let the kids do the teaching

Throughout our short geometry unit, we've had a big emphasis on vocabulary. After a lot of examining related words, the class wanted to make definition cards that we used to create a word wall. They all signed up for a couple of words and then used a Mix-Freeze to teach the words

After I posted all the words for the kids to see and asked them to make a T-chart. They wrote down at least five words they confidently understood and could explain in one column, with words they needed to know in the other. With a quick check as they walked out the door, I marked off all the words any kids were still confused about. Later, we looked at this list again and they "signed up" to teach one another:

I'm telling you, this is the easiest teaching ever. They decided on how they would teach the terminology, set it up, and then taught! They were taking notes, really listening to understand, and filling in the gaps before the unit progressed any further. 

I even said to the kids at the end that I felt useless in the class but was so happy to hear them communicating their understanding and taking ownership of their learning. Pretty good for final quarter craziness!

finding out and sorting out: perimeter

Day Two
After our hands-on intro to perimeter learning, the kids had a chance to do some authentic measuring of perimeter using their own creations.

Our Unit Work right now is focusing on energy sources, so the grade three classes are creating energy efficient houses. The kids shared some of the ways they found the perimeter of their homes, which are traditional squares and rectangles: 
"Measure one side and double it. Or you could multiply it by two. Then do the same thing for the other side and add them together." 
"Add all the sides together."
"If it's a square you just multiply the first side you measured by four."
Super engaged.

Day Three
Today I told them that Mr. Phillips and I want to get a puppy for Mara (no we don't) and we have to fence in a play area for it in the backyard (we don't even have a backyard...). For the sake of creating a model, I said we had 24 cm of fence and had to use it all. They went ahead and all of them created a square or a rectangle:

So to challenge them and get them thinking outside the box (literally!) I told them that we have to leave room for the tree and the pool in the yard and drew a picture of the yard. So we actually didn't have enough space to make a large square or rectangle - they had to get creative! This was great and I love how each kid had a different way showing their understanding:
:

As an extra challenge, one group decided to try to use the pattern blocks to create an interesting but still more traditional space for the puppy to play.

With the right line of questioning these kids were totally successful!

The next day we launched into finding the area of the puppy's play space, which was a perfect connection and easier for the kids to conceptualize. They even came up with a strategy to accurately find the area of the irregular shapes they made by partitioning them and finding the area of each smaller space. Pretty great!

tuning into perimeter

To help students tune into measurement, our student teacher and I challenged the kids in math class to do this:

Find an object in the classroom and figure out the distance around the outside of it.

Document the strategies you used.

That's it. Now go...

Here's what happened:

students chose how to organize information

accurate use of measurement tools

noticing how understanding fractions on a number line helps when measuring (!!!)

using prior knowledge

attending to precision

interest piqued!

collaboration

organization

misconceptions uncovered

From here, we did a bunch of talking and sharing. Next, we'll be able to define perimeter, model and teach formulaic equations, and practice precise measurement techniques. It was a great way to get the kids focused on math in a hands-on way and engaging in math conversations with little intervention. For us as teachers, it was a great little check-in to see what the kids know and how much, and where we'll need to step in to improve conceptual understanding.

one is a snail ten is a crab

This book was a source of inspiration last week to practice multiplication skills:

One is a Snail Ten is a Crab

Before I even opened the book, I explained to the kids that this is a book that many teachers use... with their kindergarten students.
This was hilarious to them! Half of them were sort of saweeeet and the other half was sort of laaaaame.

I asked them to think of how this book might be used in younger grades as we read.
They came up with the expected: learning to count, learning the names of new animals, counting to ten, adding to ten, etc.
Then I asked them to think of how we might use it in a way that's more appropriate to grade three, considering our current learning.
They decided that we could practice our 10s facts.
Which they then quickly decided was a bit useless because everyone knows those - yawn.
Then we thought about how we could combine our prior knowledge in addition with our strategies to solve other multiplication facts, and this is what we got:

They chose a two-digit number and figured out which animals could be added and multiplied together to show it, and illustrated this using the book as inspiration.
This is one I'll definitely be saving for next year, too!

inquiring into probability

Today was an introduction to probability.
On the board, I had typed this sentence, "We are about to start talking about probability."
From there, some interesting conversation that started with the whole class asking "What's probability?" down to "I think it's about making predictions" and "It's talking about what the chances are that something will happen," which is pretty good!
All from one student noticing that probability has the same beginning as probably.

Without really going any further, we went through some examples and I jotted down their responses.

After a few, we stopped to define probability as a class. They were getting it!

The next step is where it got interesting. 

Each kid wrote down one a "What are the chances..." question in their notebooks.

As they finished, they stood up, locking eyes with another person that's also standing, becoming instant partners. (This was Great!)

Partners shared their question and wrote down the responses found, free to find a new partner afterward.

