Thankful for a Little Differentiated Math Practice

Thanksgiving day is quickly approaching, a time for discussing the history of the holiday and the meaning of thankfulness. It also means a lot of kids and teachers eagerly anticipating a fall break. It's always good to have a few extras on the side that blend learning into the seasonal events. One good example is this Thanksgiving color-by-number math practice activity.

This package comes with different levels of math skills from Pre-K all the way to eighth grade. There's bound to be a match skill sheet for every child in your classroom in this super-easy bundled package.

After 17 years of teaching 6th grade, I know that I can give an addition sheet to those IEP students who are still struggling with their first grade skills while giving the bulk of my students a sheet on least common multiples, the skill we've currently been working on in class.  And for the gifted kids who have already shown that they've got LCM down, I can give them a sheet on multiplying and dividing fractions.

The best part about all these exercises is that the look exactly the same at a cursory glance, so the kids tend not to notice that they're all working on different skills, or at least they don't give it a second thought.  Even better, all the sheets, regardless of the skill being practiced, work out to the exact same answer key making it super quick and easy for grading.  It's the best of both worlds.  You can differentiate for all the students, yet you don't have to kill yourself grading on the back end.

So not only does everyone get to cover Thanksgiving in multiple subjects, they all get to be thankful.  The students are thankful they got to complete some math problems in a unique way, coloring a picture as they solved problems,  and you can be thankful the entire break is not taken up grading papers, leaving time to enjoy friends and family.  I wish you a wonderfully relaxing and rejuvenating Thanksgiving.

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