Money (or “Learn to get along with your classmates!”)

This week we learned more about money.  We started “Trades, Jumps and Stops”, a Context for Learning unit and the first thing students do in that unit is count some money.  On the first day, I did a Number Talk, which was definitely not a Number String! I had 50 cents in my pocket and I told the class about the 50 cents.  Then I asked, “Can you tell me which coins I have?” We wrote down 5 or 6 different combinations of coins that are equal to 50 cents.  Then I told them I had 4 coins and they immediately knew which of the options they’d given was correct.  But by “them” and “they” I mean it was only about 3 or 4 students.  Granted, we had a lot of students away due to illness but it was clear that we needed some practice with counting money and making amounts in different ways, so we took a pause from the unit and did that for a couple of days.  By Friday we were using the piggy bank cards, which we need later in the unit, to count out coins, adding up two different amounts to get a total, and comparing them to our partner. This is a detour from the original content of the unit, but I didn’t feel like we could go forward successfully without solidifying this skill. Or set of skills I guess.

I am happy to report that everyone was counting by 5s and 10s, and many were adding up quarters too!  This is because we have progressed as mathematicians!  It is also because I only gave each group 5 pennies so they didn’t have the option of counting out a very big amount by ones.

This week I am also reflecting on how well we are collaborating when we need to.  For the last several years I have done a lot of work with intentional learning partners.  I assign my students to a triad and those people are their partners for the entire month whenever they need partners. In the beginning, I assign them to a partner, or I use a random system for matching students.  As the months go by, I start to ask for their input and ask them to do some self-assessment of their ability to be a good partner.  By the 5th month of school I would not be doing random assignments anymore.

This year is different. On Thursday I pulled out our partner matching cards and I immediately thought, “Why am I still using these?  Why don’t I have partner assignments ready to go?”  Intentional learning partners are meant to match students who will be able to actually help each other out and collaborate together.  Peter Liljedahl does the opposite and has students work with different students every day.  But his work is mostly focused on older students.  I believe that in the primary grades the students need different social things than they do in the higher grades.  For example, practice putting up with each other’s oddities in order to learn some tolerance, practice noticing someone else’s preferred work style and then trying out some tips from that person, and of course they need to learn how to take turns.  They also need to be matched with someone who is close in ability.  Maybe not the exact same ability, but in a split grade class I can’t have my most accomplished grade 3 matched with a grade 2 who is really struggling.  Or worse, a struggling grade 3 matched with a grade 2 who is sailing along! I take all of this into consideration when making matches.

So, why not this year? Well, I think there are a few reasons.  First, we have an attendance problem.  I don’t want to say too much about that, but some kids are away a lot. Second, we have a few kids who are really struggling with being told what to do.  I’m quite concerned that I will assign them to a partner and they will make such a fuss that it will ruin the class period/day/week/month.  Or worse, they will want to be partnered up with someone I do not want them to be partnered up with and I will not partner them up with that person because I am the adult and IT WILL NOT END WELL!  It all seems like a better idea to say, “Sorry, not my fault.  Talk to Fate! She’s the one who picked your partner.” or, “The cards decided, not me.” (which is what I am most likely to say.) We’re a little behind in some of our executive functioning skills and random partnerships let us work on some of those areas while avoiding some of the more volatile ones.  And as I’m writing this I feel like maybe I’m taking the easy way out because I’m exhausted from all the emotional stuff that goes with teaching.

And now I’m going to spend the day thinking about maybe putting some more time into developing the executive skills that will allow everyone to manage frustration in a way that does not make Mrs. Corbett want to cry every day on the way home from school.

But we can all count money, so HOORAY!

This is the “cheat sheet” for the partner matching cards I use.  I got them from Teachers Pay Teachers.  There are individual cards which are handed out randomly and the students have to find their partner. I use the big heart as our “pick your own partner” card for the days when we have an odd number of students in the class.

