Story: These first and second grade students have heard that the Worlds Fair was in Seattle 50 years ago. They are working with a seemingly real 50th anniversary fair committee to design the monorail cars of the future! This vitamin is a request for help from the committee, asking the students to re-envision the window designs for the monorail cars. The teachers want them to begin relating fractional values to their symbols. Students are given Fraction Tiles to help with dividing the window sections and finding relationships. Of course, they are reminded to build draw and record their findings. In the video, you see how students work beside, talk and listen to one another’s ideas. You see several students drawing different types of representations for their work and one boy working to discover the fractional relationships of his Fraction Tile pieces.

Suggested manipulatives: For this vitamin, working with fraction tiles is ideal. They are thick plastic tiles with a different color for each fractional piece. These are wonderful for learning greater than/less than, equivalencies, and all operations. A must have in a classroom, even with very young students.

Prep time: Adapting the vitamin wording to fit your specific story, putting manipulatives out in the room and copying the vitamin documentation forms will take about 15-20 minutes. Set up is always more fun and shorter on time if you do this activity with a colleague.

Classroom time: Asking children to “do their best work” for each Math Vitamin assumes that some children will need a longer time than others. Ideally you want to offer a block of time for Math Vitamin projects and have another task available (writing, spelling, etc.) for those students who finish work prior to their peers. For this project allow 45-60 minutes for students to work through all the steps.

How to individualize/stretch: Explore, explore, explore! When presenting a new manipulative or math concept, give the student plenty of time to make connections. Start with greater than/less than activities, move to what pieces of the same color can you combine to be the same size as one piece of another color and then finally, start adding the written labels for what students have built and drawn.

Story: These first and second grade students are working with Cuisenaire Rods to find all the possible fractional pieces for each rod. The teachers want them to begin relating fractional values shown in their drawings to the actual written symbols for each fraction. Of course, they are reminded to build draw and record their findings. In the video, you see how students work beside, talk and listen to one another’s ideas. The classroom is set up to encourage movement during learning activities, as we want children watching and learning from those around them. You see one child working with a teacher to discover that ten centimeter cubes are equal in length to one orange rod. Another boy is building a vertical stack of red “2’s” as he tries to make it equal in height to the orange “10” rod. Building vertically is one way of exploring the manipulative. You see another student comfortably drawing out the models of one 1/1, ½, ¼ for a rod equal to 8 centimeters. All Math Vitamins require students to build, draw and record their work as well as share their thoughts with peers and teachers. The strong UCDS math community within each classroom is developed through the process of peer and teacher conversations that focus on exciting mathematical tasks and engaging ideas about the various approaches to solve them.

Suggested manipulatives: For this vitamin, working with Cuisenaire rods is ideal. They are multicolored rods ranging form one centimeter in length through ten centimeters. These are wonderful for learning greater than/less than, equivalencies, multiples, factors and some number operations. They require a higher level of abstract thinking, as a student must be able to understand that one block can also be something other than one item, it has a relational value to all the other pieces.

Prep time: Adapting the vitamin wording to fit your specific story, putting manipulatives out in the room and copying the vitamin documentation forms will take about 15-20 minutes. Set up is always more fun and shorter on time if you do this activity with a colleague.

Classroom time: Asking children to “do their best work” for each Math Vitamin assumes that some children will need a longer time than others. Ideally you want to offer a block of time for Math Vitamin projects and have another task available (writing, spelling, etc.) for those students who finish work prior to their peers. For this project allow 45-60 minutes for students to work through all the steps.

How to individualize/stretch: Explore, explore, explore! When presenting a new manipulative or math concept, give the student plenty of time to make connections. Start with greater than/less than activities, move to what pieces of the same color can you combine to be the same size as one piece of another color and then finally, start adding the written labels for what students have built and drawn.