Your end of the year math test is this week.   It will be on everything you learned in math this year.  Be sure to bring your math journal home every night to study.  Or Roxas will get angry.*

* No cats were harmed in the making of this post.  This photo was taken of my cat when he was...yawning.  *Shudder*

Do you need a reminder about how to use a drawing triangle to make perfectly parallel or perpendicular lines?  This site will show you how:  Using a Ruler and Drafting Triangle.  (Click the link, not the picture).

There is no sound and the animations are only about 10 seconds each, so click "play" as many times as you need to to help you practice!

We have been in school for 9 months now!  As a result we've studied our multiples and rules of divisibility through 10. 

This includes interpreting remainders.  For example, if you had 32 Skittles and were splitting them with some friends, how many would the 5 of you get, and what might you do with the left over Skittles?  Answer in the comments below, and write a new question for the person who comments next to answer.

The trick to understanding what a decimal is, is to think of pennies and dimes.

0.10 is a tenth of a dollar.  Ten dimes equal a dollar.

0.01 is a hundredth of a dollar.  A hundred pennies equal a dollar.

Do you know how much money 8 tenths is equal to?

You have all worked very hard in math this year.  This is YOUR opportunity to show off how much you learned. 

Take your time, read carefully, and check over your work before you hand in your test.  Stick with it, and show your work.  I know you'll do great!

Do you like getting packages in the mail?  Have you ever thought about people's jobs in the post office?  This is a simple game that lets YOU feel like you're working in a post office.

To play this post office measurement game, you need to read a ruler, scale, and table.  You might need a pencil and paper, unless you can remember two different numbers for a couple minutes.  Also, the measurements are metric, which means:

Lengths are in centimeters
Weights are in grams and kilograms

Since the math MCAS is coming soon (May 8 and 10) I wanted to make videos on any math procedures that you wanted to practice on your own.  The most requested topic was (no surprise) long division.

Here is the first of two long division videos.  This video covers level 1 and 2 long division problems (remember, click the link, not the picture). In the second video, I will go over levels 3 and 4 problems.

Level 1 problems have all evenly divisible numbers in the dividend.  It's almost not even long division!

Level 2 problems are long division problems that start out with you dividing the hundreds digit by the divisor.  You'll find a multiple, divide, subtract, and repeat.  You'll see the "wallets" we practiced using in class.

Level 3 problems will be long division problems that don't have any hundreds in your answer.  You'll need to think of the problem in terms of having lots of tens instead of focusing on the small number of hundreds that can't be divided.  You'll find a multiple, divide, subtract, and repeat.  You'll see the "wallets" we practiced using in class.

Level 4 problems will have a zero in the answer.  Paying attention to place value is important in every problem, but it's absolutely necessary in order to get the correct answer to this type of long division question.  You'll find a multiple, divide, subtract, and repeat.  You'll see the "wallets" we practiced using in class.

Did you find these videos helpful?  Please answer in the comments below.

To help you review what you've learned in math this year, we got together with Mr. Earls' class to play math games and do math activities. 

It was fun seeing some different activities that the other class taught us, and it was also great to be able to teach them some new ones too.  The activities included:

1.  Long Division
2.  Multiplication
3.  Fractions
4.  Least Common Multiple
5.  Prime and Composite Numbers

The day was a success and I can't wait to do it again next Friday!

What skills do you want to practice before the MCAS?  What activities do you think we should do next week?  Answer in the comments below.

Congratulations to everyone who worked really hard this month and improved on their fraction test! 

Not only have you learned how to find equivalent fractions, fraction of a set, simplest form, and how to change back and forth from improper fractions to mixed numbers when adding and subtracting fractions.  You also learned how important it is to go back and reread the questions to make sure you did what it was asking.  Well done, everybody! 

Here is a video that will help you learn how to change a fraction to simplest form.  You will see a model of what simplest form looks like, get 6 tips on how to decide what number to divide the top and bottom number by, and finally you'll see a sure-fire test taking strategy.  If you've ever tried to answer a multiple choice fraction test question and thought, "The right answer isn't there!" then you will love this strategy!

Was this video helpful?  Answer in the comments below.