Exploring Tenths

Zearn Math is a comprehensive approach to learning and teaching K-5 math. Zearn offers for each day's math block: Digital Lessons for students and Zearn Materials and Reports for teachers to use during Small Group Instruction. Zearn uses my Gifted and Talented math curriculum, which is very rare to find.

My math block is 75 minutes long and will be implemented as followed:

1.) Whole-Class fluency (5-15 minutes): I will start with an Whole-Class Fluency lesson using Zearn's fluency Resource to plan whole-class fluency exercises. The students will need their personal white boards to participate in the lesson. We will count by tenths and write 3 tenths in both fraction and decimal form. We will practice with several examples.

2.) Whole-Class Application Problems (5-10 minutes): I will use Zearn's word problems resource to plan whole-class-solving exercises. I will use the following problem:

Ed bought 4 pieces of salmon weighing a total of 2 kilograms. One piece weighed four tenths kg, and
two of the pieces weighed five tenths kg each. What was the weight of the fourth piece of salmon?

I will give the students 3 minutes to solve the problem on their own, 1 minute to share their answer with a partner, and then we will discuss as a whole class.

3.) Small group rotations (60 minutes): I will have 3 groups of students. Each group will move through the following 3 stations:

Station 1: Independent Digital Lessons- Students will through Digital Lessons at their own pace. They will complete this on Zearn.com with their personal access code (this is where the technology aspect comes into play). Zearn provides teacher reports as well to see who mastered the content, who has not yet completed it, and who is struggling and needs additional help. Zearn also provides challenge questions and this is very critical for my students. This is because they are identified as gifted and need that challenge to meet their academic needs.

Station 2: Math Learning Centers- Students work in pairs and small groups. I will provide the Problem Set for them to complete from Zearn. This Problem Set matches my GATE curriculum.

Station 3: Small Group Instruction- Students will work with decimal and fraction cards to match the decimal to the correct fraction. They will spend a lot of time explaining their thinking to me and their peers.

To close the lesson, the students will receive an exit ticket that requires them to write the number represented in place value disks in standard form. They must write it in both fraction and decimal form.