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Domino Math - Using Dominoes to Problem Solve and Practice Math Concepts

Dots Fun for Everyone
It is believed dominoes evolved from dice. In fact, the numbers in a standard double-six set of dominoes represent all the rolls of two six-sided die. It is thought they originated in China around the 12th century. They have been used in a large variety of games for hundreds of years, and today, dominoes are played all over the world.

Games allow children to learn a great deal concerning mathematical concepts and number relationships. Often, they are required to use critical thinking skills as well as varied math strategies to solve them. Since dominoes make a great manipulative for hands-on learning, I created a book of domino activities for grades 3-5 that are great for students who finish early or for introducing a new mathematical concept or for use at a math center. Using dominoes for a math practice center is a way to engage students while giving them a chance to review math facts.

The activities and three games vary in difficulty; so, differentiated instruction is easy. The variety of pages allows you to choose the practice page that is just right for each student. This resource correlates well with the CCSS standards.
Dots Fun

The activities in Dots Fun for Everyone (grades 3-5) include four digit place value, using the commutative property, problem solving, reducing proper and improper fractions and practicing multiplication and division facts. The games involve finding sums, using <, >, and = signs and ordering fractions.

These domino math activities in Dots Fun (primary grades) include recognizing sets, place value of two and four digit numbers, creating domino worms, gathering data, using the commutative property, and practicing addition and subtraction facts. The games involve matching, finding sums, and using greater than, less than, and equal signs. For these 13 activities and four games, you may use commercial sets dominoes or copy the blackline which is provided in the resource. This resource links closely with the CCSS standards. 

Some of the domino activities in these two resources use games while others will extend, enhance or introduce a new math concept. Since children are curious and inquisitive, plus some may have never seen dominoes, allow time for play and exploration before beginning any instruction. This is constructive as well as a productive use of class time. If they are not given this, most children will fool around and investigate during the teaching time.

To view examples from these resources as well as a complete Table of Contents, download the preview or FREE versions available at my TPT store.

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Celebrate Pi Day which Is March 14th!

March 14 is Pi Day because March is the third month, and with 14 as the day, we get the first three digits of pi - 3.14! On Pi Day, nerds, geeks, and mildly interested geometry students alike come together and wear pi-themed clothing, read pi-themed books and watch pi-themed movies, all the while eating pi-themed pie. 

Pi is an irrational number that approximately equals 3.14. It is the number you get if you divide the circumference of any circle by its diameter, and it's the same for all circles, no matter their size. You can estimate pi for yourself by taking some circular things like the tops of jars or round plates and measuring their diameter and their circumference. Then divide the circumference by the diameter, You should get an answer something like 3.14. It should be the same every time (unless you measured wrong).  In other words, π is the number of times a circle’s diameter will fit around its circumference

Actually, 3.14 is only approximately equal to pi. That's because pi is an irrational number. That means that when you write pi as a decimal it goes on forever and ever, never ending. (It is infinite.) Also, no number pattern ever repeats itself.

Usually in math, we write pi with the Greek letter π, which is the letter "p" in Greek. You pronounce it "pie", like the pie you eat for dessert. It is called pi because π is the first letter of the Greek word "perimetros" or perimeter.  What is interesting is that in the Greek alphabet, π (piwas) is the sixteenth letter; likewise, in the English alphabet, the letter "p" is also the sixteenth letter.

But hold your horses!  Whether you like it or not, pi is everywhere. Here are a few more places it has popped up:
  1. The main character in the award-winning novel (and 2012 film) Life of Pi nicknames himself after π
  2. A circular room in the Palais de la Découverte science museum in Paris is called the pi room. The room has 707 digits of pi inscribed on its wall. (The value of pi has now been calculated to more than two trillion digits.)
  3. In an episode of Star Trek: The Original Series, Spock commands an evil computer to compute π to the last digit which it cannot do because, as Spock explains, “The value of pi is a transcendental figure without resolution.”
  4. Pi is the secret code in Alfred Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain and in The Net starring Sandra Bullock.
Here is more arbitrary information related to pi that I found interesting.
  1. If you were to print one billion decimal values of pi in an ordinary font, it would stretch from New York City to Kansas (where I live). 
  2. $2.85
    3.14 backwards looks like PIE. 
  3. "I prefer pi" is a palindrome. (It reads the same backwards as forwards)
  4. Albert Einstein was born on Pi Day (March 14) in 1879.
All this information about pi and circles can be found in a Pi Day Crossword. It includes two different math crossword puzzles about Pi Day and features 20 words that have to do with pi or circles. One crossword includes a word bank which makes it easier to solve while the more challenging one does not. Even though the same vocabulary is used for each crossword, each grid is laid out differently. Answers keys for both puzzles are included.

By the way, notice my "handle" of Scipi.  The Sci is for science (what my husband teaches) and the pi is for π because I teach math.

Even Today with Spell Check and Technology, Spelling is Important!

Noah Webster, an American lexicographer (one who compiles a dictionary) was the first person to write a dictionary of American English. It may have taken him more than 25 years to do so, but this book permanently altered the spelling of American English by offering a standardized way to spell and pronounce words. He learned 26 languages, including Anglo-Saxon and Sanskrit, in order to research the origins of our country's tongue. You may not know this, but Webster used the Bible as the foundation for his definitions.

Before his dictionary, Americans in different parts of the country spelled, pronounced and used words differently. To create uniformity, Noah used American spellings like "color" instead of the English "colour" and "music" instead " of "musick". He also added American words that didn't appear in English dictionaries like "skunk" and "squash". When he finished in 1828, Noah's dictionary contained 70,000 words.

