What if I could harness all the power of those numbers and have my students see them to and then do mental math every time? For example, if they are on the elevator and see a number, they could quickly add 10 to it, or 100, or some could multiply it by ten or 100, depending on their level. Their families could get involved and challenge each other! It is odd? It is even? Stop me!
So I took pictures of numbers I saw around the school, and created a quick slide show. I ran the slide show during our whole class math time. And we went through the slides and each time we saw a picture number, we added ten to it, then we went through them again and subtracted ten. It was fun! They recognized the numbers from around the school, like the address number or the clock number.
I then worked with my smaller groups and did the same thing depending on their level, like multiplied it by ten or 100. For followup homework, each student had to find five numbers in/around their house and either draw them, describe them, or take a picture of them and then add ten, subtract ten, multiply by ten, etc. (I had different worksheets depending on the level).
They really got into it, and now I hope they see numbers around them and do some mental math when they see numbers!
PS – I couldn’t stop there, I put together 60 slides of numbers and they are available for sale for 1/2 price along with the homework scavenger hunt, as well as the activity sheets I created to go with the numbers (like x by 10, is it odd/even, put it on a number line, etc).
– Have fun finding numbers, but when you start, you might not be able to stop!