Linking It To Other Things

Raven's Grade 5/6 class recently went to see the movie The Lorax.  He decided to use some of the schema the students had about the movie and tie it into a measurement problem for his students to do.  Here is the problem he gave them:

The question brought up a lot of good discussion points with his class.  They each worked in groups to complete the work.  When they were done, the work was placed on the blackboard and the students engaged in a congress to talk about what they had done, and what they noticed.  The students engaged in some rich talk about where exactly the trees would be located, and if there was an easier way to help them find out how many they would plant.  There was talk about how the model that is drawn may not actually represent the math that was happening on the page.  This is a great discussion to have as many students get confused when it comes to area and perimeter.  I've found that sometimes when using the geoboards to help find area and perimeter students don't always count the pegs correctly, and therefore come up with an incorrect answer because of the strategy that they used.

When they were done their discussion, Raven created a highlights chart with some of their thinking.  The students can use this chart to help them as they progress through the unit:

This is a great example of how a topic that the students are interested in, or learning about in other subject areas can be used to create problems to solve with your students.