Bridges Blog Archive for Computation

Guest blogger Lorraine Trina, Math Coach from Lincoln K-8, a Warren City School in Ohio, writes to say that students are rapidly gaining number sense through Bridges.

The Lion's Share: A Tale of Halving Cake and Eating It, Too, a 2009 publication by Matthew McElligott, provides an entertaining look at the concepts of fractions and doubling. In the story, an ant is invited to the lion king's dinner party. The other guests demonstrate horrendous table manners. When the king passes the cake, each animal takes half of the cake he is passed.

The Math Learning Center is pleased to announce the release of the Number Rack App available at no charge from the iApps Store in iTunes and as a free Web application. The rows of moveable, colored beads encourage learners to think in groups of fives and tens, helping them to explore and discover a variety of addition and subtraction strategies.

Vonnie Oyer teaches fourth grade Bridges at 91 Elementary School in Canby, Oregon. After using the Word Resource Cards for commutative and associative property, she decided to make additional cards for zero, and identity and distributive properties of multiplication.

Exploring multi-digit multiplication during Unit 2 in fourth or fifth grade Bridges? Amy Radden and Kendra Brush from Evansville Elementary in Casper, Wyoming, developed multi-digit multiplication posters to illustrate some of the strategies used in Bridges.

Multi-Digit Multiplication Strategy Posters (free pdf)

Want to put a little movement into teaching Order of Operations? Jennifer Runde teaches a 5/6 blend in Ontario, and finds that her students quickly catch on to the acronym, "BEDMAS" when it's combined with hopscotch. She first asks small groups of students to create a hopscotch diagram using the acronym. In the model diagram at left, student start hopping from the top, saying:

Guest blogger Sydney Cohn is a first-grade teacher at Hopkins Elementary School in Gwinnett County, Lilburn, Georgia.

By now we've all heard of the need to reach our bodily-kinesthetic learners. It's such a treat when we are able to do this during our math lessons. Yes, there's the obvious jumping or hopping while you are skip counting, but how about a life size 100s grid outside?