GEMS: Math Bundle

Math on the Menu

This unit provides strong mathematics learning experiences in a real-world context. The Rosada family asks your students for help as they open a Mexican restaurant. Students plan the menu, determine different combinations of tostada ingredients, analyze costs, set prices, expand into combination plates, and figure out the best ways to arrange tables and chairs in a new location.

Throughout the unit students gain increasingly sophisticated understandings of combinations. They have many opportunities to work with data organization and analysis, and to explore aspects of statistics. The unit also strengthens number sense, addition/multiplication abilities, and understandings of money in the real world.

5 Activities
144 pages
ISBN: 0-924886-16-1

Group Solutions

The more than fifty highly involving cooperative logic activities in this exceedingly popular guide are designed for groups of four students. Each receives a clue to a problem and needs to share the information with all other group members to find the solution. The entire group is responsible for the solution, and it can ONLY be discovered by connecting information from ALL the clues. Introductory sections discuss cooperative learning and logic in the classroom, including a section on bilingual presentation.

More than 50 Activities
151 pages
ISBN: 0-924886-48-X

Frog Math

In an artful interweaving of mathematics and literature, these activities jump off from one of the well-known “Frog and Toad” stories, “The Lost Button.” The story leads to free exploration of buttons, then sorting and classifying and a Guess the Sort game. Students design their own buttons and use a graphing grid to organize data. They also “guesstimate” the number of small plastic frogs in a jar and lima beans in a handful to develop the valuable life skill of estimating.

A Frog Pond board game helps students develop strategic-thinking skills. The Hop to the Pond Game focuses on probability and statistics. In the revised guide, all grade levels play the fair version of Hop to the Pond with six frogs. Then grades 1?Æ3 play the unfair version with 12 frogs.

6 Sessions
112 pages
ISBN: 0-924886-02-1

Algebraic Reasoning

GEMS Teacher’s Guide for Grades 3-5
Written by Jaine Kopp with Kimi Hosoume

The delightful activities in this guide help build a solid foundation in algebraic reasoning for students in Grades 3-5. Within a compelling and challenging context, students are introduced to Professor Arbegla’s “Fabulous Function Machine.” A letter from the Professor herself then describes a malfunction in the machine that students are asked to solve. Other letters with problem-solving challenges are received over the course of the unit as students gain essential algebraic understandings, learn about equations, and apply what they’ve learned to problems related to area, including the design of a bedroom floor plan. Throughout the unit, students write in journals and the class keeps adding to an “Algebra Toolkit.”

This new GEMS guide makes a very strong connection to the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) principles and standards as it builds crucial scaffolding for more complex algebraic reasoning in later grades.

6 Activities
140 Pages
ISBN: 0-924886-70-6

Early Adventures in Algebra

GEMS Teacher’s Guide for Grades 1-2
Written by Jaine Kopp with Kimi Hosoume

“Algebra for first and second grade?” you ask. “YES!” is the resounding answer.

This GEMS guide is designed to build a foundation in algebraic thinking for students in the early primary grades. Using the compelling context of “Zero the Hero,” students learn the important role zero plays in our number system. In a series of activities, including engaging games and challenges, students solve for unknowns, explore the concepts of equality and inequality, and represent and analyze mathematical situations using algebraic symbols. Throughout the unit, the teacher facilitates classroom discourse and encourages students to explain their thinking. Sample teacher-student dialogues are featured, based on real classroom interactions.

This new GEMS guide makes strong connections to the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) Principles and Standards of School Mathematics as it builds crucial scaffolding for more complex algebraic reasoning in later grades. This guide (and its companion guide for Grades 3-5, Algebraic Reasoning) plants seeds for all students’ success in algebra.

9 Sessions
176 pages
ISBN: 0-924886-77-3