This week we did…something

It was a weird week for math. I spent some counting routine time counting backwards. They’re pretty good at it. I thought they could be independent as a small group while I worked with some people on something else. I was mistaken. We’ve still got some social collaboration and problem solving things to sort out. That’s the thing I’m reflecting on most as I move forward into next week. I know where I’m going lesson wise, but am still sorting through some of the mathematical process teaching I need to do.

Because of the work I’m doing to spiral in math this year I am feeling like I don’t have a lot of things to use for comments on progress reports. I’ve decided to focus my commenting on some of the mathematical process skills.

This week I’m realizing that so far I’m doing a lot of the selecting when it comes to the tools we use. I put a lot of work into making sure everyone knows how to use the tools properly. Now it’s time for me to talk about how the tools have specific purposes for which they are best suited. We can’t always choose the colour tiles because we like how they stack! It’s time to move along and choose based on what each tool helps us understand. I’m doing some guided math rotations this week, and want to come up with some opportunities for kids to articulate why they chose a certain tool.

That is going to lead us to some communication work. We’re doing okay with this when I am poking and prodding. Now it’s time for the students to think about being really clear with their communication. I’m going to jump in and set up a FlipGrid they can use to explain something they’ve done. They’ll have to think about how to make me understand their thinking when I watch the video at home (cause you know I’ll never find time or a quiet spot where I can view these at school!)

Finally…actually, I’m going to stop there. Don’t need to set too many goals at once, right? I’m also diving into “The T-shirt Factory” Context for Learning unit with my grade 3s and we’ll need to be focused on that math at the same time. Not totally sure what my grade 2s will do next week, but I’m sure I’ll get it sorted out.

It’s important to have a focus on teaching and doing math. But the seven processes are an important part of that we can’t neglect. In a problem solving based classroom students need to be able to do more than accurately find answers.

Making 10

You know when something goes so well on Tuesday that you assume Wednesday is going to be a piece of cake and then on Wednesday everything goes so wrong that you have to stand back and ask, “What was THAT?”  Well, that was my Wednesday.

On Monday we made groups of 10 to count totals of stuff.  I took pictures.  We congressed and talked about how efficient it is to count groups of ten.

On Tuesday we made groups of 10 and then created a chart where we recorded how many groups of 10 we had, how many loose (ones…the singles that didn’t make a group of 10) and noticed how those related to the number I wrote down for the total.  I was blinded by all the lightbulbs going off over the heads!  We ended the day with a fun writing activity. I had a number which I flashed to everyone.  They had a white board and they had to recreate our chart.  If I showed 47, they had to write “4 tens, 7 loose = 47”  but in a chart that I don’t  have a picture of.

On Wednesday we counted stuff and I asked them how many they would need so that there would only be groups of ten – no loose, or single, items. It was a disaster.  Kids were doing all sorts of things but making groups of 10 was not one of them. Figuring out how many more they would need was also not one of them.

On Thursday I took a step back. Or maybe sideways. I had some great counting items from the resource centre.  I had bowls to put them in, which meant that everyone had somewhere around 50 items, which was a manageable number for everyone.  I started by showing them a math rack with 5 red beads slid to one side. “How many would I need to slide over so that I would have 10 beads on this side?”  They got it easily.  Then I pushed 10 over and asked how many I would need to have 20.  Then I did 15, and asked about 20.  Then I did 7 and asked how many would I need to push over to have 10.  I repeated with a few more numbers – if I had 8 how many would I need?  What if I had 12?  or 18? Then I handed out the bowls and everyone made piles of 10 and I asked them how many they’d need to have only piles of 10.  And they could tell me. I took pictures so we could discuss as a group. I am happy to report that THEY GET IT!  Then we played “Tens Go Fish” and all was right in the world.

My family will be driving for the holiday weekend, so I may not end up posting about Friday.  But my plan is to do a bunch of backward counting.  We have a holiday on Monday and I am away on Tuesday so I don’t want to move forward with the next lesson in the “Collecting and Organizing” Context for Learning unit.  We haven’t done any backward counting, so this seems like a good way to spend our math time tomorrow.

