Places on a Numberline

posted Jan 28, 2016, 11:44 AM by Amy Wix

Earlier this month I was teaching a lesson on ordering numbers on a number line.  I  used a lesson from www.yummymath.com connecting the Martin Luther King holiday  and Civil Rights with our math class.  I started by using a rope held up by students in  the front of the room and numbers on tents made from index cards.  We brainstormed ways to find the largest  and smallest numbers and placed them on our rope.  I was  happy to see they remembered to use terms like maximum, minimum and range.  We calculated what the midpoint would be, and then midpoints of the lower and upper halves.  Students who had numbers closest to these put their numbers on the line.   The remainder of the students then came up to the line and placed their numbers  where they thought they should be.  Following this we had a really good discussion  where students made suggestions on numbers that needed to be moved.  Before they  were moved, they had to justify their reasoning and the group had to agree.   I think that when I do this lesson again, I will have the same random numbers placed  on the line and then talk about how timelines use benchmark dates.  After we can come up with benchmark dates we’ll make up new cards and place them on the line.   Modeling this might help with the actual timelines the students make.  Hopefully they  won’t start at 1789 and increase by 3 year increments.