The good and the bad

Some weeks I feel like the windshield, and some weeks I feel like the bug. This was a bug week so I’ve decided to find some wins to focus on. We worked hard last week, and mostly it showed. Today, Monday, I was so glad I spent the weekend reflecting on what had gone right last week instead of staying stuck in a negative reflection cycle.

Each of the above pictures shows a moment I captured on my camera because something was going well. I had a lot I left on the camera roll too. I started taking photos during math because it can be difficult to document student work in the moment. My phots help me go back and document later. I often take videos too so I can spend some time reflecting on conversations later. It helps me think about my students. It helps me refine my questioning and conferring practice, too.

Not every day at school feels like a win. Lots of them feel really hard. But there’s good to be found if I look hard enough.

What you see isn’t what I see

For Number Talks this past week I made some arrays on Smart Notebook and projected them on the board. We spent time each day talking about what we noticed and thought. Early on the fact families emerged. I’m glad because we’ve just finished up some multiplication and division learning and I was glad to see this being put into practice.

On Friday I displayed the picture below:

As you can see there were multiple ways to see this picture. Immediately people saw the array of 4 rows with 3 bikes in each.

One child kept insisting it was 2 groups of 6. It took a minute for him to convince his peers, and I had to help by circling the 2 groups. I’m glad we took the time to let him explain! He was clearly showing some beginning “partial products” thinking and I wouldn’t have known this if I hadn’t probed for an explanation.

Finally someone started talking about the bike tires. I don’t have a photo of that annotation, but it was interesting to see how the students went in to figure out that 12 groups of 2 = 12+12 = 24. Of course they were able to complete the fact family. At this point very few were counting by one’s. I was quite happy about that for sure!

It took me very little time to use the tools in Smart Notebook to make these arrays. I’ve definitely used Mathies for this as well, but the pictures in Smart Notebook led to a deeper conversation. This week I need to find some cars with 4 wheels to expand on our conversation.

This work also builds on the “Eyes on Math” number talks and picture-based number talks we’ve been doing all year. Tomorrow we are going on an array hunt around the school with our iPads. That activity has been preempted a few times but I think it will end up being a better activity now that we’ve discussed the picture arrays a few times.

Update: Assessment

I’m interviewing everyone in my class to make sure my report cards are up to date and accurate. It’s been very telling!

I often get one-on-one time with students, but they are usually at different places in their work. During the interview, I’m asking the same 6-8 questions, and talking about the strategies the kids use from beginning to answer. One question in particular is standing out because so far my friends fall into 3 categories.

The question is: I have 7 crackers, you have 9 crackers. How many do we have altogether?

One child said, without pause, “16.” This child was confident, and didn’t falter at all when I asked how he’d gotten the answer so quickly. “I just know things like that.” When I asked other questions he was equally confident and had very efficient strategies.

Another child, same question: “…mumble…mumble…it’s…16?!” I asked for an explanation. “Well, I know 9 is almost 10, so make it 10, then 10+6…yeah…16.” Earlier in the year this child told me he solved problems by reading my mind until he found the answer. I’d say he’s made excellent progress in his meta cognitive and communication skills!

Another child, same question: “….2?” I repeat the question. “7!!!!” I repeat the question. “9!” I take a handful of counters out of the nearby basket & make a pile of 7, and a pile of 9. Then I say, “These are mine. I have 7. These are yours. You have 9. How many altogether?” Response: “If I take away 2, then we’re even!” And “Is it almost time to eat?”

So I put the counters away and write on a piece of paper “7+9” and the child says 16. Rote memorization for the win!

There are three things going on here, and if I made each of these three the team captain I’d have no trouble finding people in the class with similar thinking to fill their teams. Each of the other questions I’m asking further shows the thinking behind the answers I’m getting from the class, including showing me the preferred strategies each child has. It’s so much more interesting than just getting a worksheet filled with answers.

Which is your favourite?

