Education Development Center
Word Problem with Rational Numbers—Balancing Bars of Soap
Here's a resource teachers won't want to wash their hands of. Given a task where a full bar of soap is on one side of a balance and 3/4 of a bar of soup and a 3/4-ounce weight is on the other side, young mathematicians must determine the...
West Contra Costa Unified School District
Division (No Remainders)
Help young mathematicians build a solid understanding of division with this base ten block activity. With the help of these popular math manipulatives, children model different math problems in order to reinforce the connection between...
Illustrative Mathematics
How Many Marbles?
Don't lose your marbles! This simple story problem helps make teaching division with fractions much easier. Work on this problem along with the lesson titled, How Many Servings of Oatmeal? to highlight the difference between the two...
Illustrative Mathematics
Reasoning about Multiplication and Division and Place Value, Part 2
The learner puts reasoning and estimation to work. The directions are to place a decimal in the answer to make the equation true. Pupils are to look at the two problems, one multiplication and one division, and estimate an answer. No...
Illustrative Mathematics
Running to School, Variation 2
Rose's commute to school is a fractional distance. After she runs part of the way, your class needs to determine what fractional distance she ran. This problem explores fraction operations through modeling and computation. The...
Curated OER
St. Patrick’s Day
Combine math, creative writing, and leprechauns in a fun St. Patrick's Day activity! Using a bag of gold coins and marshmallows, kids write a math story about a leprechaun that includes a multi-step equation to solve.
Illustrative Mathematics
Running to School
The object of this activity is to compute how far Rosa ran to school. Given in the exercise is the fractional number of miles between home and school and the fractional distance Rosa ran. The commentary shows several ways to have your...
Illustrative Mathematics
Running to School, Variation 3
How far is it between school and home? Here is a relatable activity where the participant runs to school a certain fraction of the way. That distance is given in miles. It is up to your learners to determine the distance between home and...
Illustrative Mathematics
Drinking Juice, Variation 3
It is up to the learner to find the amount of juice originally in a bottle, knowing what fraction of the juice is left, and the amount that has been consumed. The accompanying commentary provides a useful and detailed description of...
Illustrative Mathematics
Drinking Juice, Variation 2
An excellent activity using word problems where pupils interpret and compute quotients of fractions. The commentary includes using a fraction bar model and equations to represent the problem. In this variation of the resource, the...
Illustrative Mathematics
Comparing Products
How can 5th graders show understanding that 30 x 225 is half of 60 x 225 without completing the computation? They can use an area model and draw it out. An array, or an open array, is an area model that allows for young learners to...
Illustrative Mathematics
Making Cookies
Hooray for chocolate chip cookies! Ask your mathematicians to triple a chocolate chip cookie recipe and then reduce the recipe by one-fourth. Your class may need two days to complete, tripling the recipe the first day and reducing the...
Barnstable Public Schools
Math Relay Races
A plethora of activities make up a cross curricular choice page filled with math games—relay races, dice, and crossword puzzles—a survey challenge equipped with data organization, graphing, a quicksand recipe, Hula-Hoop activity to...
Illustrative Mathematics
Banana Pudding
Making banana pudding despite misplacing your one-cup measuring cup is easy as long as you can find your quarter-cup measuring cup! This real-life activity provides a good opportunity for learners to interpret division of a whole number...
Illustrative Mathematics
Grass Seedlings
Plants never grow at the same rate, and that is the antithesis for this word problem involving multiplication of fractions. On the learning exercise, Raul notices that Pablo's seedlings are 1 1/2 times as tall, and Celina's seedlings are...
Curated OER
Drinking Juice
Pictures, number lines, decimal equivalents, or Cuisenaire rods can be used to show insight into the meaning of multiplying fractions.Here, Alisa drinks 3/4 of 1/2 liter of juice. To find the total volume of the juice that Alisa drank,...
Illustrative Mathematics
Cari's Aquarium
The volume of a fish tank is a rather important measure when it comes to building an aquarium for different species of fish. In this problem, your kids look at how many different ways they can make a fish tank of a specific volume, then...
Illustrative Mathematics
Running a Mile
The single question in this activity has multiple ways to be solved. Two boys ran a mile. Their times were similar, except one time was a fraction of the other. Who ran faster? In demonstrating the answer to this problem, upper graders...
District 158
Plan an Adventure
For kids, taking a vacation is all fun and games, but after completing this pre-algebra project, they'll have a whole new appreciation for the planning that makes these trips possible. Given a budget of $5,000 to spend on purchasing the...
Curated OER
K-5 Mathematics Module: Number and Number Sense
Reinforce number sense with a collection of math lessons for kindergarteners through fifth graders. Young mathematicians take part in hands-on activities, learning games, and complete skills-based worksheets to enhance proficiency in...
Illustrative Mathematics
Overlapping Squares
The objective of this activity is to find the percent of the area of a two squares overlapping. Mathematicians find the ratio of area for the part that overlaps to the rectangle formed. The final answer is a percent as a rate per 100....
Illustrative Mathematics
Words to Expressions 1
Designed as a follow-up to the lesson plan titled Watch Out for Parenthesis 1, this activity asks young learners to write an equation for the calculation described with words rather than numbers and symbols. The treasure that 5th graders...