Prime and Composite lesson plan

Hello again!  Today, I'm sharing another lesson plan that I've written for my first "core curricular" class in Grad school.  I have adapted a typical math lesson on prime and composite numbers to include multiple modalities to suit varied learning styles.  Instead of creating a Google doc, I decided to just paste it into my blog post this time for easier access. 

My independent practice sheet was a freebie from Ms. Ashley's Resource Room  Thanks so much for sharing! 

Prime and Composite lesson plan

Content area:  Math          Grade level:  3 – 4          Date:  Winter 2013

Objective: 

Students will demonstrate understanding of, and classify prime and composite numbers with 80 percent accuracy. 

Standard Addressed:

CCSS.Math.Content.4.OA.B.4 Find all factor pairs for a whole number in the range 1–100. Recognize that a whole number is a multiple of each of its factors. Determine whether a given whole number in the range 1–100 is a multiple of a given one-digit number. Determine whether a given whole number in the range 1–100 is prime or composite.

Purpose:

The goal of this lesson is to demonstrate the abstract concept of prime and composite numbers with varying modalities.  In addition to the teacher’s explanation and mental modeling, students will view and interact with the graphic organizer as well as manipulatives. These added visual and kinesthetic modalities, along with guided interaction, support English learners, as well as other learners with varied learning styles.  This lesson assumes that students are already fluent with many multiplication facts, and understand the concept of dividing a number into its subgroups of factors. 

Introduction & Guided Practice:

The teacher begins by passing out bags of two-color counters to each table, and asks students to model the number 16, as if they had just completed a multiplication problem.  Volunteers explain how they have grouped the counters, either in arrays or small clusters.  Then, all counters are returned to the bag, and the teacher asks that students model the number five.  The teacher encourages discussion among group members regarding how the counters will be grouped.  After students struggle for a few minutes with this dilemma, the teacher calls students’ attention to the graphic organizer that s/he has placed on the board or document camera (see below).  The chart has two columns for prime and composite respectively.  “What differences did you find when grouping five and sixteen?” asks the teacher, as s/he copies students’ replies on a list displayed for the class.  When the students voice the fact that five can’t be divided evenly, it is drawn on the Prime side of the chart, displaying 5 and 1 as its only factors.  Students then volunteer possible groupings for 16, which include 4 and 4, 8 and 2, and 16 and 1, and are drawn on the composite side of the chart.  Students then pick a number at random between 1 and 12, and the class decides together, using two-color counters whether it can be divided evenly.  Then, a student volunteers to draw its factors on the appropriate side of the chart.  This is repeated once again to provide additional guided practice.  The teacher asks students what important words they have used when discussing this process with group members, and adds any to the list which students have omitted.  These can include prime, composite, factor, multiple, etc.  This provides English learners with practive using the academic vocabulary surrounding this concept. 

Independent Practice:

   The teacher then distributes the independent practice sheet (see Here), which also contains a completed concept map at the top.  There are five or six exercises on this sheet which involve deciding whether numbers are prime or composite, and listing the factors of composite numbers.  Students are permitted to ask fellow table group members for clarification if they have questions.  They are also permitted to model with the counters if needed.  The teacher circulates to answer questions and monitor student activity.  S/he may need to provide additional scaffolding to some students. 

Closing:

Students will return to large-group setting after a predetermined time, and offer any conclusions or discoveries that occurred to them while practicing.  One or two volunteers may add another number or two to the graphic organizer.  The teacher collects the independent practice sheets, which do not need to be finished. 

Assessment & Extension:

The independent practice sheet will serve as a formative assessment to determine which students have successfully classified the attempted numbers with 80 % accuracy.  This concept, as with most others, will then be incorporated into future authentic problem-solving activities. It can also serve as a center activity for those who have met the objective, and a guided math group activity for those who have not.   Additional practice can be gained from textbook exercises assigned for homework for those comfortable with the concept. 

Enjoy!