Halloween is a great time to gather some data and manage it. There’s so much candy to sort!

In my ongoing effort to do things like surveys and graphs in a regular basis instead of as a separate unit, I planned to ask everyone about candy today. I already knew that everyone could come up with a “What is your favourite _____?” Or “Which _____ do you like best?” question. I decided to change the question. Instead, I told the class that I think all candy falls into 5 categories: chocolate, gummies, hard candy (lollipops and Jolly Ranchers), gum and liquorice. Nobody fought me on this. I’m just realizing now we could have had quite the debate about this. Where, for example, would Laffy Taffy and Starburst fit? And what about Reese’s Pieces? But nobody thought of those until just now!

Because I was asking which candy they liked, they could answer more than once. Only voting once is always tricky for kids with a question like this because they like so many things. And, I explained, I actually don’t like liquorice but am willing to accept that some people might.

Here are our results, tallied and then graphed:

We counted the chocolate tallies. As I tallied the gummy votes, someone pointed out that gummy and chocolate were the same. We talked about how we could tell without counting, which was actually a revelation to several students. However, they noticed it on their own for hard candy and gum. I’m glad we could talk about this one-to-one correspondence because it will come up again when we start talking about multiplication.

Since we have 22 students, and only one was away, we had to figure out who didn’t like some of the candies. We talked about how many people were not voting for each candy categories. Finally, we talked about how just because I don’t like liquorice doesn’t mean I shouldn’t buy it for them. (Nice of me, right?)

I’m going to add this to our math walk tomorrow. I want it up to remind everyone about organized data, and how it’s so much easier to follow along with than the other kind (haphazard tallied scattered abroad.). By the end of the month I want everyone to be able to come up with a good question and gather data. We’ll mostly be doing this during social studies as we begin our study of world communities.

We can make our own number lines!

I’m not going to lie:  making the jump to drawing number lines independently has taken a while!  All the grade 2s can explain what I am doing on a number line, and all of them (ok, most of them) can describe a strategy and when I draw it on a number line they confirm I have drawn what they were doing in their heads.  But to make their own?  That’s been hard.

We had completed all of the activities in “Ages and Timelines”, one of the Context for Learning Units, and people were still referring to tools (hundred chart mostly, they they tried to use math racks unsuccessfully) so I wanted to spend an extra week just talking about how to use that number line AND draw it independently.

One day last week, I created some Smart Notebook slides and we all sat down the chalkboards.  Here’s the first one,along with some notation to show that people were flexible with strategies…they used both addition and subtraction to find the answer. I will say that those who added were surprised some had used subtraction, and those who subtracted were surprised that addition could be used, so we had a great conversation about this slide! (Oh, and we are collecting paper towel tubes for science! 🙂 )

Here is another of our questions:

I wandered around and captured some number lines.  Now, this might not be beautiful to you, but darn it!  It is gorgeous to me!  Look at the line, the iterated jumps, the acknowledgment that 4 jumps of 1 is the same as 1 jump of 4…*sigh*  I’m smiling again just thinking about it!

 

I caught one person who was struggling, and handed that child a hundred chart, with a 25 chart on the back.  For this problem, this child was able to use the 25 chart, but for later problems, had to use the 100 chart, and did!

Another beautiful number line… Another great demonstration of the iterated units drawn evenly and there even arrows on the end!

 

One of the most amazing things that happened is shown here.  One child had a 100 chart and was using it well.  Another had no strategy and was looking around the room to see if she was alone in this dilemma.  As soon as she spotted the 100 chart, she scooted over to it.  However, upon arrival, she realized she wasn’t sure what to do.  The other child showed her!!!  (There is a sock on one child’s hand because we use them to erase the chalkboards!)

So, it took us an extra week, and I am quite sure the number of grey hairs on my head has doubled since March Break. Next week, mixed in with some probability to math workshop centres, I am going to be sitting at a table interviewing these lovely grade 2’s to see what they can really do all on their own.  Can’t wait!