The interesting part (you can't really see it well as I just used the class iPads to snap photos during the math block) is that although we had so many different responses as a class to the question I posed about snow in Manila, when they responded to one another, they ALL used percentages!

So we sat down as a class. I asked some people to share two of the responses they got from their classmates. Just responses.

Then I asked simply, "What did you notice about the response?"

They said things like, lots of people said 100%, 4000% is not a real amount, etc. 

It started dawning on them that all the responses were number based...

So in partners, they were challenged to figure out the "language of probability" using a number line.

They came up with so many descriptors!

Next up, experiments to test some predictions we might make using our understanding of probability. Vague, yes... Let's see what they come up with.

integrated inquiry: health + math

I was inspired one weekend when my husband set out money for our helper's weekly trip to the grocery store. She has off-the-charts mental math skills, and from the 2000 pesos (about $50), she spends almost every last cent to buy the food she needs to cook our lunches for Tuesday - Friday. (How seriously lucky are we that this something we have in our lives?!) Then I thought: this must go into the classroom. It's the perfect link with our Physical Wellbeing commonality.

So I set it up with the kids, telling them about Angie, and we figured out together how much she probably spends each day. The kids used very intelligent reasoning, saying that some days, when she makes us soup, it probably costs her less than when she makes us chicken with a salad. I mean, come on...! Well done, grade three.

Then we talked about how difficult it is to eat healthy everyday. We talked about advertising and how it's literally all around us, trying to persuade us to buy every sugar-filled and "low fat" and cartoon-laden product out there. From here, we inquired into what makes a balanced meal?

The kids hit the Chromebooks, iPads, and our library, searching for information. After about an hour, we came together and discussed our findings. We even qualified the terms "good" and "bad" with reference to food.

Someone hit on "the five food groups" and we were off...

The next day I shared with them a Google Doc called "The Legends Supermarket," modeled after our class name, that was blank. The kids organized themselves into food group companies, browsed Compfight and CC Search for images of foods, and began adding them to the Doc to create a grocery flyer.

You can see some groups have even started adding in prices...that I've spent some time adjusting today! 10 pesos for a whole chicken? Okay.

After pricing is made more appropriate (!), the kids will use the shared folder to build their own healthy meal for one lunch, with 250 (fake) pesos in their pockets. We've discussed the goal, which is to practice our 2- and 3-digit addition skills. 

I'm really looking forward to getting back to this next week! Real life, meaningful, and integrated.

number lines + rounding

To kick off our Math classes, I show this awesomely hilarious video (of course - it's a beginning of the year staple): 

The kids then talked together to help them figure out why I would show it to introduce math. It was a pretty great conversation and they hit on a lot of the major messages: there are many different ways to learn in math class; you can't just give up if you don't get it; instructions really matter to help our understanding; etc. Then as their first journal entry, I simply ask them to answer the question What is math? Their responses can be very telling!
(There are a number of these and they're great and simple little brain breaks!)

The next day, I stood in front of the class with a long strip of butcher paper with a 0 and 100 at opposite ends and asked them to simply work in teams to create a math tool. That's it. They worked freely together for about an hour (I was surprised it took this long and was happy I'd reserved two blocks for this very open-ended task!) as I rotated to listen in on conversations. Some of their responses:

They got pretty creative and used a number of strategies to make number lines. Afterward, I asked each group to casually present their work to the class. We were able to focus a lot on their work as a team, with two big topics of conversation being What went really well for your group? and What was challenging about this task? I definitely have a reflective bunch this year!

The next day I used more of the workshop model with a very mini mini-lesson (which wasn't really me actually teaching but more guiding the kid's conversations to help them understand rounding to the nearest ten and hundred). I handed out a page of numbers to each team and asked them to show me in some way how they could be rounded appropriately.

The kids looked at the work of other teams in a sort of gallery walk, which gave them a chance to revise some of their incorrect numbers. This was definitely a great start-up to our cooperative math and workshop model format!

fractions on number lines

Last week after introducing plotting fractions on number lines, I was worried.

Like, very worried.

The kids didn't seem to "get it" very well.

I literally spent two days hearing, "I don't get it" and "I'm confused."

I even showed them the "draw a square shape connected to the number line and shade it according to the fraction you want to show" trick...

A represents 3/4. {source}

But even that visual just didn't do it for some.

This morning, after our long weekend, was not a great morning in AmandaBaby Land.

The little things were adding up, you know?

So I was extra worried about the lesson I had planned to start our day.

Here's what we did:

I (pre)made 7 sets of index cards with various proper and mixed fractions on them.

Today I asked the kids to arrange themselves into groups of 3 and I handed out a set of cards to each.

Their job was to put the fractions (index cards) on a number line.

That's it.

Some groups got out white boards so they could better understand the task.

Some got really creative and were lying out rulers to show the line so that they could properly space the fractions.

