5th Grade Math Resources for CCSS 5.NBT.4

5.NBT.4: Use place value understanding to round decimals to any place.

UNPACKED EXPLANATION: Round decimals to either tenths, hundredths, or thousandths, although strategies and skilled learns should apply to any place.

WHAT THE PARCC WILL EXPECT: The PARCC Practice Tests question for 5.NBT.4 tests students ability to round decimals without a given context (without telling them "round to the tenths place," etc.). The actual problem is:

The PARCC does this quite a lot. There are 6 numbers that can be dragged, meaning that two numbers will be left behind, so the traditional test taking strategies, especially process of elimination, won't be as effective here (although it still helps). Students will need the ability to do exactly what's laid out above, to be able to match numbers to their rounded counterparts, and do it without context.

RESOURCES: I'll focus on resources that cover all the components of this skill. You'll likely want to start with doing a lot of rounding with context, and eventually move to the more rigorous side of this standard.

• ROUNDING WITH CONTEXT:
• Short explanation before some rounding of specified digits
• 4 page packet that rounds with context
• Mathworksheetland.com lesson outline: It's all context based rounding here. 
• Massive listing of worksheets from internet4classrooms.com: Tons and tons of context based rounding sheets, I mean TONS.
• Assessment for 5.NBT.1-4: Actually some decent problems here.
• GAMES
• Rounding decimals soccer
• Scooter Quest
• ROUNDING WITHOUT CONTEXT: There's not a lot out there for rounding decimals that leaves no context. My advice here is to look at the PARCC problem above and craft some problems that are similar to it, this ensures students are getting rigorous problems that make them problem solve and think. I highly recommend going to that level if possible,
• Performance assessment task from insidemathematics.com: Look through this document for a few rigorous problems with scoring rubrics. They could be used for practice or even incorporated into assessments. 
• Iowa released test items: Released items from the old NAEP test that are now aligned to CCSS (interstingly enough, a lot of these problems were originally meant for 7th and 8th graders). Search the document (ctrl+f) for 5.NBT.4.

5.NBT.4 VIDEO:

Informational Text Free Digitial Resources: Gearing up for the Common Core

It's time for Common Core (CCSS) all over the United States, and I for one couldn't be happier. I believe these standards will demand more of students and teachers. The standards will demand a thorough, rigorous, culturally relevant, and college preparatory based education from kindergarten all the way through 12th grade. If the standards are taken to heart, if teachers buy in and work to the maximum of their abilities, I have little doubt that education in the United States will not only be the strongest in the world in about 10 years, but will be the strongest educational system the world has seen. No, I'm not just a CCSS fanboy, I was skeptical just like many others, but the more I read, the more I experience, and the more I train both myself and others, the more excited I am to see what my students are capable of, and how hard and how far I can push them.

In the area of literacy, the CCSS moves classrooms into the world of informational reading and writing. In fact, by the 4th grade, students should be reading 50/50, 50% literature and 50% informational. It also demands that informational text goes deeper than just reading for fact finding. I'm guilty of this, I have too often used informational texts as nothing more than a fact hunt to use in research posters or projects, etc. But that's changing, we have to start going deeper.

This post specifically targets informational text resources that are freely available out there. For me personally, I'm able to call upon a teacher resource room with hundreds of informational texts at my school, and an online resource file of informational texts through the Pearson SuccessNet website (something that came with my districts reading adoption a few weeks back). Those two things are definitely not free and if you don't have them, you're probably not getting them anytime soon. So what to do?

Here is a list of some resources out there to get you some informational texts to your students. All you really need here is a computer, BUT, if you'd like to view these on a tablet, or have them in pdf format, that's pretty easy to accomplish (I prefer using pdfs on iPads because students can annotate them within a note taking app, and pdf documents have more of a traditional text "feel" to them.