Middle School Science Freebie

Okay folks, I must admit, I'm just a little out of my comfort zone here.  I don't have any experience with middle-schoolers.  I was asked to write a content-area literacy lesson for this age roup for my foundations of literacy class.  So, here is the result!  It asks students to make connections between their own knowledge, other texts, and a digital article from Time for Kids magazine.  And, there's a little science at its core.  The article touts the amazement of finding a complete, dead whale whose species had only appeared as bone fragments in the past.  I wanted students to connect this discovery of a current species to the inferences that scientists make about dinosaurs and other fossil evidence.  At the end, there's an extended writing activity where students make inferences about an animal skeleton image before seeing the picture of the actual animal, which is an African lion.  For those of you that teach at the secondary level, or even upper elementary, feel free to try it out and let me know what worked, and what didn't.  Please also let me know if the images aren't present, and I will Email them to you. 

Enjoy!

 For today's Cyber Monday post, I thought I'd share Carol Hurst's Children's Literature Site.  There are synopses and reviews of thousands of children's books as well as ideas for classroom discussions and post-reading activities.  I have found this resource especially helpful because I've been looking for nonfiction books to use in the primary grades.  The Common Core Standards encourage us to provide children a more even balance between fiction and nonfiction texts.  The earlier children are introduced to nonfiction at appropriate reading levels, the less intimidting nonfiction will be as they grow as readers.  But there is also plenty of great fiction to be found here too, along with a free newsletter. 
 

 Happy teaching!  Enjoy!

February Currently

Okay folks, it's time once again to link up with Farley at Oh boy! 4th Grade!  She always has such cool stuff going on over there.  Here's my Currently.

I'm still feeling a little behind, but I'm slowly catching up.  I just can't believe it's February, and the school year is like more than half over! 

Dynamic Characters freebie

This week, my fourth-grader and I have been exploring a few books by Particia Polacco, especially Chicken Sunday and Babushka Baba Yaga.  Both of these books demonstrate a theme of acceptance and looking beyond prejudice.  Both have characters whose attitudes change over the course of the story.  That's why I created this Dynamic Characters Chart  Sorry it's rather plain, not all full of cute-ness ;(  Oh well, one day I'll have the cute-ness factor figured out.

This comes just in time to link up with All Things Upper Elementary for the Free For All Linky Party!


Hop on over and get yourselves some freebies that everyone is so kind to share.

Happy teaching!

Predict-o-Gram Freebie

This week, I learned a new word study strategy from my Foundations of Reading class.  It's called Predict-o-Gram.  The idea is that when a handful of familiar and unfamiliar words are presented to students, they predict where they will appear in the book to be read.  This helps students to think about the context.  I made a little freebie to demonstrate this strategy Here  (Does anybody know how to link to the document with the image??)

Steps for using this strategy:
1.  Decide on 6 - 10 words from the book, which are important to the understanding of the text.
2.  Show them to students, and use them in context.  (You could have students turn-and-talk to use them in sentences with a partner).
3.  Have students predict whether the words will be used to describe the characters, the setting, the problem or the solution, and place them on this recording sheet. 
4.  Adfter reading, confirm if predictions were correct. 

This could either be used in a large-group mini-lesson, or in small-group guided reading. 

Note:  Some of this information was paraphrased from Figure 8.11 on P. 262 of Nettles (2006) Comprehensive Literacy Instruction.  Enjoy!

Cyber Monday... I'm back!

Hello again, I have been neglecting my posts just trying to get caught up after the holidays.  I am in my second semester of graduate school, taking two courses; one covers the Florida accomplished practices, or FEAPs, and the other covers the foundations of teaching reading.  In discussions with my classmates, I ran across this great resource from The Los Angeles Office of Education  This is a varied list of phonemic awareness assessments for primary students.  I would suggest using these as formative assessments to be used for forming groups and planning systematic instruction.  There are detailed instructions for administering each, and some even have video demonstrations!  Best of all, it looks like they don't take very long, and we can frame them as games!  YAY! ;) 

Enjoy!