Others put flip flops equally spaced and labelled them 0, 1, 2, and 3 to represent the whole numbers.

(This was the coolest one to see and I, of course, didn't get a photo!)

All of this was a great time for me to rotate and ask groups questions about what they were doing and what I was seeing.

This in turn brought out some misconceptions, and more often, helped the kids recognize these straight away.

I was so pleased because... they got it!

After the number lines were complete, the groups did a gallery walk so we could critique the work of others.

Discussion ranged from "Something I saw that was wrong was..." to "We need to be sure we respect the work of other groups. We weren't asked to fix anything..."

The best part? 

After this activity, I actually heard kids saying things like "Fractions on number lines is fun!" and "I like doing this - it makes fractions seem so easy!"

Overall, the lesson was a huge success and was pretty much riddled with the Mathematical Practices!

I totally recommend this one and you can easily make up the fraction cards in a few minutes.

cooperative learning with fractions vocabulary

This week my students did a great vocabulary activity to help acquaint them with some of the vocabulary related to fractions.

After some pre-assessment and introductory lessons, I had a pretty good idea of where each student was in terms of their overall understanding of fractions. Based on this, I placed them into vocabulary groups: fraction, numerator, denominator, equivalent fraction, and simplest form. When I introduced the activity, I gave students freedom to pair up in their groups, work as an entire group, or work independently. Their task was to figure out what their vocabulary meant by defining it in their own words, modeling it with pictures and/or manipulatives, and using it in a sentence. Their overall goal was to understand the term so that they could teach it to the other groups.

They used Chromebooks and dictionaries to help understand the term and wrote about it in their math notebooks. Then, I gave them all this form...

(Grab this simple worksheet)

...to document their learning. Their goal was to fill their page by asking others to explain their research, and, of course, to ultimately come to understand the terminology themselves. It was a great cooperative learning exercise and we were able to have a great reflection session afterward. We will definitely be digging deeper into the concepts of equivalency and simplification in the coming weeks, but I'm happy that they all have a beginning understanding of these difficult (for some) concepts.

tuning into probability

This week in Math we talked about probability.
First up, what is it?
We created an ActivBoard web of all the student's prior knowledge and connections:

I then used The Hat (seriously, it's so great) to create groups of 4, printed these simple activity cards on coloured paper, then put them around the room as stations:

(Click any picture to download!)

They stayed at each station for about 5-7 minutes, collecting and recording data on white boards as they went.

Before they switched, I asked them to think of a sentence they could say aloud as a sort of "prediction" (tying into our latest Unit of Inquiry) about the next round of results.

Things like, "I predict that ____," "It is certain/likely/unlikely/impossible that_____", "The most probable thing that could happen would be _____", "Based on the results, I think that _____"

They had a ton of fun!

Afterward, they had a 15-20 minute free-write about their understandings of probability.

It was super engaging and a great way to find out their thoughts.

mental math activity

Today in Math we were talking about mental math strategies.
We did some sample questions and then talked them out in pairs and small groups.
26 + 10 =              26 + 12 =               36 - 10 =            You get the drill.
My kids had some really different ways of answering the equations.
We did a few of these simple ones, and most of their addition and subtraction skills seem in pretty good shape!
(After that I pulled out the toughies... 250 + 70      300 - 18     90 + 40     etc.)

When I started to see their attention slipping, I knew we had to break out the individual white boards.
Off the top of my head, I came up with a great activity that got everyone moving and practicing some mental math.
For some reason, "in the middle of lessons" seems to be the best time for me to come up with fun little activities - I guess I'm just more in the zone at those times.
We called the activity "The Quiet Math Game!"
Oddly, I find a lot of kids like the challenge of nonverbal communication... happy teacher!

Give each student a small white board.
Ask each to write a mental math problem on the board. (We used addition and subtraction questions only since I know some of my students are not familiar with multiplication and division concepts, but this could easily be adapted.)
They do NOT write the answer on the board, but they do figure it out and memorize it.
Next, they walk around with their white board and marker silently finding a "partner."
Jack will look at Jill's question and calculate it mentally.
When he knows the answer, he will write it in the corner on his own white board for Jill to see.
Jill will check it and give a thumbs up or thumbs down.
Then Jill will look at Jack's question and calculate it mentally, same as above.
When they are both correct they do a little high five, erase the answers in the corner, and find a new buddy.
It was a lot of fun and I loved the little "math brain" buzz in the room!

Super engaging time activity

I know it's been done before {hasn't it all in this profession? Just in new ways?} but my class Loved this activity!
Laminated paper watches. 
Differentiated times given to each student {with a master list for assessment}.
A class list in the notebook.
Four words: "What time is it?"

So fun and definitely a keeper activity! 

Click the picture to download the blank watch faces we used:

I'm thinking of doing this for our temperature concept tomorrow!

- Amanda