Grades 3-5 Math Problem Solving in Action_ Getting Students to Love Word Problems

Figure 8.1

Great Math Picture

Books

Math Text

The Lion’s Share—

Matthew

McElligott

My Full Moon Is a Square—

Elinor J. Pinczes

Actual Size—

Steve Jenkins

A Fly on the Ceiling—

Julie

Glass

Storyline

This story is about a dinner that takes place at the Lion King’s home. The animals come and eat and then share a cake. They end up dividing the cake into fractions. It is a hilarious story and students love it.

This story is about a frog who loves to read and the fireflies who love to listen. One night, the moon doesn’t come out and the fireflies end up saving the day by aligning themselves into square numbers.

This is a magical book that allows different animals to spring out of the pages of the book. It talks about and shows different sizes of animals. Students are mesmerized when they read

it.

This is a tongue-in-cheek tale of Descartes and how he came up with the idea for the Cartesian mapping system. It is a story well told.

Online resources

http://matthewmcelligott.com/lionsshare/projects.phphttp://mathgeekmama.com/the-lions-shar

e-lesson

s-and-printables/

http://www.uen.org/Lessonplan/preview.cgi?LPid=18924

http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/readers_guides/pdfs/JenkinsGuide.pdf

http://www.uen.org/Lessonplan/preview.cgi?LPid=11237

Activities

Have the students actually act out the story by cutting the cake (using a big piece of pink paper).

Have the students act out the story by modeling the square numbers with tiles.

Have the students measure the animal parts in both metric and customary measurements.

Have the students actually look at coordinate grids from malls, theme parks and subway schedules.

Questions to extend the learning

So, if the frog took half of

1 ⁄^8

,

what part of the cake did he take? If the beetle took ½ of 1/16, what part of the cake did he get?

So, if the fireflies came down in a 4-by-4 array, how many fireflies came down?What if it wasn’t bright enough and the fireflies had to come down in a 12-by-12 array? Can you model what that would have looked like on the grid paper and solve it?

How many centimeters shorter is the butterfly than the frog?What would a line plot of the length of all these animals look like?

Have the students locate different directions. For example, ask: “Which store is at B12?”Have the students make up questions using the maps.