Factors and Multiples

Happy Monday blog world! How many of you are knee deep in fractions right now?!

Last week we started talking about factors, multiples, simplifying, equivalents, and more. Before I knew it, my student's eyes looked a bit cross. Many of them were tripping up on the difference between a factor and a multiple. No matter how many times we repeated it, wrote it, acted it out, they couldn't quite remember.

Then, as if the clouds parted and the angels started singing, I remembered this fantastic anchor chart that I saw a while back about a factor ninja??? and multiple monster??? You can see the originals HERE.

...and VOILA!!!

With a little Miss Nannini touch, I had my kids chopping up products all afternoon (with ninja sound effects of course!)

They absolutely loved these ideas to help them remember the difference!

Here they are on our math focus wall (or door!):

As a quick formative assessment, we threw out our typical paper/pencil test and created artistic posters instead. Sometimes you need to create alternative assessments, especially when your kids have spring fever, and it is conference week.

I had each student take their student number (unless you were #1 and #2...they were assigned different numbers) and list out all of the multiples and factors of their student number. They also had to give me their own definition of factors and multiples. I didn't give them any other guidelines besides the fact that they could be as creative as they would like when decorating them.

 -Has my obsession with doodle borders gone to my kids now too!??!

We finished these in 1 math block and it was a super easy, fun way of giving me a quick check of where they're currently at with these concepts. I know it's nothing profound, but I like an honest quick assessment that doesn't always require a dog and pony show! ;)

Here are a few more examples of the finished assessments:

How cute is this student's poster?! He asked if he could "theme" his poster, with Despicable Me. Of course I couldn't say no. I have such a creative group this year, so any chance for art is a must!

*I wanted to update those of you that purchased my March Madness Math Project. I updated all of the rounds to reflect the new tournament "lingo" this year. I also updated all of the websites to include the current brackets! Go re-download your updated version for free, or if you don't have it go check it out HERE! It starts this WEEK!!!!

Have a great week everyone!