April Math Center

It's about time, teachers, for ...

And a new month means new math centers and bulletin boards. Combine both in How Many Ways? - April Edition.

This is a fun, open ended, critical thinking, math challenge. It works well as: 

• an anchor activity
• a math center
• a sponge activity 
• a challenge for fast finishers 

Similar to Boggle, the challenge in this activity is to arrive at a target number in many different ways. It readily provides differentiation by allowing the teacher to choose between 2 questions: one asks students to count to the target number; one requires students to use math operations to arrive at the target. It may be easily adapted to any elementary grade level and provides differentiation within a single grade.

Reproduce the raincloud icons and place them on a bulletin board along with the How Many Ways? question of your choice. These icons come in color and black line; with and without counting dots. Choose the math operation(s) appropriate for your students and post them, as well. Then invite your students to determine how many ways they can reach the target number. Students may use each icon only once, however, they need not use every icon. Add an extra challenge by requiring that the numbers used must touch each other.

This activity is CCSS aligned. 

My students use Post It notes. They write their equation(s) on a Post It and stick it up along the side of the display. At the end of each day, we calculate How Many Ways we found the target number.  Then I put up a new target number and we are ready to go for the next day.

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