This week we had five whole days of school!  And even better, we had five math warm-ups!  Check ’em out!

Monday

Tuesday

This warm-up question illustrates just how authentic and real-life I try to make these.  This one really came from a conversation I had with a group as they were working on the problem I gave during work time on Monday.  It was just where I wanted us to go, and so presenting it as a warm-up made sense.  And when it can be suggested as a kid’s idea instead of mine–which it really was, anyway–that’s even better.

Wednesday

As they did these warm-ups, the focus was on finding common denominators to help them add.  Rather than finding the LCM, however, I want them to connect these to work we’ve already done with fraction-percent equivalents; they know they can double or halve certain fractions to make other ones.  Mostly we’ve worked with thirds, fourths, fifths, sixths, eighths, and tenths, but I threw that 25 and 50 one in there to see if they could transfer the thinking to a similar problem.  They could. 🙂

Thursday

This one reminded (or introduced to some) us of important vocabulary of improper fractions and mixed numbers.  As we added these, they focused on changing the mixed number to an improper fraction, adding them, and then reducing it to simplest terms.  Notice how the last one has the fraction circled?  It was on this problem that someone figured out that we could add the whole numbers and then just add the fractions and put them back together.  Smart, huh?  Again–this was so much more meaningful that they discovered it on their own, than if I just told them that they could do that as a shortcut.

Friday

These problems encouraged my friends to focus on the strategy we had discovered at the end of the warm-up the day before, and also threw in some vocab we already knew (sums).  By the end of this conversation, there some kids who were smiling, which was nice considering all the frowns I’d seen early on in the week.  🙂

On a side note…sorry for the mess of the charts this week.  I ran out of chart paper and had to use the backs, too!  It’s resourceful, right?  Or just messy…not sure which. 🙂