Welcome to this Lesson!

Itsy-Bitsy Math Songs

creating math songs to help students remember the steps needed to solve math problems

This lesson was created by Northern Nevada teacher Lisa Baehr while attending the NNWP's
I-Pod's Across the Curriculum Workshop.

This writing prompt inspired by

the Itsy-Bitsy Spider and other familiar songs and nursery rhymes.

Click here to do a Google search for the lyrics.

Three-Sentence Overview of this Lesson:

In his picture book Take Me Out of the Bathtub, author Alan Katz demonstrates his love of familiar songs and nursery rhymes by writing new lyrics that can be sung to them. For this asignment, students will take a mathematical procedure and write step-by-step instructions for the procedure that can be sung to the tunes of familiar nursery rhymes or songs. This will be first completed once as a whole class activity, and then students will work in groups or as individuals to create original songs that demonstrate their ability to put ideas from notes into original words. Teachers: Click here to see the entire lesson plan.

6-Trait Overview for this Lesson:

The focus trait for this lesson is idea development; students will transform their knowledge of exponents into their own words as they create their nursery rhymes. The support trait here is organization; students will borrow and adhere to the structure of a familiar nursery rhyme as they carefully place their original words within the structure.