To assess students, they were asked to make rectangles that had a perimeter of 24 inches. Some made their rectangles with tape on the floor while others constructed them on paper. Some had only whole number dimensions while others included the use of fractions and mixed numbers. Then they were given a fixed perimeter and asked to design the courtyard with the largest area. This is played like the commercial game Battleship but with graph paper.
Students graph adjacent points to represent five different size ships.
Students took turns in front of the room displaying their signs. Those at their seats wrote the addition sentence shown by the human counters. Those remaining after zero pairs sat down represented the answer. When students learned the meaning of a term, they wrote its definition in their own words. My students practice illustrating fractions or percents by using two different color plastic plates with a radius cut in each plate.