The school year is in full swing in my neck of the woods and we have been hard at work doing assessments, setting up groups and even getting some teaching in!
My second graders have been looking at addition and subtraction strategies for facts to 20. One of my top priorities for this unit is making sure kids are solid with combinations of 10 by the middle of the unit. Without being solid with combinations of 10, some of the most efficient strategies for the facts between 10 and 20 are much more challenging for kids to develop. We talk about the friends of 10 from the first day of the unit and incorporate games like make 10 go fish, flip and write, pyramid, and popper cups. My second graders are getting really good at these! This morning, I was thinking they all seemed fluent but I wanted a quick way to check without another formal assessment. Today I was using One Big Pair of Underwear to introduce the difference model for subtraction. Kids already had out white boards, makers and erasers. As I was finishing up the whole group lesson and transitioning to math station and guided math groups, I had kids quickly write down as many of the friends of 10 that they could think of in 1 minute. This let me see who was really fluent and to make sure there were not kids who were looking at other kids boards to get the answers. For the most part, kids were very quick and the wandering eyes didn't happen until kids were done or close to it. It was interesting to see which kids organized their equations and which kids wrote equations in a seemingly random way.
To finish this up and give kids one more chance to practice combinations of 10, we watched this Friends of 10 song and as each combination of 10 appeared on the screen, they erased that combination on their board. This made them really pay attention to the song and gave them one more chance to practice. I am so pleased with the progress my second graders have made in this area and am looking forward to seeing them use this skill to develop other strategies!
How are your students doing with fact fluency? How are you doing at finishing up those beginning of the year assessments? Please respond in the comments below or head over to my Facebook page to leave your thoughts!
Welcome to the final week of our Minds on Mathematics book study. If you missed them you can go back and read Understanding Takes Time , Shallow Versus Deep Math , Starting Class and Mini Lessons & Work Time . This week are going to take a deeper look at ending class with sharing and reflecting when using a math workshop model. Sharing Perhaps the most important part of a math workshop model is the time for students to share. It is so important to stop work time before the end of your math class period and give kids a chance to share. This is the part that helps to solidify their comprehension and gives them a chance to practice metacognition which is thinking about their own thinking. They get a chance to synthesize their understanding, check on their progress and make goals for the next day. Teachers can gather important formative assessment data about what strategies kids are using and where to go ne...
Welcome to week 3 of our Minds on Mathematics book study. If you missed them you can go back and read Understanding Takes Time and Shallow Versus Deep Math . This week are going to look at how to start a day of math workshop. The Opening The first part of math workshop is the opening. This is a time to invite learners to make connections and establish purpose. The book outlines 4 parts to a successful math workshop opening. Welcome Learners If you are teaching a self contained classroom, this is your chance to make a transition to math class. You might play a math song, check out a math you tube video , have kids share a favorite memory of math class or have some way to get kids pumped up that math is about to start. If your students switch rooms for math and this is the first time you are seeing those students that day, this is your chance to greet kids at the door and work on making those connections with students. It is your chance to wor...
Welcome to our second week of looking closely at math workshop. Get more details about my math workshop book study here . Deep Versus Shallow Math In this week's reading, I was struck by the difference between deep and shallow math. Here are some characteristics of each type of math. Shallow Math - Memorizing algorithms - Applying an algorithm (usually a word problem found on the bottom of a page full of practice for that algorithm. - Hunt & copy exercises - Plug and chug numbers - Not considering what the numbers mean - About covering the content - Teacher gives out knowledge Deep Math - Engaging, exciting, exhausting & inspiring - Pushes learners out of their comfort zone - Mental models - An understanding of a concept that can be built upon later - Discourse - Challenging tasks - Students wrestling to make sense - Content understanding - Teacher as a facilitator of learning When I was in elementary and middle school 99% of the math I did would be classified...
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