You know there are four basic mathematical operations, right?
- Addition
- Subtraction
- Multiplication
- Division
Your children probably know that as well. Do they know the meaning of sum, divisor, quotient, the difference between a product and a dividend? You might be surprised by the answer to that.
Many teachers have told us that their students were not familiar with math terms, and I certainly didn’t think they were lying, but it still came as a shock to me when I saw the number of SEVENTH GRADE students at a particular school who missed the question:
What is the sum of 4+4+4+4+4+4 ?
Many of them didn’t understand the word, ‘sum’. This school had a high proportion of students for whom English was a second language, but we found the same problem, to a lesser degree, at schools with few ESL students.
Click here for PowerPoint or here for PDF to accompany this video.
As always, you are free to modify these resources as you see fit.
Other students did not realize that they could add 4+4 and then add the SUM of that to 4 and keep doing it until they had the answer.
For those students, we have our MAKE IT AN EASIER PROBLEM video, again, with accompanying PowerPoint and PDF you are free to modify to make your own.
This uses an example of subtracting two three-digit numbers, which we have found to be difficult for students (and adults) – far past the age at which mastery is supposed to have occurred. This problem-solving tip will help.
Have you ever seen someone make a mistake that has you slapping your forehead?
Seriously, how can anyone add 305 and 92 and come up with 97 as the answer?
Estimation and the world’s largest Venus fly trap is a video that teaches how to estimate and do a reality check using an example of a road trip to see (you guessed it) the world’s largest Venus fly trap.
As always, here is a PowerPoint and here is the PDF to go with the video.
All of these resources supplement the Spirit Lake game, which runs on Mac and Windows.
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