I’m wondering at this point of working with a new tool was actually part of the key to this success.  We have done a lot of work with my counting jars, and I think they already know the answers for many of these jars.  They remember that there are 8 bottle caps in one jar, and 47 beads in another.  Are they really thinking about these numbers still?  Or are they just sort of multi-tasking – half paying attention the materials and the piles of ten while also thinking about Minecraft? I feel like having a new item to count got them thinking about the counting again.

Another interesting thing happened on Thursday.  A child who keeps telling me that grade 3 is too hard listened to me give the instructions for “Tens Go Fish”. As I neared the end he got excited. “Madame!  I played this game last year with Madame G!”  It was the most enthusiastic I have seen him in math.  Making that connection to the familiar was so important for him! Was the game maybe too simple for most grade 3 students?  Yes.  Was it still useful? I think so.  They could think about this in a different way as grade 3s than they had as grade 2s. They are now pretty proficient with making tens, for the most part anyway, so this really was a practice.  But they are now thinking about how making tens is useful for problems like 32+18, or 17+13.  Next, the grade 3s are moving on to triple digit numbers, and I feel excited about what this will mean for their understanding.

 

 

Estimating and Number Lines

This week we were focused on two things:  estimating stuff and counting to see if our estimate was close.  I’m feeling really good about it!

There were some fun activities we did that I think really helped.

First, I had some small jars full of stuff.  We started the week by reading a book about estimation.  Then I held up one jar at a time and asked everyone to estimate how many were in the jar.  After the second one, I sent them to their tables to practice.  They had a great time estimating how many paper clips, beads, erasers or rocks were in each jar.  We did this on Tuesday and on Wednesday.  (We didn’t have school on Monday.)

We also played a game that I first learned this summer during a free week of online PD offered by Christine Tondevold.  There were new webinars every day, and one of them featured Graham Fletcher.  He dropped counters into a container but students couldn’t see what he was doing.  They had to rely on their hearing to count along and then identify how many were in the container.  We did this each day last week as a counting routine at the end of the lesson.  On Thursday, I started with this activity.  We had estimated enough times this week that I was ready to take it to the next level.  I pulled out one handful of counters. I asked the class to estimate how many I had.  They turned to a partner and discussed, then I constructed a number line as we went along to show where everyone’s estimate fit on the number line.  They were all convinced that I had no more than 12, so that was the last number on my line.  Then, I dropped them while they counted.  I had 17, so we had to stretch out the number line.  Next, I took 2 handfuls and asked them to estimate.  They did a quick turn and talk.  The first child I called on said, “Well how much is 17 and 17?  Cause if you can fit 17 in one hand then you probably have double that amount.” I was excited about this response!  The child is in grade 3, and I thought this was prefect reasoning. I annotated his explanation as he explained how he added 17+17 (sorry…had to erase that before I got a picture.)  We all agreed that it was pretty likely that I had 34 in my hand.  We started to count.  I had 37, which we all agreed is pretty close to 34, so 34 was a good estimate.

After we had counted them, one of my friends suggested that maybe I had 47.  Win some, lose some, right?  But I put that on the number line and we discussed our answer of 37 again and I think that friend understood that I had 37 and how far away from our estimate 47 is.

An interesting thing happened while we were counting.  Thirty-seven is a high number for some kids to hold in their head so they were using fingers and counting out loud to aide their working memory. I wanted to talk about this strategy so that those who hadn’t done it would know it’s a strategy they could use.  One friend said that he had actually only been able to count to 10 on his fingers at first so each time I got to ” a group of 10″ (“Like 10, 20, 30…like that!”) counters he held up 1 finger. He knew he had 3 fingers and that is 30 counters, then he just had the 7 to go with the 30.  I tried to draw that thinking too.  This strategy actually lead really nicely into our lesson.  We are working on the “Collecting and Organizing” Context for Learning unit next, and counting stuff is the beginning of that unit.  He introduced to us the idea that things can be put into groups of 10 to help with organizing and counting.

