Order of Operations Scavenger Hunt

So many of you are off on Spring break, and I am SUPER jealous! In Massachusetts, we don't have one March spring break, but instead have a week in February and a week in April. That leaves us with this loooooooong, endless chunk of time right before state testing that I affectionately refer to as March Madness. The kids are going stir crazy, the teachers are tired, and the test is almost here. It's hard for everyone! So, in an effort to get my friends to pay attention, I decided it was time to jazz up my lesson plans. With the help of a super creative co-worker (who thought of so much of this) we decided to do an Order of Operations Easter Egg Hunt Egg-stravaganza!

I started off by reviewing the order of operations and using my "Order of Operations without Aunt Sally" freebie. This really helps my kiddos understand the correct way to perform the order of operations without relying so heavily on "PEMDAS."

If you are interested, you can read more about that from my previous post here.

Thanks to Easter egg sales and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, this lesson was pretty easy to put together. I found the Order of Operations bingo from the NCTM Illuminations website. I made a few modifications to make it work with an easter egg hunt though.

First, I labeled all the problems with letters so the kiddos could put them on their recording sheet and keep track of which one they solved. This would help me correct their work later on in the day, as well.

After that, I cut up the problems and removed the answer. Then, I put 2 or 3 of them in each Easter egg. 

Then, I hid the eggs (in plain sight) all around my classroom!

The original game is meant to be played as Bingo, so the recording sheet is built for that.

I love the idea of having the kids record their answers in a column that corresponds to the value, so I decided just to cut the word "bingo" off the top when I photocopied them. As the kiddos found the values of the expressions, they wrote down the value AND the the letter that I had labeled the strip of paper with. This way, when we went over our work it was easy to tell if they solved the expression correctly. To amp up the "fun factor" my kiddos were trying to fill an entire card with correct solutions for a small prize. 

So, with a few modifications, Order of Operations Bingo become our Egg Hunt Egg-stravaganza! How do you add the "fun factor" into teaching this time of year?

March Madness and a fraction dash!

I'm about to embark upon my very own version of March Madness. Now, usually March Madness has a fun and exciting connotation- but not my version! Why, you ask? Well… it’s about to be the busiest month of my life. March happens to be the only winter month without a vacation. There is a long weekend, but it's not until the very end of the month for Good Friday. This month I will (of course) have my normal teaching responsibilities, as well as the big cheerleading game for the girls I coach, the school auction to raise money for technology, title one tutoring after school twice a week, and the last chance state-testing push. To just add to the fun, I also have a semester long state graduate course, 3 one credit educator professional development graduate courses, and a creative composition photography course- which I took "for fun." Ahh! I don't know how I will get through this.


A couple weeks ago, the teacher in the room next door retired. She was such a sweet woman, and I will miss her! She’s already off to finish the winter in Florida. So jealous! The girl who is finishing out the year for her is great, though. She is around my age, and has a similar teaching style to me. On Friday, we decided to open the wall up between our classrooms and have a “fun Friday” activity. We chose to do play the “Equivalent Fraction Dash” game I found over at Math Coach’s Corner. It was a blast! We mixed our classrooms up and split them into teams. They loved racing through the classroom and trying to beat the other team at finding equivalent fractions.

to the left is the classroom next door, to the right is my classroom. The cinderblock wall is the divider between our rooms. The wall with the fraction dash pocket chart is the collapsible wall between our rooms.

Students racing to finish the game!

 It was loud, a little rowdy, and tiring- but so worth it. The kids had a ton of fun, and they were angels the rest of the day. We told them that if they work hard, they can earn more activities together like this one. So much fun- make sure you check out the game!