticity--no tricks, no fingers, no count-by's down the side of their page--just automatic fact recall.

Back to the cards, I took all of the "Find the Missing Multiples" and "Which Multiple Does Not Belong" activity cards, printed them on a different color of cardstock for each number set, and put them each on a ring. I try to meet with my Multiplication Intervention group for 20 minutes 3 or more times a week. I meet with them during one of their stations or while other students are completing task cards. I prioritize this group because I know that their math success and confidence lies in gaining better number sense. {I'm even thinking about starting a math/multiplication club during lunch once a week to move some of our practice time out of math class time}.

I love having these cards on a ring because they are ready to grab at any time that we have an extra minute to go over multiples and factors, and multiplication facts. (Think--lining up for specials, lunch, whole-class bathroom break times, end of the day, etc.) Just show one of the cards to your kiddos and teach them to allow others "wait time" before they shout out the answers. You can even have them give you a thumbs up when they are ready with an answer.

Let's take a look at a week with one set of these number sense intervention tasks:

Day 1:
Pre-Assess the Group using 1 to 4 of the "Which of These Does not Belong" puzzles. (I'd use the student notebook pages rather than the task cards for now because it gives them a place to write how they know the number does not belong.) Allow students to share their ideas to provide space for you to gauge misunderstandings and depth of understandings. {Some students have really great insights although they may have trouble with fact memorization}.

Day 2:
Work together using Discovering Patterns to find patterns and rules for "multiples of..." the number you are working/intervening on. Continue getting students to verbalize the patterns they see. (For example, have you realized that some of your students may not realize that a multiple of 4 or 6 must ALWAYS be an even number? When I saw a student write 4 x 9 = 37, that's when I had my AH-ha! about number sense and multiplication facts.) I've included some of the ideas students should come up with in most of the downloads. This is the time to allow students to discover their own ideas, but also to hit home ones like when the multiples alternate even-odd-even-odd, or when all multiples are even.

Day 3-4: Go back to the "Which of these Does Not Belong" cards (for fun, game-like use in small group--I like to have students use a white board to jot down, rather than call out, their answer.) Use student notebook pages to have them explain how they know the number does not belong. Students can share in pairs or in the small group. Expect individual students to begin being able to explain deeper number sense as they pick up ideas from your teaching and other students' insights.

Day 5 and on...Practice with reciting multiples using the "Find the Missing Multiple" and the Number Searches (like word searches). Students can complete these for morning work or in a quiet center/station. Encourage students to recite their multiples even if they know the answer to the puzzles. Multiples recitation is one of the building blocks to multiplication fact memorization. And dang, if they can't memorize a fact for whatever reason, I surely want them to be able to accurately and rapidly recite multiples WITHOUT finger-counting.

Other Ideas for Using the activity cards: 
1) These intervention tasks are perfect for having a volunteer work with a child as an intervention. While I like to use these in a small group (to meet more students' needs), a volunteer could pull one child at a time and work more closely on the multiplication set that student needs. These resources and activities could even be used by an eager parent who wants to help their child master multiplication facts more quickly.

2) Based on where students are with mastering multiplication facts, create student groups. Once or twice a week, you can give students practice time in their small groups with the activity cards.

3) Using all of the multiplication intervention activity card sets (or combinations of sets) have students deal cards equally to one another (2-3 players) and play War or other type of game where students compare the answer they get when solving the puzzle and then whomever has the highest result (factor/multiple) gets to keep the cards.

4) Display problems on interactive whiteboard for "bell-ringers" or when you have extra time. Have students show their answers on a white board

I designed these intervention activities on the basis that many of my students who are not mastering their multiplication facts need to develop greater number sense and to increase their "count by" speed and ability. The more practice you can allow students, the better. They can complete the same activities again and again until they are comfortable with the multiples of a specific fact family. If you want to check these out on TPT, here's links to the BUNDLE pack and the individual sets. (Note that you can grab two right away for free!)