During Webster's lifetime, American schools were anything but productive. Sometimes 70 children of all ages were crammed into one-room schoolhouses with no desks, poor books, and untrained teachers. The textbooks came from England. Noah thought Americans should learn from American books so he wrote a spelling book for children. Known for generations simply as The Blue-back Speller, millions of American children learned how to uniformly spell and pronounce words. Webster also established a system of rules to govern grammar, and reading. Clearly, he understood the power of words, their definitions, and the need for precise word usage in communication. Without a common oral and written language, he felt the country would remain divided.

Fast forward to today with the use of texting. Writing skills have turned into sentence fragments while spelling consists of numbers, symbols or abbreviations. These habits carry over when students are at school; consequently many really don’t know how to spell or write well. No longer can students punctuate correctly since text messages often contain run on sentences with no punctuation, In addition, with the constant use of lowercase letters, students fail to use capital letters where they should. How do I know? I teach at a community college where about 60% of our students are in remedial English which involves sentence structure, basic grammar and spelling. When assigning a written assignment, I must include how many words a good sentence contains and how many sentences are in an acceptable paragraph. Even these requirements do not guarantee a complete sentence.

It seems we have moved away from standard spelling to inventive spelling (an abbreviated, expedient form); yet customary spelling has not gone out of style. It is required at school, in business, at work and in just everyday life.  In addition, the correct spelling of words affects academic success. Students are frequently assessed on their skills in written language because it is considered a strong indication of their intelligence.

Spelling is an indication of a number of things when a person applies for a job.  When correct spelling is used, words are readable and communication is clear. This convinces a prospective employer that the job applicant has been well educated. It also tells them that they take care of detail and take pride in what they
present.  Let’s face it, university applications and job resumes littered with spelling errors don’t make it very far becuz badd spilleng is hrd two undrstnd wen yuu reed it.

Furthermore, good spelling streamlines communication. By following the identical rules for spelling words, we can all understand the text we read. Likewise, good spelling avoids confusion. In a way spelling is similar to football. It is up to the person passing the ball to make sure the receiver actually catches it. The same goes for spelling. If you write with intent and proper spelling, the receiver of that text will understand it.

As teachers and parents, we should care about the fundamental part good spelling plays in our language and everyday lives. We owe it to our students to give them the necessary skills and essential spelling tools for learning and communication so they can be successful.

If you liked this article and would like to purchase some useful spelling resources, check out these two games. Their purpose is to help and encourage students to practice spelling words in a non-threatening way while having fun learning to spell.


Surprise! Leap Year Doesn't Occur Every Four Years

We live by and teach our students that there are exactly 365 days in a year. In reality, the earth turns approximately 365 and a quarter times (six extra hours) on its axis by the time it has completed a full year's orbit around the sun, which means that every so often the calendar has to catch up.  Since those six extra hours add up to 24 hours over the course of four years (4 × 6 = 24), our calendar includes a leap year every fourth year.  (It's similar to receiving a free ice cream cone after getting your frequent buyers card stamped the fourth time.)  That is the reason the month of February has 29 days instead of 28 for a total of 366 days in the year.  (Yes, we have to wait an extra day for Christmas!)

This year of 2024 is a leap year, but why is the word "leap" used?  Believe it or not, it has to do with patterns. (All math is based on patterns!)  Typically, a calendar date that is on, say, a Monday one year will fall on a Tuesday the next year; then Wednesday the year after that, and so on. However every fourth year, thanks to the extra day in February, we "leap" over Thursday and that same calendar date lands on a Friday instead.  

Believe it or not, there is a mathematical formula for figuring out leap years. (Don’t you love it?) It goes like this: A leap year is any year whose date is exactly divisible by four except for those years that are divisible by 100, not 400. (No, I didn’t make this up!) So years that are evenly divided by 100 are not leap years; however, if the years are also evenly divisible by 400, they are leap years. BUT this is only a temporary fix! This will work for about 3,300 years, at which point we will be a day off - again!

For example, 1600 and 2000 were leap years, but 1700, 1800, and 1900 were not. In the same way, 2100, 2200, 2300, 2500, 2600, 2700, 2900, and 3000 will not be leap years, but 2400 and 2800 will be. Therefore, in a period of two thousand years, we will have 485 leap years. By this rule, the average number of days per year will be 365 + 1/4 − 1/100 + 1/400 = 365.2425, which is 365 days, 5 hours, 49 minutes, and 12 seconds.

So why does this formula have to be so difficult? Because, in reality, the exact number of days in a solar year is slightly less than 365.25 (365.242374, to be exact), so the algorithm is designed so that a leap year is omitted every so often to account for underestimating the length of the earth's orbit.

Unfortunately, there's an exception to the "divide by 4" rule.  (You knew there would be).  For some time, astronomers have been able to more precisely estimate the earth's orbit. In reality, that number is roughly 365.2422 days, or 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes and 46 seconds, just a smidgen under the 365.25 days previously discussed.  By comparing the numbers, we see that the number above is off by 26 seconds. To make up for this, a rule states there can only be 97 leap years over the span of 400 years, not 100 as you may think. [Source: U.S. Navy Astronomical Center] One way to remember the rule is this:  Years that occur at the turn of centuries such as 1900 and 2000 must be evenly divisible by 400. This is why 1900 wasn't a leap year but the year 2000 was.

Still confused? Purchase a new calendar each year to keep you up-to-date!