Measuring surface area continues to be a challenge for many students in the junior grades. Recently someone was asking me about this, so here are a few thoughts. EQAO Problem: The container of popcorn shown is in the shape of a rectangular prism. What is the smallest amount of paper … More Understanding Surface Area »
Another exciting day of job-embedded learning with students and educators in a primary class. The teacher had just introduced her students to perimeter the day before. – “estimate, measure, and record the distance around objects, using non-standard units”. The students were organized into pairs and given a shape and snap … More Perimeter and Multiplicative Thinking »
I love problems that provide authentic opportunities to cluster several big ideas. Recently, I was in a classroom where the teacher gave the following problem to his students. Tia is filling a bucket with water. She knows that 500 ml of water comes out of the hose every 10 seconds. … More Proportional Reasoning – Measurement »
With our focus on proportional reasoning many educators are discovering that it is everywhere in our math curriculum. Once we become aware of this we know what to look for and listen for so that we can impact students’ fluency and flexibility with numbers. Recently, I gave the following problem … More Proportional Reasoning and Area »
