With the introduction of volume, fifth-grade students learn to measure three-dimensional space. Recognizing volume and understanding it as a measurement of a space involving cubic units is an important skill. Wixie includes a Swimming Pool Volume template to provide opportunities for a guess-and-check calculation of volume in a real world context.

Editor's Note: This blog is part of a series of posts from former math specialist Scott Loomis on the real world math templates he has created for Wixie and how you can use and modify them for your own awesome performance tasks. You can read the backstory on his experience and expertise below. 

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One could easily argue that there is no more authentic math calculation than determining the area and perimeter. There are countless examples of 'real world' applications including:

• the necessity to calculate the perimeter of a room before deciding on the amount of carpet or crown molding you need to buy, or 
• calculating the perimeter of your yard to better estimate the amount of grass seed or fertilizer required.

One of my all time favorite examples involves a mini golf course design. I remember fondly spreading out pieces of carpet and wooden two-by-fours on the floor of my fifth-grade classroom. My students then completed a performance assessment in which they had to calculate the area and perimeters of a handful of given hole designs, so they could order the correct amount of material. Finally, they could create their own design and have a friend attempt the calculations. You can use Mini Golf Measurements activity in Wixie to do the same activity.

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Representing and interpreting data is a common theme in elementary mathematics instruction. Unfortunately, most activities seem to "spoon feed" the representation, typically a bar or line graph, to students with the x- and y-axis, labels, and scale all completed and ready to go.

What happened to the good old days when students were handed a piece of graph paper and had to create the representation from scratch? I can appreciate the need for students to efficiently demonstrate their knowledge, but I feel strongly that students need to create graphs 'from scratch' like we used to (as recorded in black and white movies!) when we were children.

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Students in 4th grade are expanding their number sense to include fractions and decimals as well as building fluency with operations. They are ready to build foundations for algebraic thinking as well as geometric reasoning.

Wixie's Curriculum library includes a range of math-focused templates you can use for formative assessment purposes or to support student thinking as they tackle complex math tasks in your classroom.

Teachers can assign Wixie activities directly to students, or customize to differentiate them for specific learners in their classroom. Written and voice instructions for students show in the Wixie interface. You can also ask students to record their voice to explain their mathematical thinking.

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Solving single-step or multistep practical mathematical problems is a theme throughout the Common Core Standards and Virginia's Standards of Learning. These practical problems require computation skills that evolve as the students progress from kindergarten to high school. Although this authentic task can be utilized by students in multiple grades, for fourth graders, the problems typically involve adding, subtracting, and multiplication as well as division with whole numbers.

The On Top of Denali template involves a problem solving strategy that utilizes subtraction as a potential part of a Computation unit taught at the start of the school year. Students are asked to compare the elevation of Denali to the highest points of other states including Oregon, Arkansas, and Virginia to name a few.

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