Multiplying by 2's TRY IT FREE
Multiplying by 3's
Multiplying by 4's
Multiplying by 5's
Multiplying by 6's
Multiplying by 7's
Multiplying by 8's
Multiplying by 9's
Multiplying by 10's
Multiplying by 11's
Multiplying by 12's

All of the Facts: Number Sense Intervention Bundle

And don't forget, the Teachers are Heroes sale is on {in about 10 minutes here!} and you can get many products up to 28% off. My store is on sale for ya and my cart is full!! It's a great time to re-stock since we are mid-year or pick up some bundles to save even more!

Happy night yall!

Multiplying and Dividing Fractions Plans

You might recall that going into this quarter, I figured out a planning routine for differentiation that I think is AWESOME applesauce! I take all of the materials I have (task cards, worksheets, etc) and place them on a continuum of difficulty. (If I need to fill in holes for lower levels or higher levels, I begin searching for resources or create my own). In addition, I outlined the quarter with FOCUS CONCEPTS (new material) and REVIEW CONCEPTS (1 day/wk).

I outlined my fractions unit {loosely} before the quarter began, and of course, things have already changed a bit. Mainly, I realized that it would be okay to push a few things to next quarter (like coordinate planes) and spend an extra week on multiplying and dividing fractions. {Keep in mind that I do not suggest only teaching fractions for 4 weeks. We already spent a large chunk of 2nd quarter on fractions--adding, subtracting, and a little intro to multiplying. Can you tell I could literally spend ALL year on fractions and be in MATH~nerd~HEAVEN?}.

I thought I was differentiated to the max already, but as I began to teach my three classes, I understood that what I had considered lower-level needed to be even more straightforward or scaffolded for one of my classes (for this group, I have went back to my old math workbooks). Now, don't get me wrong, these kiddos that I have to drop back to the worksheet for CAN get it and have done so, but I found that they need a more straightforward approach first and then they move into the task card sets. With a worksheet, they seem to get more accomplished and grow more in their confidence that they CAN solve the problems--and they know they will be moving on to task cards, which they have a positive attitude about.

Here's my fraction outline in a continuum format. The first icon will be the easiest/basic entry level, with the activities/practice work moving into increasing levels of difficulty. Also, it is important to note that some of the individual sets of task cards (like the Chili Math Multiplying Fractions) already include questions in increasing level of difficulty. This pack of task cards has 60 cards that I broke into sets. Some of the first questions are straightforward multiplying fractions problems, while some of the later task cards make students think backwards to figure out the factors that were multiplied instead of just the product. Needless to say, these cards have kept us busy busy for a week (with whole group minilessons also included at the beginning of each math class). The extension column includes materials for those students who finish the tasks above and beyond and are ready to move on to other concepts or look at the focus concept in a new way.

Based on my routine math schedule that I brainstormed before the quarter began: 

Mon-Wed: Practice with Focus Concepts (new material we are trying to master, students work through the continuum)
Thurs: 1/2 time Data Day (charting our exit slips performance and assessing on an OLD skill); 1/2 time: Algebraic Thinking Day
Friday: 1/2 time remediation on old skill (based loosely on assessment performance) and 1/2 time continued work on Focus Concept (some students may be working on extensions while others are 'secretly' being remediated, and others are completing work from the week that they understand but just need more time to work on). Some students may also use mobymax.com as a differentiated spiral review/to fill in some unmastered skills.

I will say that in getting the quarter started last week and getting to know my new students, I decided not to implement the Thursday/Friday schedule until our second week back. We will definitely have assessment/data/algebra on Thursday and Remediation/Review on Friday this week.

By the time I teach math for the third hour, I am burned out...and worried that I can't fix everyone's issues and misunderstandings. But, after having a little lunch and getting to my planning time to further differentiate and plan for the next day, I get really excited and LOVE the ability to focus on only a few subjects (I'm also teaching reading/social studies integrated into an hour and 20 minute block).

I hope your teaching life is happy, and please comment with questions as I am hoping that I am able to explain what I am doing clearly, but I am not always sure it is!

Modeling Multiplication of Fractions

It sure feels like I have been writing about fractions like CRAZY~CRAZY, but we spend almost all of 2nd quarter and part of 3rd quarter learning fraction concepts. Are you looking for a way to launch your unit on multiplying fractions (read-elicit some prior knowledge and a reality check on where students are in their fraction understanding?) I created these task cards to do just that with my students. I wanted to focus on representing situations/word problems with models and equations. I also incorporated the opposite--representing models and creating word problems. It was interesting to see my students try to color the fraction models to represent the word problems.

