Concepts

Grades 3 and up Decimal Fractions to Decimals Decimals are a challenging concept and many students find it confusing. The key is to provide a lot of visuals and make sure students understand fractions. Decimals include a decimal point to represent a whole number plus a fraction of a whole number (tenths, hundredths, …

Arrays are a great way to introduce multiplication in grades 2 and 3. Playing with arrays will help students model multiplication as repeated addition and understand the properties of multiplication. It is very important that we help students visualize and understand multiplication early on so that we build a strong …

Dragon Times is an educational fantasy card game that aims to motivate children to practice multiplication and division facts while saving Dragons and casting magic spells. Goal: Save and free the Dragons of Times and become the Wizard’s apprentice. While playing Dragon Times children improve their mental maths skills and …

A few days back I gave my students a few”numbers crosses” to solve as part of an escape room activity. I call them number crosses because instead of words you write numbers on the tiles and you describe those numbers in words. They work like puzzles and they can get …

In how many different orders can the 3 Binions sit in their spaceship? If the blue Binion sits in the first seat then there are two ways for the three Binions to sit. If the purple Binion sits on the first seat there are two ways for the three Binions …

Symmetry surrounds us. People, animals, plants, everything on the earth and outside is symmetrical. Symmetry is nature’s artwork that creates harmony and balance. So why not have a symmetry lesson outside, in nature. Spring and fall are the best seasons for this activity. Finding symmetrical objects with students while on …

Divisibility Rules help us figure out if a number is divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5, 9, 10, 25 and 100. They help us perform a divisibility test easily and quickly. Students usually know the factors of the numbers 1-100 by grade four from practicing the multiplication facts. Divisibility rules …

Prime Factorization is the method of finding which set of prime numbers multiply together to make a number. In a previous post, we talked about factorization, which is a method of finding the factors of a number but not necessarily the prime factors. What is different with prime factorization is that we …

The order of operations is a group of rules that tells you the right order in which to solve different parts of a math problem. It is like an agreement we all made to be sure that we read and understand a problem the same way. According to the order of operations, we need to first …