Magical Math Dust!

Dec 1, 2017

It’s December, the most wonderful time of the year! To celebrate the winter wonderland we are kicking off a new series: Shannon’s Magical Math Dust.

magical math dust

For the next few weeks, Shannon will put her years of classroom experience as a teacher and an education consultant to work to bring you practical solutions to your burning questions in a Q/A format. No question is too small for a sprinkling of Magical Math Dust!

Submit your questions here: https://goo.gl/CPbTZB

To kick us off, here is our first reader-submitted question…the question that inspired the series!

Question:

I need some of Shannon’s magical math dust, ie. any tricks she has for teaching unknown partner.  For example, there are 10 apples, 8 of them are red, how many are green?

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Answer:

1.) On the Counting Buddy, have the students show the total number of apples with the beads by pulling over 10 beads. Then, push eight beads to the side to represent the eight red apples, and see how many are left to figure out how many are green.

blue plate2.) Take a buffet style plate with three sections put 10 counters or unfix cubes in the largest part of the plate. Separate eight of the counters out into one of the smaller sections to represent the eight red apples, then see how many are left that to go into the other section to represent the green apples. If you get a plastic plate, they can write on it with dry erase markers!

3.) You can also do represent this kind of problem with a ten frame or double ten frame as well!
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