Playing with Probability, Percent, Ratios, and Circles

Using Children's Books to Understand Probability, Percent, Ratios, and Circles

This unit plan is going to encompass four main topics and then relating them back together. The first day we are going to go over probability with word problems presented in the book Probably Pistachio . This will be a great opportunity for the students to be introduced to basic probability and the pulling out of information from word problems. The second day we are going to talk about Percent using the book Twizzlers Percentages Book and an activity using Twizzlers. This will allow them to be comfortable to taking multiple items and turning them into proportions of the whole. The third day we are going to talk about ratios using the book Pythagoras and the Ratios: A Math Adventure. This will allow them to become comfortable doing two things. They are pulling information out and turning it into ratios and turning a percent into a ratio. The fourth day we are going to use the 

Mathematical Manipulatives Uses in a Classroom

Uses and Possible Problems with Math Manipulatives

Mathematics manipulatives I discovered are very useful and important in a mathematics classroom at any level. When I started my Mathematics Education 530 at the University of Tennessee - Knoxville, I knew what a mathematics manipulative was but had no idea there were so many different ones or how to use any of them. So when selecting my articles, I selected two articles which showed how to use certain manipulatives in the classroom and I also chose one article which discusses the possible problems with using manipulative in the classroom. The articles that showed how to use manipulatives in the classroom used technology manipulatives such as a calculator and Microsoft Word. I selected these because most of the schools I know of have calculators for every student in each class and rentable computers for each student of each class.