Math Talk: A Recordable Moment

Today in math I wasn't planning on teaching addition with regrouping because I wasn't sure that my students were there yet.  We have been working on mastering our facts to 10 so that we have solid foundation.

It has been touch and go and I've been trying to make it as interactive as possible.  My students are always up for anything that I present to them and today was just the same.  I went into today's lesson thinking that I was going to start subtraction (without regrouping), but once I wrote the header on the board, I came to me that I needed to do more addition, but with regrouping this time.

We warmed up with a card game (similar to "war") where students work in pairs with a deck of cards and they each flip a card over and add the faces together.  Whomever adds up the faces correctly first gets the cards.  It has been a major hit with my students (because they are uber competitive and sponges for learning), so I figured it would be a good lead in to the addition with regrouping.

I reconvened everyone and presented a problem where they had to regroup.  We discussed the need to remember the place value columns and what the digits in a two-digit number meant.  We spent a few minutes composing and decomposing numbers to get the idea of what numbers were really made of.

We were then off to the races to try and add with regrouping.  In trying to keep it simple, I stuck with a simple algorithm that they could follow the steps/pattern to.  With everyone engaged and wanting to share what they thought was the "right way", I turned the floor over to them and asked for a turn & talk.  They needed to talk to the person beside them how they were going to solve 38+96.  This is where I went scrambling for my ipad to record a conversation between two students (grade 2s) about what they immediately saw about the numbers and the steps that they were going to take to solve the problem.

This left me so proud of where they have some from since September when they wouldn't even talk about what they saw or what they wondered.  It was an unintentional moment, yet perfect.  I was ecstatic that could capture it on video.  Next time I would stop questioning them and hope that they would continue to talk about what they saw and hopefully get up and demonstrate their ideas on the board to solidify their understanding.

Until tomorrow, I hope that there's sunshine & happiness in your day similar to what I had today with my math talks.

Stephanei :)

I. Hate. Paper.

Yes, a pretty bold statement, but one I think I need to get out.  Yesterday I experienced perhaps the most stressful hour of my math career.  I gave my grade 1/2 students a "paper test". That's right, just as you read, a paper test.  What an epic fail!

Let me back track for a minute. I am a part of a great opportunity within my school to work with a grade level team (me + 2 others, so not a huge team!) to do a student work study work with a focus on mathematics.  We met last week to discuss the vision and path we wanted to take and thus, created a pre-test for students to complete as a starting off point.

Fast-forward to yesterday. I feverishly worked through my lunch hour to prepare the small packages of manipulatives and paper test for each student and then gathered everyone up at the beginning of our usually exciting math class.  Students were excited asking what we were going to learn today until I calmed them down and started my explanation.  I started out with what we were going to be doing today was not going to be something that was going to be marked for their report card and that it was something that was very different than we are used to having.  I pulled out a package with the manipulatives and the paper and immediately there were hands in the air asking 1,000 questions.  I went over each question one by one and I could see some confidence in their eyes still, so there was hope in my heart too.  I was holding onto that hope because I knew that we had done each of the questions in isolation before, but never in this format.  I sent each student away with their package and almost instantaneously everyone's stress levels rose through the roof.  Because it was a pre-test for the work study, I could not give direct explanations as to what I was looking for in each question.  I read and re-read each question what felt like 100 times to try and ease their anxiety of having this paper in front of them. All of this brought be back to my EQAO days, minus the age of the kids.

With a quick glance at "the paper" and their faces when each child handed in their work, I knew I had just destroyed them.  They looked discouraged, defeated, confused and unmotivated.  This crushed me.  I also knew that they could answer each of those questions had I asked for a verbal response or been able to give them a marker and a piece of chart paper.  I felt deflated as a teacher.  What had I put my students through and how can I make it easier for them?

All of this to say, I hate paper.  My students are used to manipulating, drawing, collaborating and discussing their ideas and learning that when I put a piece of paper, better known as the "test" in front of them, they have no clue how to handle it.  I felt so frustrated with their outcomes and sad towards how they felt they did.  I shared these feelings with my principal and she reminded me that it's not a bad thing that they didn't know what to do and that there are some students that had I put the same paper in front of them would have eaten it right up and known exactly what to do because that's all they know.  All they know are worksheets.  All my students know is manipulating, discussing and collaborating.

Today we're going back to our manipulating and active learning.  There won't be another "paper" until the post-test comes up in a month from now.  Until then, I'll be making it up to my students with snap cube & pattern block free time!

How Do You Teach Reasonableness?!?

So as I laid in bed a few nights ago because I couldn't turn my brain off, I got thinking about the batch of marking that I had done earlier in the day.  It was a math formative assessment that followed a weeks worth of lessons on proportional reasoning and consequently the reasonableness of our answers.  What kept coming to my mind was "how do I go back and teach reasonableness again?" because it seemed every answer I read I wonder who would have submitted this if they had only re-read their answer to check if it made sense.  We've had a new vision in math these past few years in going to more of a problem solving approach (which I love by the way), so I try to keep an open mind when reading the work of my students.  I preach on a daily basis that we all take different routes to school in the morning and all end up at the same place, so we can do the same thing with a math problem.  However, I often make my students laugh when I ask if they think it's reasonable that I head to Montreal first before coming to school just to prove my point that sometimes our answers are not the best avenues to take.  But this isn't sticking with them...so now what?!

As a part of our School Learning Team it was one of our focuses this year to get students to re-read their work before submitting it (regardless of the subject area) and I seem to be failing miserably with this focus.  I'm at a loss as to how to get this point across.  I've thought of giving them the whole "can't hand it in until you've read it over" or "you must take a minimum of 10 minutes to solve the problem before handing it in", but it isn't teaching the kids what to look for.  They are solving the problem to the best of their ability and if they knew the answer was not right then they wouldn't have written it in the first place.  I always consolidate answers to problems that have a high rate of inaccuracy and when I do the light clicks, but it doesn't always stay on for the next time.  So my big question is "now what?".  Please leave me any comments or suggestions here or on my twitter at @stephwardranger

Have a good week!

Stephanie :)