Math Can Take You Places

Arezou Laridjani
Williams Elementary School,
Garland Independent School District

Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills Addressed: TEKS 5.2; 5.3B, C; 5.4; 5.14C (Click here for details)

· Use mental math to compute products of whole numbers using place value and properties

· Estimate products/quotients/sum/difference with whole numbers using rounding and compatible numbers

· Call a local Home Depot and speak with the person that handles field trips and other children’s workshops. Let them know that you would like to teach your students how math is used in real life, and would like to set up a “Homer Math” field trip. You would need to coordinate with them so that you can pre-select departments that you would like to use to demonstrate the use of math.

· You would need to then take care of formalities to set up the field trip through your school (permission slips, money collection…etc.). There is usually no cost for the Home Depot tour, but that might not be the same at all locations…you would need to check ahead of time. The only other cost would be transportation.

· Divide your students up into small groups/teams. Assign a “Captain Homer” to each group. He/she will be in charge of recording computations and all for each group in their “Homer Challenge Book”.

· Educate the students how the field trip will run and what you will expect of them. Let them know the objectives of the field trip and that you will be expecting them to solve challenge problems as a team.

· Decide how you will reward your teams as they work together to solve the challenge problems in each station/department. Home Depot is usually very good about donating things from their children’s workshop team. They have pens, aprons, pencils,…other things that you can ask for ahead of time and let you students know what they can earn for their efforts, as a team and individually.

· Formulate math problems using what you have taught or teaching at the time. Apply them to the different departments from The Home Depot to help kids connect Math to everyday items/things at their homes. Sample questions are provided.

· Have challenge questions written on poster boards for kids to view at each station at The Home Depot.

· Treats/Rewards (ask the Home Depot associate for donations so it will not have to come out of your pocket)

Homer Math is a great way to help our students to make a connection between math and its uses out in the real world. What better place than the Home Depot!? It is filled with all kinds of things that are in every child’s home. Beginning with their kitchens, there are the cabinets, appliances, and the countertops. Throughout their homes they have the different types of flooring. Then in plumbing there are great examples of fractions for all the PVC pipes and pieces that they know are used for plumbing in their homes. Paint department is a great spot for them to see how precisely the computer requires proportions of different hues. These are just a few examples of how you can help them see math used in different ways. Other departments (garden, lumber, millwork, electrical, receiving…etc.) can also be used depending on what you would like your presentation to include. But you would want to choose no more than four departments in order to keep it within a 30-minute time span.

· Prior to the trip make sure students know what team they belong to and who is assigned as their “Captain Homer”.

· Once you reach your destination you want to pre-arrange a starting point where the Home Depot associate can give them an introduction.

· From there you would take them to the first department that you would like to begin. In that department either you can give them some background about the products and how they relate to their every day life, or you can ask the Home Depot associate from each department to do that for you (they are excited to help).

· Once you have given them about a 2-3 min. background knowledge then you can present the teams with the challenge question for that department. This is where you hold up the poster with your challenge question for all teams to work together to solve. Again, the team Captain Homer is the only one recording answers/computation as his/her teammates work together to solve the problem.

· You repeat the same procedure in the other departments until your tour is complete.

1) How your reward them is up to you. You can either reward the team that comes up with the correct answer first with something (carpenter pencil, or something) and other teams can get something else for effort (i.e. pens that you would get form THD).

2) If you have a large group of kids then divide them into to two Groups and you take one group (divided into Teams) through the Math Challenge Stations while the other group goes with other teacher to a general store tour with another Home Depot associate. Then you meet after 30 minutes and you swap groups.

3) Leave time at the end for taking pictures with the Home Depot team of people that are involved. Usually the store managers get involved as well.

4) Following your field trip have student to individually write a composition to share what they learned and what the field trip meant to them. You can use this as a composition for your grades and also send the original copies to the Home Depot as a thank you for their efforts and time. It helps them to see that they have helped their community by serving students and teachers.