We did a bit more counting on Friday.  Everyone tried to make groups of ten, but many aren’t yet convinced that this will help.  We’ll dive deep into this unit whenever we go back to school (hopefully Monday!) and I feel confident they will have it by the end.

We finished on Friday with the “Flying Cars” Esti-Mystery from Steve Wyborney’s new Esti-Mystery set.  It was a huge success and the students were so excited that their estimate was so close to the real answer.  I was so excited that their ability to both reason and explain their reasoning had come so far in just one week.

Up next on the spiralling document I have been following is more counting (forward to 100 for grade 2 and 200 for grade 3).  This week we did some hundred chart puzzles.  I had some made with 101-200 charts for the grade 3s to work on.  They all did pretty well.  They can now become a centre when I need everyone to do independent activities while I run Guided Math groups.  This will become really important in about 2 weeks (depending on if/how long schools are closed for the strike) when I want my grade 3s and grade 2s working on some different units. We also need to be able to count backward (from 50 for grade 2 & 3, and from 500 by 100s for grade 3s) so that will be the focus of our counting routines next week.

And look….nobody went to the washroom during our Number Talk that day!  Interpret that as you will.

 

Early Algebra

We started the “Trades, Jumps and Stops” Context for Learning unit quite some time ago. A variety of inclement weather days has interrupted us a lot, so we are behind where I thought we’d be at this point. That might be part of the issue I’m having with this unit.  I’ve not taught it before, so that has to take a bit of the blame as well.  And finally, I’m thinking I might have misjudged our general readiness for this unit.  But I talked to my down-the-hall neighbour who is also doing the unit and she concurred:  It seems that some kids are easily getting it, and some are really, really having to work hard to get it.  There’s not a lot of in-between here.

Day 4 of the unit begins with a mini-lesson that we needed quite a bit of time with.  I was to fill 2 separate bags with a certain amount of coins in each, plus a “mystery” coin.  We have had a bit of trouble adding up coins, so I decided to stretch this out a bit instead of trying to get through it in 15 minutes.  Instead of putting the bags out of reach, I gave the coins to kids.  I started by explaining, “X and Y have some coins.  They have an equal amount of money, but they have different coins.  I want to see if you can figure out which coins they have.” On the first day only one child had a “mystery” coin (a poker chip!), but on the second day both kids had one.  The children holding the coins were very excited to be given this job. It gave them practice identifying the coin by name and value.  Have you ever thought about how we interchangeable use “dime” & “10 cents” when talking about coins? Some of the kids are still calling this “The Boat”.

We unpacked the bags a bit at a time.  I don’t have pictures of the whole process, but this is how it looked in the end.  Obviously our mystery coin was worth 10 cents this time.  This is the beginning of the children learning about a variable, and I think they did OK!

On the second day, we talked more about the signs < > and =.  We added up the coins in chunks, as suggested in the lesson, and then decided if we needed to have a < or a > or if we finally needed the =.  This time, instead of adding them up as a group, I had the students work with partners.  We knew that X had 40 cents, and Y had 5o cents, but how much would they have once they each got another quarter?  This partnership was trying to make a number line across the bottom end of this photo, without actually making the number line.  It’s a step in the right direction for them!

They wanted to have the numbers in a long line, but couldn’t hold all those totals in their head. Writing them above helped them work on the math and compensated for the stress load on their working memory.

We had lots of people able to do this:

Finally we made it to the mystery coin.  We knew how much money everyone had in actual coins, but what was that mystery coin worth? This led to one of those really cool moments when I felt like (most) everyone was excited about the math.  You can see here where I recorded some of the different responses to the value of the mystery coin.

I was even able to use a double number line to show two of the answers, and since that is the goal of this unit (developing an understanding of the double number line is in fact the very next lesson we will do!) I felt very good about that.

