Games

We played a fun game this past week called “Cover up”. I learned it from the book “What to Look For” by Alex Lawson.

Each pair of students got 20 tiles. One partner closes their eyes while the other covers or removes some tiles. Then the first child figure out how many are covered up.

It didn’t take long for all the groups to realize organized arrays are better than disorganized piles. The array allows a child to count empty spaces.

I enjoyed watching them use lots of other strategies to figure out how many were missing: counting what was left then counting up to 20, counting backward from 20, noticing a whole row was missing, subitizing the number left. I had one group work with only 10 tiles on the first day, but by day 2 they also had 20. Even the kids who had trouble at first soon, with the support of their partner, figured out what to do. It was a great task! I’ll be adding it to our repertoire of games for Guided Math.

Slow and steady

This week looked a lot like last week. I had no idea it would be so hard for me to slow down my “ease back into school” math routine. Typically by the third week we’re ready to rock and roll. But I am now preparing for week four and it’s more like elevator Muzak than Bon Jovi. I think it’s a good thing.

One of the things that was on my mind a lot is how long it’s taking for some of us to fall back into school mode. It makes sense because the students in my grade 2/3 class haven’t completed a full year of school since kindergarten. A colleague suggested that it might also because it continues to feel like we could be closed again any time – kids can’t trust that we’re going to be here for long because school, for them, has always been uncertain. Makes sense.

We spent time this past week doing dot talks. It was interesting to learn about their thinking. But it was also interesting to learn how they communicate. But it was most interesting for me to see that they don’t think of counting as math. I would think that would stick out as a main component for them.

That’s where I plan to start on Monday: What is math? I’m going to ask them and we’ll talk about it. I hope we can establish that math is playing with numbers, shapes, and information. Should I put “playing” in air quotes? Not sure yet.

I think my number talks will need to be planned after this conversation. I’m predicting I’ll need to show them a few things and do a number talk on a different math area each day – data and graphing one day, geometry one day, number operations another day.

For lessons I think I’m ready to start getting the students ready to split into different groupings. Yes…I’m talking about Guided Math again. I don’t know a whole lot about my mathematicians yet, but I do know they are in many different places.

These are the centres I think I’ll have this week:

*games with cards

*games without cards (no idea what they will be yet!)

*iPads for online activities

*work with Mrs Corbett