Number of the Day

This year my fourth grade team and I began with Math in the morning. For some reason I always though this was a district mandated rule. But obviously it is not. With that being said, I love math in the morning. I think the students are enjoying it as well.

Every morning we start with a number of the day. Sometimes it stays the same the whole week, sometimes we change it. The students see the number, and they are challenged to find as many different ways as they can to come up with different ways to make it. The students tend to stick to addition and subtraction but as the week goes on they branch out to multiplication and division. I have the students work on the number of the day own their own for about 5 minutes, then they are given about 3 minutes of group work time. The group picks someone to go up and share their equation on the white poster. We add and add on to it until their is hardly any white space left!