The next day I needed a Number Talk to reinforce the understanding of the variables.  I didn’t really NEED to do it, since this doesn’t come into the curriculum until a later grade, but they were excited about it, and it certainly can’t hurt them so we did it anyway. I found some images on Math Before Bed and use them for our Number Talk.  I feel like they really help to reinforce the student’s number sense because there is more than one way to make 10, or 12, or any number really.

The weather here is terrible today (Sunday) but I’m hopeful there will be plenty of actual school days this week when we can move forward with this unit.  I don’t want to lose our momentum!  Next time I do this unit, however, I am going to maybe wait a bit.  Of course, the thing that keeps getting me through is that I have to trust Cathy Fosnot! She says this will work, and she has seen it work with many, many children, so I am going to go ahead and finish the unit.  The students are mostly getting the ideas behind the math. Some of them are actually in need of more practice with adding up money.  I am going to make sure we have a day this week when we have some activities that require counting money and we’ll rotate through those to give everyone lots of practice. Often these blogs help me think through what has happened and what needs to happen next!  Time to stop writing and plan my money counting activities.

Addition of double digit numbers

There were about 50 of these on our whiteboard at different times over the last few weeks. We’ve gotten pretty good at adding the tens using mental math strategies. 20+20 -> 2+2=4, so 20+20=40…no problem! But it’s was time to move on!

I really wanted everyone to learn how to effectively use a number line. We’ve been working our way through a Context for Learning kit called “Measuring for the Art Show”. I demonstrated it about 1 billion times. First we used cubes to make a line, then we annotated this on some cash register tape, and then we moved to the whiteboard. Finally, I gave everyone some problems (from the kit) and some paper they could use for drawing the number lines.

As I walked around I could see lots of kids with lots of right answers but no number lines. “How are they doing this??” I wondered. So I asked. And I was amazed! So many of them were using the mental math strategy of splitting. They thought about how many ones there were in each number, and how many tens were in each number, then they found a total.

But the number line isn’t the go-to strategy yet. So I’m annotating the problems two ways now. The way lots of them are doing it, and the way some of them are doing it. Both are ways I hope all of them can do these problems eventually.

Our next step…my next step…is to organize into small groups (I know…back to some guided math. It keeps coming up!) I need to help the kids who are splitting learn the number line, and help the number line kids do some splitting and help the “I have no idea what to do kids” get some ideas.

I’m ALWAYS happy to reach Winter Break, but it always comes about a week before I’m ready. I don’t want to interrupt our math learning. But I’m confident the stuff we’re doing now will stick. I won’t have to start from scratch on January 7.

Here is more work from today:

More on Assessment

I’m nearly finished with my math interviews (minus the two who were absent today, of course!) One interview really sticks out because It wasn’t a good interview and I finished it off thinking, “WOW!  There are basically no skills here.”  Now, this isn’t the first time that has happened to me, and I know what to do about it. It’s just that this child had come to me with comments from last year’s teacher that lead me to expect some skills.  So…I went to her for some clarification.  She had saved the interview they did together last year in June.

So instead of a score from a test, or a report card mark and comment, I got to see exactly how he had answered the questions she had asked.  In our board, there is a set of interview questions that most people use, and she had used those.  I use different ones, but have been choosing 3 or 4 of my students as “marker” students, and I do this longer interview with them so I can have the same data as my colleagues for some discussions in the building.  I was so grateful that my colleague still had the exact interview sheet lying around, and wondered why I hadn’t thought to keep more of them.  Likely because I have decided not to be a hoarder in my classroom, which is an important goal, but at times like this I question my reliability as a goal setter.

This weekend, one of my school jobs is to go through my interviews and sort the data.  The board math people (I can’t ever remember all the job titles) have provided us with a tracking sheet.  I haven’t spent any time really looking at it, but I’ll probably give it a go so I can use it to participate in math conversations in our building. I also need to plot everyone on the Landscape of Learning.  Even though I feel pretty confident about my decision to start with the “Collecting and Organizing” Context for Learning unit, I have this niggling suspicion that I will maybe have to run two units at once because a few of my friends are in a very different place than the rest of us. That’s the beauty of the Landscape!  I will know who needs to start here, and who needs to start there. It’s a counting unit though, so I think it will be the only one for now.

