10 Performance-Based Projects for the Math Classroom

Grades 3-5

Todd Stanley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9781000491289
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Teaching Mathematics

Each book in the 10 Performance-Based Projects series provides 10 ready-made projects designed to help students achieve higher levels of thinking and develop 21st-century skills. Projects are aligned to the Common Core State Standards, allowing students to explore and be creative as well as gain enduring understanding. Each project represents a type of performance assessment, including portfolios, oral presentations, research papers, and exhibitions. Included for each project is a suggested calendar to allow teacher scheduling, mini-lessons that allow students to build capacity and gain understanding, as well as multiple rubrics to objectively assess student performance. The lessons are presented in an easy-to-follow format, enabling teachers to implement projects immediately.

Grades 3-5

1 Oral Presentation

DOI: 10.4324/9781003232490-2

Much of what a student knows can be expressed in an oral presentation. Classrooms are full of the type of student who raises his hand and can provide insightful, meaningful responses when taking part in discussion, but as soon as you ask that same student to write down his thoughts, you are lucky to get a one- or two-word written response. He is not able, or more likely, not willing, to give you the same insightful responses in writing. In dealing with these kinds of students, the question for me became: Why couldn’t this student provide his answers orally, especially if it meant getting responses like he did in class? On the flip side are those students who do not know how to express themselves in an oral presentation, and the acquisition of the skill is very valuable to them.

What It Looks Like

Oral presentations can take several forms, but they typically consist of an informative speech designed to educate an audience. Some of the forms can be:

• ◆ an individual or group report,
• ◆ an oral briefing,
• ◆ an oral exam,
• ◆ a panel discussion, or
• ◆ an oral critique.

The student’s goal in an oral presentation is to verbally teach classmates or the audience what she has learned after researching a particular topic or skill. A successful oral presentation needs to be set up just like an essay would, with a topic sentence, supporting details, and several drafts before the final presentation. This structure is something that should be taught to students. This can be done with modeling, looking at exemplary examples of great oral presentations, or practicing presentations with no consequences.

Having Your Math and Eating It Too

Baking a cake or cookies involves math, especially fractions. How much of each ingredient to put in, what measurement for those ingredients, how long to bake, how much will it make, and so on, are all factors.

In this project, students will work in groups to bake a product, using various kinds of math. Each group will bring its product and recipe to share with the class. Their recipes must involve math problems that others must solve in order to determine the amount of ingredients to use. They will teach the class using the problems they create, demonstrating equivalent fractions, adding and subtracting fractions with different denominators, and multiplying and dividing fractions.

Connections to CCSS

• ◆ 4.NF.A.1
• ◆ 4.NF.A.2
• ◆ 4.NF.B.3
• ◆ 4.NF.B.4

Materials

• ◆ Project Outline: Having Your Math and Eating It Too (student copies)
• ◆ Suggested Timeline
• ◆ Lesson: Usin...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• Project 1: Oral Presentation
• Project 2: Debate/Speech
• Project 3: Group Discussion
• Project 4: Role-Playing
• Project 5: Interview
• Project 6: Exhibition
• Project 7: Essay
• Project 8: Research Paper
• Project 9: Journal/Student Log
• Project 10: Portfolio
• REFERENCES
• ANSWER KEY
• ABOUT THE AUTHOR
• COMMON CORE STATE STANDARDS ALIGNMENT