March Resources for Math Teachers.
St. Patrick's Day Math
Early Childhood:
8 leprechauns followed the rainbow to a pot of gold and found 24 gold coins. If they share the gold coins equally, how many coins will each leprechaun get? Write an equation with a variable and solve.
25 leprechauns followed the rainbow to a pot of gold and found 400 gold coins. If they share the gold coins equally, how many coins will each leprechaun get? Write an equation with a variable and solve.
Upper Elementary:
Jessica picked some clovers. One was a four-leaf clover and the rest were three-leaf clovers. Altogether she counted 31 leaves. How many 3-leaf clovers did she pick? Explain how you solved the problem.
Leprechauns hoarding their treasure-filled pots with 2.5 tons of gold. If 1 ton equals 2,000 pounds, how many pounds of gold did they have?
If 1 pound equals 16 ounces, how many ounces of gold did they have?
Middle School:
Counting and recounting their gold each night, it took each leprechaun 3 hours to count 4 pots of gold. At this rate, how many pots of gold could be counted in 21 hours? How many hours would it take to count 48 pots of gold? Include a graph to prove your solution.
Website Resources:
Pre-K
Pre-K St. Patrick’s Day Math Activities
Early Childhood
Free early childhood St. Patrick’s Day Math Activities
Upper Elementary
Middle School
Hibernation
Whether it feels like spring or not, spring is now upon us and animals are beginning to awaken from their long winter’s sleep. Wake up your math mind with these hibernation-themed problems!
Early Childhood:
Preparing for his long winter’s sleep, a squirrel tucked away 54 acorns in his nest. During the first month of winter, he ate 12 acorns. How many acorns did he have left? Write an equation to show your thinking.
Upper Elementary:
Black bears can hibernate up to 7 ½ months. Approximately what fraction of a year is that? Approximately how many days are there in 7 ½ months? Write a math rule to explain how you solved this problem.
Middle School:
During hibernation, male black bears can lose up to 30% of their body weight, while female black bears lose 40% body weight. If the average black bear weighs 250 lbs, how much do you estimate the bear would weigh after hibernation? If the average female weighs 150 lbs, what do you estimate the female bear weighs after hibernation? Write a matching equation with a variable to show your thinking.
Website Resources:
Early Childhood
Hibernation Activities for K-3 Students
Upper Elementary
Classroom Activities About Hibernation
Middle School
Same But Different Math
When using the Same but Different routine, students are forced to look at the features, the characteristics, the defining qualities of what we are comparing. They notice the overlap of ideas as well unique distinguishing qualities. But specifically saying, “these two things are the same” has a way of lowering cognitive tension and beginning the building of a bridge to understanding. Using this explicit language with students (How are these the same but different?), I see an opportunity for a deep impact on student learning. By using the images on this website, as a routine, we have an activity ready for use in the classroom, but at a more important deeper level, we are teaching a way of thinking: grayscale thinking, categorical thinking; building a network of ideas but also an approach to how we learn and think about all of mathematics.