I know that people love Teachers Pay Teachers units.  They are super easy to print and photocopy. And I know it’s much easier to mark 10-20 questions on a math test or quiz than it is to conduct individual interviews and then plot each individual on the Landscape.  But when I am considering taking some assessment shortcuts, I can’t stop thinking about a girl I taught a few years ago.

In grade 4, I gave everyone a quick multiplication sheet so they could do some practicing.  She got every single question right! But along with the quiz, she had also been working on a separate sheet of paper.  I knew she was drawing pictures to solve some problems.  But when I sat down to look at everyone’s work, I realized she had drawn a picture for every single question.  For 8×7 she drew a picture, which is fine because 8×7 can be tricky.  But for 2×2 she  also drew a picture. And for 1x 6 and for 3×3, and on and on. Her score said “Level 4”, her drawings said “Level 2…maybe actually 1”.   And back to my friend from this morning – I would have had to consider that child a “beginning” mathematician at best, but thanks to information that came out in interviews with his previous teacher, I know him to be much more.

In conclusion, I’m busy too, but I make time for this even though “all the other kids” get a bit loud playing their games, and they spent more time on Dreambox this week than they’ll spend in a single week for the rest of the year. It’s time well spent.

 

Math Interviews as Assessment

On Friday I was working on finishing math interviews with my students.  I am ¼ of the way through the class already! (growth mindset)

Me:  What is 4+3?

Grade 2 student, without hesitation: 7

Me:  How’d you do that so quickly?  

Student:  Because last year my teacher had us work on things like that on this app on the iPad. We had to do those kind of problems every day.  It was so annoying (insert eye roll) day after day! But now I’m really quick at it.

Me:  That’s great! What is 8 + 14?

Student (blank stare):  Um, yeah. We aren’t on that level yet.  I think that’s like level 17 and I was only level 16, so I don’t have that memorized yet.

Me:  Well, do you have any way of figuring it out?   (I’m trying not to look at the 20 “special stones” that were just counted out, or the Rekenrek sitting to the right, or the whiteboard and marker to the left.)

Student: Ummmmmm……no.

Me:  What if you were using some of these tools? Or your fingers?

Student:  Ummmmm…….no.

Apparently they valued memorizing the basics at his previous school.  You can draw your own conclusions about how I feel about that. But this isn’t about judging another’s teaching based on the word of one 7 year old.  The real question for me is this:  What am I going to do about it for this child?

The start of the year is always a tricky time for me.  No matter what “last year’s teacher” has shared with me about a child, I feel I never really know them until I complete a reading Running Record, a writing conference, and a math interview.  This conversation above is exactly why I think a math interview is important. Thanks to this and a few other questions, I now know that this child is subitizing numbers less than 6, can skip count, count on and count back when counting objects but not when presented with just the numbers, can draw a number line that shows where 7, 10, 20, 30 50 and 48 would be, but that these will not be drawn in iterated units, and can count from 30 to 100 but has a long pause when moving between decades (48, 49……….50!)  I also know that though this child has some basic facts memorized, there isn’t a whole bunch of understanding behind that fact, so little understanding in fact that the child had no idea what to do when the answer wasn’t already known.

Years ago, I had a math textbook to use that provided a “pretest” and a ”post test”.  They were of very little use. Sure they gave me a score I could use for a mark, but that was often all they gave me.  The interview, however, tells me so much more about where to start, where to go and how fast to try and get there. A follow up interview after a few months tells me if I am moving at the right pace, if someone needs to be pushed faster or slower, and if I need to circle back to a place I thought we’d already covered sufficiently.

