Story: Inspired by the way Ben, a character from their read aloud book Wonderstruck, relied upon his vision, students in this classroom are asked to notice shapes around the room. They are specifically challenged to find and measure rectangles. Students can use a ruler to measure the rectangles in centimeters or inches and are asked to document the measurements and figure out the area of each rectangle they find. This vitamin is one of several during the recent weeks that have focused on the concepts of area, perimeter, building arrays and learning the process for the double/triple digit multiplication algorithm.

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 learning to build rectangular arrays, students can begin by using Unifix cubes, centimeter cubes or multilinks. As student skills develop, move to base ten blocks for building double-digit arrays.

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, activity centers 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: When working with arrays, start discovering area and perimeter by having students make all the array configurations they can discover for the numbers 1-36. This project also highlights prime and square numbers as well. Move onto building larger two digit arrays and eventually this will lead to learning the algorithm for the multiplication.

Story: Looking over a set of theater blueprints inspired by the read aloud Wonderstruck; students analyze each room to determine how much space was designed. Once they have determined the perimeter measurements for each space, they begin building a model using base ten blocks to help them determine the overall area. These students are already very familiar with building single digit multiplication arrays, thus, this project requires them to build double-digit arrays and explore the algorithm process for documentation.

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 the

Suggested manipulatives: For learning to build rectangular arrays, students can begin by using Unifix cubes, centimeter cubes or multilinks. As student skills develop, move to base ten blocks for building double-digit arrays.

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, free exploration 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: When working with arrays, start discovering area and perimeter by having students make all the array configurations they can discover for the numbers 1-36. This project also highlights prime and square numbers as well. Move onto building larger two digit arrays and eventually this will lead to learning the algorithm for the multiplication.

Story: Students have voted to create a Geojacket model of Seattle for the school’s annual Theme Fair project. Now they have to examine some models and practice creating their own Geojackets. To begin, students explore a manipulative called Geoblocks; they are wooden multi-dimensional geometric blocks that have some type of relationship to one another. For this vitamin, teachers have created “nets” from centimeter grid paper that fit around particular Geoblocks. Students are asked to use their knowledge of arrays to find the surface area of each net. They are also challenged to see if they can look at a flat net and visualize the folded 3-D shape. 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 area and perimeter explorations, color tiles are a good beginning manipulative. For this vitamin, the teachers are asking students to refer to area and want them to start exploring surface area, so geoblocks are ideal for this project work. You will also need multiple pieces of centimeter grid paper for each student when working to explore and document his or her findings with Geoblocks.

Prep time: Adapting the vitamin wording to fit your specific story, putting manipulatives out in the room, creating the centimeter grid paper cutouts 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, free exploration 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: For work with area and perimeter, have students start building and labeling single digit rectangular shapes. Move to larger double digit shaped arrays and the algorithms for partial products. For this vitamin, teachers are referring to that previous learning and asking students to explore the concept of surface area. For this concept, explore pre-cut nets and eventually move toward having students create their own nets around more complicated shapes. Extend by having them combine blocks and create a singular net for that shape.