Here at school we have been busy learning about President's Day, fixing and fancying our teaching books for a celebration, exploring math concepts through math centers, and of course getting excited for Valentine's Day!
Math Centers
The last couple of weeks children have been working on extending the counting sequence. We have practiced counting by 1s and 10s. We have looked for patterns along our number charts to 120. Children have explored ways to group in order to count larger quantities. All the while we have continued to work on our math fact fluency with addition and subtraction, showing our work with story problems, and incorporating math technology into our learning.
Here are a few examples of us hard at work at math centers!
Math with Someone
Children play a math game with their math partner. In this game, children are making combinations that equal 10 to gain fluency with their combinations to 10.
Math Writing
Children work to solve various story problems that reinforce adding, subtracting, and finding the "unknown" number. They solve these problems in their math journal. We often "unpack" the problem by visualizing it. Sometimes we model the problem. We talk about what info we know and what we need to find out. Often times children see 2 numbers in a problem an they assume they need to just add or subtract, However, many of the problems they are solving now include missing information that is not necessarily the sum or difference.
For example: Mike had 10 cards. He gave some away. Now he has 6. How many cards did Mark give away?
We encourage children to use an efficient strategy, (which could mean related facts, thinking addition to subtract, using a number line, or a known fact), show their work, and add a label.
Math Technology
Any time an iPad or computer is in the mix the activity becomes high interest. In order to use technology in a meaningful way, we focus on apps and online games that reinforce skills children have already practiced. Children play games to reinforce adding fluently and finding known combinations. A favorite math app is called Math Fight where children go up against an opponent to see who can find the sum of 2 numbers the fastest.
Author Celebration
I'm calling this a mini celebration :)
Children have worked really hard on the beginning skills of writing a teaching book. They have thought up many topics that they feel they are experts on. They have planned "subtopics". They have worked on their writing stamina trying to fill pages with several sentences instead of just 1. We have learned craft moves from other non-fiction authors in order to better teach their readers with details, include interesting information, and add pictures that teach. They were so proud of their work, we just had to celebrate before the end of the unit!
We set up a classroom library and children could read each other's books to learn more about topics they were interested about. When we were done rotating around to different sections of our classroom "library" we shared out some of the interesting facts we learned!
When we get back from break it's on to Teaching Chapter Books!! Stay tuned!
I hope you found this info helpful! Come back soon :)