The major questions that always comes up is this: What do the other 20 children do while I spend 10 or so minutes with a child one on one.  During a Running Record, they all read and look at books. During a writing conference, the others are all writing. But we can’t just have a bunch of 7 and 8 year olds “do math” independently in September.  Here is what I have them do:

1. Dreambox.  If you do not have access to this, I am VERY sorry for your luck.  It’s great. It’s a bit expensive, but if your luck is good your board has purchased a license and your class can use it.  If not, try Prodigy.
2. Dice Games
   1. Race to 100:  Here is one version I’m excited to try.  We actually play for counting chips.  Every child has one die.  Simultaneously they are rolling that die, then taking the same number of counting chips.  When one person gets to 100 (we were playing to 50 this week) the game ends. 
   2. Tenzies/Yahtzee
3. Card Games
   1. War 
   2. Addition war
4. Math Manipulatives
   1. They love to use pattern blocks and there is a lot of spatial reasoning work than can happen even if the class seems to be “playing” with these blocks.
   2. They like to “play” with 3D shape blocks for the same reason and it gives them the same learning experience.
5. Finally, if you haven’t read “What to Look For” by Alex Lawson, you should.  At the end of this fabulous book, there are a collection of games that can be played to help move students along in their mathematical understanding.  You can look at specific skills your students need, then choose a game that helps them work  on that specific skill.

I will admit that it gets a bit loud while we work on this. This might feel like a waste to some teachers.  I think it’s a great chance for us all to practice what we do while the teacher is busy with just one person. I also feel that the information I gather from each child saves me so much time down the road that it more than makes up for these first few days of playing at math. I am not guessing about a starting point – sometimes missing the mark by a mile and starting too far ahead or too far behind my students.  I can confidently set up my guided math instruction in a way that is truly differentiated for the class. Finally, who says math can’t or shouldn’t be fun?  

 

*I’ve had a few requests for a copy of my assessment.  I hesitate to share it, but I’m not sure why.  I can’t think of a real reason not to, so I guess I will.  It’s going to be most useful to you if you are familiar with the Landscape of Learning, created by Cathy Fosnot.  I don’t ask every child every question.  If they are having a lot of trouble with the first 1 or 2 addition or subtraction problems, I don’t ask the others.  If they are having trouble with the number line, I don’t ask all those questions.  But I don’t stop asking after the first mistake, because sometimes the child will go back and revise their number line, and that’s useful information for me too!

Here it is.

 

 

Patterning

So – Patterning.  I’m thinking a lot about this skill and how to make it meaningful for my mathematicians. I’m thinking a lot about its connection to algebra and how to set my grade 2’s & 3’s up for success and start them on the road to algebraic thinking.

I put them to work on Monday.  I put baskets of math manipulatives out and told them to go make patterns.  As predicted, they made a bunch of repeating patterns.  They were quite proud of them in fact.  On Tuesday, we talked about growing patterns.  They weren’t really showing an understanding of reading the pattern left to right, so we had a bit of a chat about that on Wednesday when we talked about shrinking patterns and about how the direction matters. As seems to happen often this year, they were amazed by this knowledge.  I think it will stick!  Here is one of the examples I built to show them that direction matters:

Today, Thursday, I asked everyone to actually put their pattern on a number line.  We have done a lot of work with number lines this year, and with the 100 chart.  I feel like it is really paying off!  I started with some guided inquiry.  What, I asked, would my pattern look like on a number line?

Together we constructed a few:

Really glad I put this on top of the gross old tape line that children have been slowly picking off for 2 years!

Then I sent them to make some patterns of their own, and map them on number lines.  I didn’t hand them the paper until they had their patterns made and could talk to me about how the pattern was growing and shrinking (by ones, by 3’s, etc.  Actually, no “etcetera” because everyone either did ones or threes, like our example.  I’m not worried though because tomorrow I can tell them they are too good to stick with ones and threes and they need to choose something else!)

This one led to a conversation about how they actually have 2 different patterns: add 3 tiles to each term, OR add one column to each term. They hadn’t noticed the second and were trying to figure out why I was so excited about it! I feel like there is a double number line opportunity here, but we aren’t ready for that!