· A kitchen designer (you can use the designer’s name here if you know it ahead of time…will be more personal for the kids to connect) has designed a kitchen for his client. He used 25 pieces of cabinets in his design. Each cabinet costs $50.00 and his customer has a coupon for a $250.00 discount. How much would his customer pay for the cabinets? (Answer: $1,000)

· Customer picks out Corian color group B ($47/sq.ft) for her kitchen. She has about 200 square feet of countertops in her kitchen. She asked the designer to give her an estimate of how much her countertops would cost. Help the designer with the estimate. (Answer: About $10,000)

A customer has a tile design. He needs to know how many pieces of tile his design would require. His design is six large squares and each one has 25 small tiles inside each one. He also wants a border of tile all around the design which will use 45 tiles. How many tiles in all will he need for his design? (Answer: 195 tiles)

You want to paint your room. When you come to The Home Depot you are not sure how many gallons of paint you should buy. But when you READ the label it tells you that one gallon covers 400 square feet. If your walls have a total of 1,200 square feet, how many gallons of paint do you need? (Answer: 3 gallons)

Your Dad comes to THD to find the proper size PVC pipes to do a bathroom project. He needs a pipe that is greater than a ½ inch pipe but less than a 1-inch pipe. What size should he choose? (Answer: ¾ inch)

This activity will hopefully get your students excited about big numbers by using money… lots of money!

The idea is that when you start your place value lessons, each student becomes a billionaire! Each student gets a note card with a name and an amount of money on it. This person is a real American billionaire. The names and net worths are taken from the 2006 Forbes 400 list of richest Americans if you would like to choose different people. (I tried to choose people that the 5th graders might have heard of or made their billions in a fun/interesting way.) Each time the students come into your math class they automatically become those billionaires and use their net worths, the number on the card, to read, write, compare, and order as we learn and use these large numbers.

· Have the students practice writing their numbers, and others in the class, in standard, word, and expanded form

· Have the students compare their numbers with a partner and switch partners until they have compared with the whole class (this could become a 22-25 problem assignment!)

· In groups of 4 or 5, students must order their numbers greatest to least, and least to greatest

· The entire class must hold their cards in front of them (or wear them) and order themselves across the room least to greatest without talking

· Create an “I have, who has” game using the billionaire numbers to practice value (Ex: “I have 2 in the hundred millions place, who has a 5 in the ten thousands place?)

· Students round theirs and others’ numbers to specified places and practice estimation using their numbers

My activities usually last about 4 or 5 days and these can be taken out and reused all year long to review. It’s also fun to remember who was which billionaire.

Also for fun, I don’t tell my kids up front who exactly their person is or how they earned their billions if they don’t already know or have a clue. If they know, I let them share what they know but then I tell the students they may do some research during the week and find out who their person is using their parent, television, internet, etc. At the end of the week, before we move on to the next objective, the students share who their person is if they found out. If not, I tell each student who their person is, how they got their billions, etc. It’s usually pretty interesting to them!

Directions: write each persons name on a note card and create a number that would round to the person’s net worth under their name. Other billionaires can be found by visiting www.forbes.com and searching “lists” and “400 richest Americans”.

Name of the Business Person	Net Worth	Name of Company / Type of Business
William Henry Gates III	5.3 billion	Microsoft
Warren Edward Buffet	46.0 billion	Investments
Jim C. Walton	15.7 billion	Wal-Mart
Michael Dell	15.5 billion	Dell Computer
Sergey Brin	14.1 billion	Google
Larry E. Page	14.1 billion	Google
Mars Family	10.5 billion	Google
Philip H. Knight	7.9 billion	Nike
Pierre Omidyar	7.7 billion	Ebay
Micky Arison	5.0 billion	Carnival Cruises
Steven Paul Jacobs	4.9 billion	Apple, Pixar
H. Ty Warner	4.5 billion	Beanie Babies
Ralph Lauren	3.9 billion	Fashion
Jeffrey P. Bezos	3.6 billion	Amazon.com
George Lucas	3.6 billion	Star Wars movie series
Gordon Earle Moore	3.4 billion	Intel
Steven Allen Spielberg	2.9 billion	Movies
Leonard Allen Lauder	2.9 billion	Estee Lauder
Mark Cuban	2.3 billion	Broadcast.com/Sports team owner
Ted Turner	1.9 billion	Cable TV
Bernard Marcus	1.9 billion	Home Depot
Richard Marriot	1.8 billion	Hotels
Michael Illitch	1.5 billion	Pizza
Oprah Winfrey	1.5 billion	Television

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