I will be focusing on the ins and outs of the CCSS and how informational texts fit in the classroom here in the near future, but for today, let's stick to resources, because it's so much easier to jump on board when you know you have something to back you up. So here we go:

• This first link is to a free, browser based web page to pdf converter. It takes the center frame of a web page and saves it in a high quality pdf. I use this when I want students to read something from, for example, the Scholastic for Kids page, and don't want them sifting through text in the midst of side bars and links. Web 2 Pdf. Bookmark it!
• A listing of some good places to start gathering resources, in a post titled Online Sources for Informational Text at a blog called "Hello Literacy." Ignore the link to the web to pdf converter on their page called joliprint, as it is no longer in service.
• While I'm linking to some online listings (of which there are literally thousands upon thousands), there's also this page from the Common Core Georgia Performance Standards website on Informational Text Resources. There's also this post at Eye on Education. Both should give more than a few resources that you'll want to bookmark.
• At the beginning of the second page of this pdf document is multiple links to small readers on the Scholastic website, and they're really pretty good (and already in the correct format). 
• If you're not aware of The Reading and Writing Project, familiarize yourself. They are the group that did Pathways to the Common Core, a great book that's been like a CCSS literacy bible for me personally. On their site, they keep a listing of information texts called Digital Nonfiction Text Sets.

5th Grade Common Core Cumulative Assessment and Practice Packet

My students are currently gearing up for some end of the year assessments, and these assessments are rather important to 5th graders, because their scores influence their placement in middle school classes. Obviously, my students see the value in doing their best, so they asked for a cumulative review to get them ready.

Now, even though we're not technically "on" the Common Core (CCSS) until next year, our districts formative assessment, the Discovery test, is CCSS based. So for that reason, and to fill in any gaps, I searched far and wide for a cumulative review, and boy did I find some good stuff!

But, instead of listing a ton of resources, I wanted to focus on one in particular that my students are using, and are thankful that they have.

Off at the Bridges Math Learning Center website, I found this fantastic pdf file titled:

FIFTH GRADE ASSESSMENTS AND SCORING CHECKLISTS, COMMON CORE STATE STANDARDS

This document is 41 pages in length. I was able to narrow it down to 22 pages of things my students are going to review. So I edited down this pdf file. I want to stress that all credit for this document goes to the Bridges Math Learning Center.

My edited version of this pdf (the 22 page version) can be accessed HERE from my Google Drive.

PARCC Assessment: Yes, It's Coming, Yes, You Can Prepare

Soooo, I don't want to freak anybody out, but if you live in:

• Arizona
• New Mexico
• Colorado
• Oklahoma
• North Dakota
• Arkansas
• Louisiana
• Mississippi
• Alabama
• Georgia
• Florida
• Tennessee
• Kentucky
• Illinois
• Indiana
• Ohio
• Pennsylvania
• New York
• Massachusetts
• New Jersey
• Delaware
• Maryland
• Washington DC

You are only a year and a half away from a new state mandated test, called the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC from here forward) assessment. That's right, your state testing is about to change, and the change will be dramatic.

What makes this test difference is, well, a few things. First of all, it's computer based. That's right, students will be taking the high stakes test online. Plus, now, when we want to compare data across states, we won't be comparing apples to oranges to bananas. We will be comparing states using the identical assessment. So for those 22 states and DC, greater accountability is at hand.

But don't freak out! It's good news (hopefully). When the PARCC Assessment goes live during the 2014-2015 school year, each of those listed states will be fully aligned to the Common Core (CCSS from here forward). 

We're talking about an assessment that will be taken in grades 3-12 by over 25 million students (according to the website).

I highly recommend teachers from any one of those states listed above to go to the PARCC website (which I've linked to twice, you can click the logo or the other link... oh heck, HERE IT IS AGAIN). Start digging through it and see what's waiting for us all right around the bend. 2014 is a lot closer than you think, A LOT CLOSER!!!!

Illustrative Mathematics: A Great Resource To Help in the Transition to Common Core Standards

In my most recent web surfing, on Richard Byrne's Free Technology for Teachers blog, I came across a post  called Illustrative Mathematics. After looking into Illustrative Mathematics (this link goes to that site) a little more, I really like what I see. For each grade, K-12, you can see illustrations of what each common core standard is all about and how to utilize it. The image below shows the menu that comes up when you click on K-8 Standards at the main page, with a box around 5th grade. Any standard that lines up below fifth grade is clickable for more information. It's really a great resource if you're transitioning to the common core. In the state of New Mexico, we still have one more year in 4th and 5th grades before we move to the common core, but we're already hard at work aligning our content to make our work easier come this time next year.