Kate Franklin
Number Sense Lesson 1
2/15/04
Title: What’s in a Million?
Content Area: Math
Grade Level: 3-5
Key Concepts: Conversion, The Concept of a Million
EALRs: 1.1 understand and apply concepts and procedures from
number sense
number and numeration, computation, and estimation.
GLEs: Grade 3 Represent a number to at least 10,000 in different ways (e.g., words, numerals, pictures, physical models). [CU]
Grade 4: Select and justify appropriate strategies and tools from among mental computation, estimation, calculators, and paper and pencil to compute in a problem situation. [SP, RL]
Goals: For the kids to get a better understanding of how much a million is and define it in their terms.
Objective: Given working through the M&M problem and reading a book about a million, students will demonstrate a clearer understanding of the concept of how much a million is through presenting their own example drawn out on a poster.
Materials Needed: How Much Is A Million? Book; 1 large jar; 1 small jar; M&Ms to fill both; group cards; equivalences of metric/non metric units; posters and markers; calculators. Must have already covered conversion to some extent.
Procedure:
1) Jar of M&Ms 10 minutes
Teacher takes out a large jar of m & ms . Teacher talks about how we have been using estimation of numbers to make sure we are on target with our problem solving; to make sure our answers are realistic. Sometimes though it is hard to estimate without anything for a reference- for instance try estimating how much is in the jar. Children write down their guesses. Now present a smaller jar. Ask kids to try and figure out how many are in there. Kids count, or guess. Ask how they came up with their numbers to get some various strategies. Reveal to them that there are 70 in the small jar. Now ask them to apply it to the other jar to make another guess of how many are in the larger jar. They write that down. Then you talk about how having a reference can help with understanding how of something there is. Tell them there are 914 in the big jar and see if there second number was more accurate. Now ask how many jars they would need to have a million M&Ms. Draw a number line on the board if they need help. Hand out the M&Ms.
2) How much is a Million? Book 15 minutes
Now talk about how the goal of the lesson today is to think about how much a million actually is. It is hard to have an idea of how much that actually is when the numbers get to be so large. Just like we needed help with the smaller jar to help estimate how much was in the larger jar, sometimes we need examples of specific things to see what a million would really look like. Read the book.
3) Talk about Groups 5 minutes
Tell children that they are going to break up into pairs and come up with a way to represent what a million would be. They will need to come up with an example of something that would represent one million. They will then need to show how big or long it would be if they had a million of it. Ask first how much a million is – and write it on the board. Give students different metric equivalents, written on the board, so they can change units as needed to show how much a million would be. Require what the final units must be ie. Miles or tons instead of inches and pounds. This will build on their conversion skills that they have been working on. They should draw a poster of it that will go up in the classroom that clearly states what they are showing a million of and what a million of that would look like. They should also hand in a sheet of paper that shows how they got to the end result clearly- ie. all equivalence computations.
4) Students work in groups 20 minutes
Teachers walk around and assist as needed
Students come back and present what they came up with to group.
Teacher collects posters and computations. Teachers gives feedback when necessary.
Post Assessment: Looking at posters and work shown on them for accuracy and to see if student was able to apply idea of showing a million.