I know it might not be right to have favourites, but this is my favourite conversation:

First, there was this:

The child who made this pattern was insistent that it was a growing and shrinking pattern.  His partners were not convinced.  In fact, they were downright mad because he was so sure and they couldn’t see it. I couldn’t see it either, to be honest.  I wanted so badly to tell him that this was not going to work!  But Cathy Fosnot’s voice echoed in my head, “Productive struggle…productive struggle…”  so I handed him the strip of paper and a marker, and walked away.  A few minutes later, I returned to this:

He’d figured out on his own that to make a number line his “special stones” needed to be laid out in a straight line.  He was also able to finally show us that the green stones aren’t actually part of the pattern.  They just mark the end/beginning of each set of clear stones.  As soon as it was straight, he could help his partners see his thinking – he could explain it so much more easily.  He’d made it through the struggle and came out successful on the other side.  (He did write in the numbers and finish the number line – I didn’t get a picture though.)

Two others made this pattern. (I’ll add the picture later!)

When we chatted about it, they told me that they knew 22 should come next, but didn’t have enough special stones. This was a huge piece of info for me! I thought they’d just been rote counting, but are perhaps ready to make a line without having to build the concrete pattern first.

I am, however, left with one question:  How does one put a repeating pattern on a number line?  ABABABA patterns, or ABCABCABC patterns – can they be put on a number line?

*update* Today I challenged everyone to try something besides 1 & 3.

They tried 2, 4, 5 & 10.

…backwards…. We still have work to do!

This one went on and on, but there are kids in the picture near the end.

They made a “counting by 1” pattern and had to be convinced to add the second row and then to understand the second row. I had to start the number line for them, but it felt like an appropriate scaffold.

I can’t show the “100” at the end. But I can say there was a great conversation about why 10 and 50 were so close, but 50 and 100 were so far away! They decided they needed a “refresh” and drew a new underline with perfectly iterated lengths between the numbers. Also, they realized they didn’t need to build every term in the pattern to draw the number line.

Proportional Reasoning is so cool!

This image is from the “Grocery Store, Stamps and Measuring Strips” Context for Learning unit.  I love this unit and think it is a great way to introduce multiplication to students.  At the end of the unit, students are asked to look at this image.  (Note:  I am only including part of the image because this is not my work and I don’t want to violate copyrights!)

We had done all the proportional reasoning work before this:  figuring out how tall or long everything on a city street (trees, a bus, a few buildings) might be in relationship to 4 foot tall Antonio.  It was time for some final assessment.

“How many design elements are on the curtain?” I asked. One image shows a full extended shade, with 16 (maybe 20?  I forget)  oranges in an array.  The grade 3’s easily told me the total, and explained how they had counted.  Lots of multiplying I was very happy to note.  But they said there were 14 stars on this shade,  and 12 or maybe 18 diamonds* on the other curtains. They debated it for a while.  Then I said, “What if I stretched that shade so it covered the whole window, just like this one with the oranges?”

Blank stares.  The 5 of them looked at each other.  They looked at me.  They recounted the 14 stars and 18 diamonds*.  They  weren’t sure what I was asking.  “Well, we can see part of the window in each of these, and there is light coming through.  But what if the curtain was closed?  What if we could see the whole shade?”

They thought some more.  They used their fingers to measure.  They finally decided that if there were 12 on one curtain, there must be 12 on the other, and 2 groups of 12 = 24. . The roller shade wasn’t as easy, but once they figured out the curtain they had a strategy. “I think,” said one, “that there would be 3 more rows of stars.  So thats 7+7 doubled, plus 7 more.” OH MY GOODNESS!  Proportional reasoning AND partial products???  I could not have been happier.  Everyone agreed, then took turns explaining how they’d counted the stars and diamonds.

I’m calling this unit a success!

 

*We are calling them diamonds instead of rhombuses because they don’t have parallel sides that are straight, and the angles aren’t right for rhombuses.

Just about every Tuesday I blog for the Slice of Life challenge over at Two Writing Teachers. You can read more posts on that blog.