Did I mention that these cards grew from the fact that I was pretty sure that many of my high-achieving students could solve the equations for multiplying fractions, but I was not sure that they truly understood what they were doing or why you would multiply a fraction by a fraction or a fraction by a whole number. With these cards, students were exposed to examples, had to represent what it meant on a picture, and had to create their own situations/word problems.

I included 16 task cards each for multiplying fractions times a whole number and fractions times a fraction. 8 of the cards in each set focus on modeling a word problem and 8 of the cards focus on writing a word problem and equation to represent a model.

The student answer sheets for these task cards include all parts students are to complete (IE-models, equations, written word problems, etc).

I also made a version of the task cards that are one to a page so that you can show them on the smart board. This is actually how I used the problems to launch the lesson (students had their recording sheets and I displayed the cards on the board so that we could "math talk" about what we were thinking and share our representations.) After day 1, students worked on the task cards independently. These task cards fit 4th and 5th grade Common Core standards for fractions.

Have you checked out my other recent math posts? Here's a run-down: 

Fractions Fractions Fractions  (differentiation strategies and subtracting fractions with regrouping)

Adding and Subtracting Fractions w Unlike Denominators

Division with Fractional Parts (Multistep and CHALLENGING!)

Multiplying and Dividing Fractions with a Focus on Area Word Problem Task Cards (House Plans Themed)

Multiplying and Dividing Fractions Word Problem Task Cards (cupcake theme)

You can check out all of my fractions products HERE @ TPT

Oh yeah, I also made an "Everything Fractions" pinterest board, if you want to follow along. I've already pinned some goodies, especially websites for integrating technology in math, but I will keep pinning every time I see a great fraction idea.

I'm cooking up one more idea for an interactive fraction lesson that I hope I can make work...

Thanks for stopping by!

~Multiplying and Dividing Decimals: House Plans Themed Task Cards~

Do you use my Themed Task Cards in your math classroom? I just made a set of DECIMAL multiplication and division task cards based off of my Multiplying and Dividing FRACTIONS: House Plan themed task cards. Get students to work on accuracy with multiplying and dividing decimals as the work to solve area problems and recreate the given house plan.

Check out the answer key to see the types of problems students will solve.

Multi-Step Word Problems Ready!!!!!

Finally...
                 I
                    am
                          SO EXCITED
                                                    to have this set of word problems finished!

Not only can I not wait to get into the classroom this week and get these babies printed off to use the first day we come back from break, I am SUPER DUPER excited to share these with you! This is the first product I have made by purchasing a set of clip art and I love the way it turned out. (So, now I think I will be addicted to buying clipart to make snazzier goods for my class and other teachers!)

Teach your students how to solve multi-step word problems with these 10 problems from "School Supply Central." The 10 math problems in this set require students to think through the problem solving process. These problems mainly require students to multiply and divide whole numbers and interpret remainders, but other concepts are also embedded. If you require students to write equations for the problems, you are also incorporating the Algebra standards. (Common Core Alignment: 4.OA.3, 4.OA.4, 5.NBT.2, 5.NBT.5, and 5.NBT.6)

These problems would be a good challenge for 4th graders, designed for 5th graders, and would provide challenge to most 6th grade students still learning to analyze word problems.***These problems were modeled after NC EOG released items and other state's released testing problems but can be used at any time of the year*** (Like this problem I talked about earlier today) Click on over to check out my School Supply Central problem set.


Now, while I was working on this product, I knew I also had to revamp my "problem solving process" so that I can teach how to solve these problems when we return from break AND I wanted to create a new product for linking up with All Things Upper Elementary.

And was born (or re-born), the problem solving graphic organizer:

 I also included step-by-step explanations of the graphic organizer that you can use with your students (pull up on the smartboard, go through the comments to explain the 4 parts of the problem solving sequence).

I feel like this product took forevah-eva to get ready, but it's all those finishing touches that we must do before we upload! Hope you LOVE LOVE LOVE it, and I hope you can use the freebie! (PS: If you purchase the multistep problem solving task cards, the problem solving steps graphic organizer is included in the download).


Thanks for stopping by!
Tammy