Skills:
K-2: number recognition, pattern
3-5: pattern, addition
My youngest son visited the Basilica Sagrada Familia, a Roman Catholic Church in Barcelona, Spain and brought this pattern back for me as a gift. Here’s a photo of his gift: (And before you read the next paragraph where I describe the main pattern, you may want to discover your own patterns first.)
This year I decided to add the 0-120 number grids to my K-2 estimation jar. The number grids come from our Math Medley kits and kids can use dry eraser markers to “think” as they’re working out their estimation. Of course, there’s the thinking paper and the referents, as well.
What Do You Notice? Rectangular Arrays
Skills:
Primary students (K-2): shapes, counting, repeated addition, area
Intermediate students (3-5): classifying quadrilaterals, area model of multiplication, multiplication, prime, composite, and square numbers
It’s been on my TO DO list for a long time. Years, in fact. But I’ve finally checked it off and I’m thrilled with the results.
As many of you know, for each of my Family Math Night events I include a What Do You Notice? poster. These posters are designed to get kids and parents thinking about math on a deeper level. Although each poster has been included on our website, there has never been details…until now. I’ve taken each of the posters and written a thorough description of the math involved. I’ve also included the specific skills by grade span, K-2 and 3-5, and given several examples of student responses.
“Your workout has to be fun. You’re not going to stick with it if it isn’t fun.” I hear this every time I’m in the middle of a difficult workout. And every time I hear it I want to ‘bop’ the lady on the DVD who is guiding me through the “fun”.
It’s not always easy, but I try to get in a workout several times a week. Unlike the opinion of Ms. DVD, however, working out is not always a lot of fun. There’s usually some pain involved. Those lunges hurt.
So the other day when she repeated herself for the umpteenth time, I started to think about why I continue to pop in that DVD and torture myself for 40 minutes. After all, she said it was supposed to be fun and I wasn’t feeling the fun. I just wanted the workout to be over so I could get that sense of accomplishment that comes with knowing you’ve done something good for yourself.
And there it was. My motivator. That sense of accomplishment. And I was willing to endure some pretty tough exercises in order to get it.
But there was another motivator, too. Results. If I didn’t get any results from my pain, well then it wouldn’t be worth doing.
It’s the same in the math classroom. Some math problems are not fun. And some math problems are not easy. But that doesn’t mean that they’re not important to do. The key is to help students make connections between the problems they’re working on and the reasons for doing them. We need to show them the benefits.
I’m excited to share with you that our Building Number Sense in Grades 4-5 Power Pack is now available. All of our Power Packs are filled with games that teach parents strategies and tools to help their children build strong math skills.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, there have been a lot of changes in mathematics curriculum and pedagogy in recent years and a lot of parents don’t feel as prepared as they’d like to be when it comes to helping their child in math. The power of these Power Packs comes in the integration of strategies and tools that parents use as they play the games with their children. While playing the games, not only are parents learning about the new standards, they’re also gaining strategies they can use to help their child in math.
The strategies and tools in our 4/5 Power Pack are: