"Gifted" Math

When kids have Christmas on the brain, why not add a little holiday cheer to a time of day when their brains have to work the hardest? A time of day such as…solving word problems!

I want my kids to be able to feel like they can always tackle any word problem that comes their way, so this Problem Solving strategy is something my class practices on almost a daily basis. And thanks to a cute idea from a couple of amazing teachers on my grade level team, today it was daily practice in the form of a fun holiday craftivity!

When we do our usual daily Problem Solving, the kids divide their white board into 4 squares. Here’s what each box stands for:

Find: What is the problem asking you to find?

Know: What information do you already know from the problem?

Show: Show a visual representation for the problem (picture, part-part-whole model, etc.)

Solve & Explain: Write a number sentence to solve the problem and explain your strategy for solving.

To spice this up for the season, today my kids solved a holiday themed word problem:

Instead of using their white boards as usual, they each got to show their work on their own Christmas present. They loved getting to prove how “gifted” they are in math!

If you wanted to provide an opportunity for higher order thinking, here’s another variation of how to “present” this to your students (no more puns for the rest of this post, I promise)!

You could give them a word problem where it shows how another student solved the problem, and the kids can analyze that student's work. Here is an example word problem that my colleagues created:

This is what the kids could work on for each square of the grid:

Operation Used- What operation was being used to solve the problem?

Explanation- Explain whether the problem was solved correctly or incorrectly and why.

Another Pathway to Solve- What is a different way that the problem could have been solved?

Visual Representation- Draw a picture to represent how to solve the problem.

Student Work:

Hopefully you will find one of these problem solving activities to be a good fit for your kids (or you could even use both and differentiate for your class)!

Now, bonus points for anyone who can solve THIS word problem: Today is December 12. Our last day before winter break is December 22. How many days are there until winter break??