I am attempting to teach my math curriculum in small groups. Do any of you have any ideas for math games or centers that are appropriate for 4th grade? Thanks!
I am doing this as well. I will have 4 small groups, but only meet with 2 a day, which means a lot of independent work. The book is out of print, but there is a book called "The Good Time Math Event Book" by Marilyn Burns. It is very "70's" but the activities are fantastic, and each one is one page of instructions and one page for a worksheet. The directions are all written like a comic book, and easy to follow. There is also a sort of objective or explanation at the bottom of the page. I have copied each page onto card stock and will laminate. Then will put the worksheets at the tables. There are about 10 activties for each math strand. There will probably be about one a week. The book is really good. All of the materials needed are things from around the house, beans, jars, string, newspapers, etc. Here are a couple of the activities, so you get the idea. Writing the letters of the alphabet (captials) and using a mirror to see which letters are symmetrical. She has a sort of data collection sheet and they look at the similarities of the letters to think about why some are symmetrical. This is one of the easier ones. Another is "counting" how many beans in a jar without counting one by one. She has them figure out how many in one handful, spoonful or some other way, then use that information to estimate how many are in the whole jar. There are other things, like measuring your body, lots of things like making pentominoes and other really cool "investigations." I am calling them Math Labs. I am actually going to have the students set them up like an experiement and make a prediction, then test it. The book is cheap on Amazon, maybe 3-5 dollars. I REALLY love this book! I am also doing Math Journals, which will be writing prompts about math (from a book called "Write about math, More than 200 prompts to develop essential math skills -grades 3-6") and they will do story problems where they clearly explain their thinking in the journal as well. (The story problems will be from the curriculum.) (there is another book, called Marvelous Math Prompts, grades 2-4 that I want to get for my lower students.) My other centers will be fact practice with games, flash cards and mad minutes (timed with a partner who uses a stop watch.) Independent practice- basically worksheets of those skills that just need a little drill and kill or things that are fun but don't get a lot of attention, like roman numerals, or other things like that. I also have math story books, that I may put out sometimes. Things like "The Grapes of Math" or "The Math Curse," "Meatballs and Spaghetti for All" etc.
I use Terc Investigations for the main lessons and math projects. The independent math is supplemented with workbooks from various sources. Evan-Moore, Scholastic, etc. The other books I use are listed.
Are you using the Everyday Math games? I'm trying to do a better job of teaching and using them with my 2nd graders this year, but your kids should be coming to you in 4th grade with some knowledge of those. They actually like doing some of them, and most reinforce Ev. Math concepts, like Name That Number, Addition Top-It (you could use 3 cards) and others. I have heard of 4th graders in my school doing some Everyday Math game that has to do with baseball ... not sure of the name. But if you can use some of those for when kids are done with their Math Boxes or small group work, it will save you a lot of busy work getting even more centers prepared/laminated, etc.
The teacher across from me plays Grand Slam Math with her 4th graders and they love it. It is sold by Lakeshore- however it is a little pricey. I also made file folder games using Evan-Moor's Take It to Your Seat book. The kids seem to really like the games. My kids also like using those Hot Dots games using those little light up pens. They have them for math, the states, reading and you can also buy just the dots to make up your own games reinforcing whatever skills you need to.
I do use the EDM games during center time. The program does have many valuable games, however, not necessarily games to go along with each concept. For example, we are working on geometry, but there are no games related to this topic. However, I did discover a fun little section in my teacher's manual this weekend called "reteaching" or "extending the activity." FOr each lesson, there are activities that the students can do. It's amazing what you find when you read ALL of the resources! Thanks for all of the great ideas and suggestions!
