Technology in Your Classroom : How To... :
How To... Integrate Math and Technology
By Linda Lindroth
With a bit of literature, too - it's easier than you might think!
There are many ways to incorporate technology into the study of math and numbers. Whether you decide to use your word processing program for story problems or use a spreadsheet to help calculate $1 words, I hope you and your students find these activities fascinating.
Word hunts
Send your students to a website to hunt for words pertaining to a current science or social studies theme. Have students open a word processing document so they can type the words that they find as they scan the website for information. Older students can "cut and paste" to create a dictionary. As they copy words from web text and paste them into a word processing file, they can find pictures that go with the words, creating a content dictionary that can be used as a study guide.
Primary students can search a website for words that begin with each letter to create an alphabet book. Or, they can search the content for repeating words and create a number book where each page represents a word that they find one time in an article, two times, three times, etc., all the way up to 10. Extend their skills by using the "Find" command in the browser to search for words.
In the news
The newspaper is also a great way to reinforce vocabulary. Open a news article online and use the Find tool to search for words from your spelling list or word wall. Students can search the news for references to numbers or economics. They can copy news text into a word processing document and count the words, then use Find to see how many times a particular word is used. Frequently-used words can be graphed.
Use a thesaurus to find synonyms for these words to add interest and variety to student writing. Visit www.m-w.com for the online Merriam-Webster dictionary and thesaurus. While you're at this website, visit WordCentral for a student dictionary and dozens of word games to strengthen vocabulary.
Word problems
One of the best ways to make math "real" is with story problems.
A subscription to MathStories.com gives K-8 teachers access to thousands of word problems.
MathStories.com is a subscription service for grades K-8 with a database of thousands of word problems aligned to national and state standards. The problems can be accessed in English or Spanish, which makes it great for ESL use at home.
You and your students can even submit original story problems to be considered for the database. This is a great opportunity to reinforce keyboarding and word processing skills – and provide an authentic audience for their writing. www.mathstories.com
Stories by the numbers
There are plenty of numbers in literature. Primary students can visit fairy tale websites to find three little pigs, seven dwarfs, three bears and other numbers. A good source for annotated fairy tales across cultures is Surlalune Fairy Tales. www.surlalunefairytales.com/
Another fairy tale website you won't want to miss is Classic Fairy Tales, with animated, narrated fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen and others. www.classicfairytales.com
There are many children's books that can help with integrating math and literature – Five Chinese Brothers by Claire Huchet Bishop (Puffin, 1996, ISBN: 0-698-11357-8), One Snowy Day by Jeffrey Scherer (Cartwheel Books, 1997, ISBN: 0-590-74240-X), 101 Dalmatians by Justine Korman (Golden Books, 1996, ISBN: 0-307-00116-4) and The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes (Voyager, 1988, ISBN: 0-156-42350-2), to name just a few.
Murphy the math man
When I'm looking for math in literature, one author's name jumps to mind immediately. Stuart J. Murphy has dozens of books with a math theme and his website at www.stuartjmurphy.com provides ideas and activities for using his books in the classroom. Two of his latest books, Coyotes All Around (HarperTrophy, 2003, ISBN: 0-060-51531-7), which deals with rounding numbers, and Less Than Zero (HarperTrophy, 2003, ISBN: 0-060-00126-7), which is about negative numbers, are good examples of math picture books that spark math/language arts integration. Another resource for similar books is Picture Books for Math at www.eho.org/mathpicbk.htm
The above chart offers quick reference to how much each letter is worth, and also leaves space for kids to list their words. To get the reproducible chart (shown above) that helps kids keep track of their $1.00 words, click here.
$1.00 words
What's a $1.00 word? It just so happens that my last name, Lindroth, is one! This is one of my favorite math/language arts activities. Just give your students an alphabet chart where A = $0.01 all the way to Z = $0.26 and see how many $1.00 words they can find. Add up the letters in Lindroth and it's a $1.00 word! See how many your students can find. Among your $1.00 words, you should find:
- • a day of the week
- • a girl's name
- • an animal
- • a synonym for "great."
.................. The answers to these hints: Wednesday, Suzanne, elephants, excellent
You can incorporate the use of calculators and challenge your students to calculate prefixes and suffixes to help with their word building. Why not make a sign beside your Word Wall and label it "Our Money Wall?" You can use it as a place to list common prefixes and suffixes along with their values. Just making a word plural adds $0.19 for an -s, $0.24 for an -es and $0.33 for an -ies. What an easy way to increase the value of a word!
This activity is a great way to review word families. Kids can spend time using a thesaurus to build their vocabularies while they're finding new $1.00 words. You can even send students to www.balmoralsoftware.com/dollar.htm to calculate the values of words they find.
A great extension that motivates students to keep looking for $1.00 words is to award points for words that fall into given value ranges: one point for words that amount to less than $0.50, three points for words that are within 15% of the exact answer (between $.85 and $1.15) and 10 points for each $1.00 word. Download a reproducible chart that will help students keep track of their points.
This is a great way to celebrate the 100th day of school. Even middle school students will love the challenge of adding the values of the various letters. You may find that your students continue to track $1.00 words for the rest of the school year!
Be sure to e-mail me the $1.00 words your students find and we'll post them on www.TeachingK-8.com
I look forward to reading the wealth of words from your classrooms. You can reach me at Linda@TeachingK-8.com
Linda K. Lindroth is Teaching K-8's technology editor and website coordinator, and a technology resource teacher at Russell Cave Elementary School in Lexington, KY.
E-mail: Linda@TeachingK-8.com.
January 2004, Volume 34, Number 4
