
Today, my students worked on matching up concrete models to decimals and relating it to expanded notation. Making the connections that they are all related can be difficult to understand. Thankfully, I heard a bunch of my kiddos say, “Now I get it!” as I was walking around the room! That is the reason I teach…to hear those very words!!
How I set up this activity and how it went!
I posted the guided question slide asking how we can show decimals in different ways and asked them talk among themselves. I heard comments like money, fractions, number line, base ten, etc… I even had one answer “brownies” because of our decimal brownie lesson last week. I loved that one! Here is the link to that lesson if you need a great introductory or fun follow up lesson to decimals. It’s a student favorite for sure. Of course, it does involve actual food and some school sadly don’t allow that anymore. 😦

Then, I introduced the target and instruction slide. I read the target and asked for some of the vocabulary words I had heard early and let them know I would be listening for math language as I walked around the room. I also explained the instruction slide in detail. I wanted to make sure everyone understood what to do before I sent them off to do the work. (Tip: Make sure to over explain that each row on the paper should be a match. I had one student that automatically glued the pieces down randomly and he had to start over). After there were no more questions, off they went!!
I roamed the room and helped anyone that might have been struggling. I did put an example up on the board of a random number to show how expanded notation should look as a reminder. Also, some of my students still need help recognizing coins and their worth as well. So, I opened a Chromebook and put up our digital “Helpful Math Charts” slide up from their Google Classroom.

I had a couple students finish early and showed them how to write it out as a fraction on the side of the paper as the other students were finishing up.

This lesson took a little over an hour from beginning to end! When all the students were finished, we met back on the carpet. I showed the last slide and the kids answered some questions and discussed something we noticed and learned. I then gave them all an exit ticket that they had to draw on and show me they understand. Tomorrow, I will pull a couple kiddos that need just need to see me at my conference table for a few minutes and then we should be good!
Please let me know if you have any questions and you can find this resource by clicking the link HERE.
Have a great day and I will try to have a new lesson blog up in a week!
Rachel
Love your lessons!
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Thank you so much!
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