Through conversations with other teachers, I’ve seen an increasing need for more differentiation options and opportunities with math tasks and math projects. I have several ideas for tiered tasks in mind, but I’m sure those projects will take quite some time to create. In this post, I’ve shared some new differentiated pages I’ve included in my Thanksgiving Math Activities.
Thanksgiving Math Activities-The Cost of Cooking
Two-step word problems are always a challenge for students. They require students to read carefully and think about what the problem as asking, which is often much more difficult than the actual computation involved. In this activity, students receive a Thanksgiving meal price list and solve 2-step word problems based off of the prices. There are three different versions of the price list. The easiest version only contains 1-digit numbers. In the moderate version, all prices are 2-digits, and the more challenging version contains decimals.
Thanksgiving Math-Elapsed Time & Interpreting Remainders
In the Cook Off activity, students solve elapsed time problems. All of the problems are centered around preparing a Thanksgiving meal, so the questions are relevant to students. In the first version, all times are on one hour and a half hour increments. In the second version, all times are in five minute increments.
The Party Planning activity has students interpret remainders, which is always challenging. I find that many students want to solve the division problem, but they don’t actually answer the question. This helps slow students down and actually think about the problem. In the first version, all problems are 2-digits divided by 1-digit. In the second version, all problems are 3-digit divided by 1-digit.
Thanksgiving Math-Geometric Feast
In this activity, students lay out a Thanksgiving feast using a large variety of geometry terms. I’m going to have them go all out and decorate and color the table and food items. It can be tricky to include the shapes that each teacher needs to teach or review, so I also included a version where you can fill in the shapes of your choice. I like to collaborate with students on this section and have students determine the shapes and we fill in the blanks together.
Thanksgiving Math Activities-Partitioning Pies
The Partitioning Pies activity has quite a few options for differentiation. In one version, students compare fractions with either common numerators or common denominators. This is definitely the version I would use if I was teaching third grade. In the second version, students add and subtract fractions with common denominators. They also compare fractions with unlike numerators and denominators. In the third version, students add and subtractions fractions with unlike denominators and compare fractions with unlike numerators and denominators.
It’s Turkey Time
This is my newest (hence the lack of photographs) and favorite activity in this pack. In this lesson, students plan a Thanksgiving meal for a given number of guests. I differentiated this activity by changing the number of guests. In the easiest version, students plan for 12 guests, and in the most challenging version, students plan for 96 guest.
To make this even more relevant to students, you can use the open ended version. In this version (my favorite) students plan their meal for all of the faculty and staff in the school. Using that information, you can give your students a budget to stick to. Then, students can use grocery store flyers, catalogs from places such as Honey Baked Ham, or even store websites to plan their Thanksgiving feast. I think that working with real places and real prices increases the level of authenticity to the task.
I hope that you were able to find some ideas that you’ll be able to incorporate into your classroom. I’m sure the fact that all of these lessons are no prep activities will be a huge help during this incredibly busy time of year. If you’d like to check out the unit, you can click here . If you’re looking for language arts ideas for Thanksgiving, you may want to check out this blog post.
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