Book Order Math: Multiplication Practice

When I moved to third grade this year, I had to find a way to repurpose the lessons I used in fifth grade for my new third grade audience.  I knew my kids would love the things I was doing in fifth, but the skills were just above the heads of these 8 year olds.  So for each lesson I do, that I once did in fifth, I sit down and think about how I can best adapt it to meet the needs of my new, younger learners.

In the past, I used the old Scholastic Book Order forms to help the students practice adding, subtracting, rounding, ordering, and multiplying decimals.  (you can see that lesson here and here) That wasn't quite the skill set my new third graders have.  So I decided we would bring the idea to a more manageable set of standards -- multiplication facts and adding.

Adapting Book Order Math was actually rather easy to do.   It is just such a versatile project!  The basic idea is simple:  the kids go "shopping" for 6 books in the book order magazine.  Each book, priced between $1 and $12, was then cut out of the magazine and placed on the recording sheet.  Using a pair of dice, I asked the kids to roll to see how many copies of each book they would buy.  Since we are only working with the basic fact set, a pair of dice worked great for keeping the kids under 12.  They then performed the multiplication to figure out the cost for the set of books in that title they would be "purchasing".

Once that was done (which took about 30 minutes), the kids then added up the total books they would be purchasing, how much all of them cost, and ordered the unit prices from least to greatest.  This hit a few more standards the kids have been working on this year.

Overall, this was an easy adaptation that kept the kids engaged.  It gave them the perfect way to adapt their math skills to the real world, while having a little fun (I mean, who doesn't love pretending to shop??)  

If you would like to do this in your room, you can pick up the recording sheet here.