Smarties and Fear Factor

We started some new math units on multiplication and fractions. To make it fun, we are pretending we are on Fear Factor (thanks to my grade partner for the great idea).

As a hook, I showed the kids this video (click to play):

The reaction included a lot of shrieking. Some of the kids shrieked too.

Our math problems have been similar to:

“[Student A] had to eat 7 plates of 4 African Cave Spiders and [Student B] had to eat 3 plates of 9 African Cave Spiders. Who ate more? How many more?”

It’s a multi-step problem that requires them to not only multiply, but to also add or subtract to find a difference. They’re so good at it, I had to teach them how to stack multiply to work with multiplying 2 digit by 1 digit problems to add to the challenge.

Some of the games and puzzles I’ve introduced for this unit have been Around the World and Square Numbers.

Around the World involves two students facing off and whoever answers my multiplication problem correctly first, moves onto the next opponent. Whoever is the last person to win the last face off wins.

Square numbers looks something like this:

They have to figure out which numbers fit so that they multiply horizontally and vertically to produce the numbers at the ends.

We also started our unit on fractions, which can be a really hard concept for kids to grasp. The first day was a fun fractions day where I gave them each a bag of 10 Smarties and had them represent their Smarties colours as fractions.

Today, we learned about equivalent fractions. We started off by colouring in fraction strips to help us visualize fractions that are equivalent to 1/2.

Equivalent fractions is an expectation for the Grade Fours, so we worked in a small group on understanding this concept. 

Meanwhile, the Grade Threes have to be able to divide a whole group into equal parts and define it as a fraction, so they worked on a problem where they had fake Smarties (black dots) and had to divide them evenly into different groups. Then they had to define (using fraction language) each group.

And because the Ontario curriculum requires the students to use tools and manipulatives to help them work with fractions, we have these up on our front white board as a tool in addition to our own fraction strips.

Now onto Literacy…

I wanted our new unit to involve a read aloud so I chose Book One from the And Then It Happened series.

Each chapter is an isolated story involving the same three mischievous boys. The stories are silly and hilarious and the kids love them. Today, we read a chapter from Book Two, actually called “The Fart Chart”.

Basically, the three boys keep track of the students in their class who breaks wind and allot them points when it happens. Whoever gets 100 points first is crowned the Farting Champion. Their poor teacher doesn’t address the issue but endures daily headaches and feels so nauseous that she has to take her sick days.

My class thought this story was hilarious.

Backtrack for a moment: yesterday, my friend and teaching partner combined our classes to talk about a strategy called I Statements. They are used to help students calmly talk through challenging situations.

After we read “The Fart Chart”, I had the students write a letter to the class from the point of view from the teacher (point of view is one of our learning goals) using I Statements. Some of their letters were hilarious. Here’s a great example:

Before we ended our language block, the kids promised me that they would create no such contest while in our classroom hahaha.

Sometimes you just have to have some crazy, silly fun. 

We ended the week with a fun Valentine’s Day celebration. Of course, I baked them all cupcakes and loaded them up on sugar and other sorts of junk food before sending them home. We also watched Honey I Shrunk the Kids…they thought it was a very retro choice.

And they spoiled me right back.

And now it’s a long weekend. Enjoy your Family Day!