Ms. K
Using Wiki Spaces to Further Math Instruction…
I found this wiki space that has student math movies on it. Students explain what they have learned about a math concept on a video. The wiki definitely gave me some ideas. There are many math topics listed. My favorite is the spoof of the Brady Bunch theme song and opening video, but instead “The Avery Bunch” explaining fractions. Of course, Mr. Avery is their teacher. I really like the idea of the students demonstrating their learning in video form because they have to be knowledgeable enough to explain their learning in detail. We all know that increases learning–teaching others–according to Glasser’s theory of learning!
Project Based Learning–Where Do You Start?
With the common core standards making their grand entrance this year, project based learning is quickly becoming a new buzz word. I myself understand the concept of project based learning, but have seen very few examples of students real-world projects. Seeing few examples makes project based learning seem vague, and so I was very excited to stumble upon this fascinating website http://pbl-online.org/ about project based learning. When you visit the site, you will find information about what project based learning is, a collaborative community of teachers developing and sharing projects (you will have to create an account for this), and videos of students and teachers working through and planning projects etc.
Do Government Monopolies Have a Child’s Best Interests at Heart?
In John Stossel’s recent report on public education, he conveys how the government school monopoly does not trust education to the free market even though the free market has made everything else in America great. Opposing teacher’s unions argue that the parents aren’t real ‘customers’ because they aren’t knowledgeable enough about education. Stossel’s report implies that if we trust public education to the teachers unions as we have before we will get more of the same–increased funding yet no results shown in improving student achievement. Teacher’s unions continue to advocate that they are ‘for’ improving education, yet some teacher’s unions are explicit in their thoughts such as one teacher’s union leader who stated, “When school children start paying union dues, that’s when I’ll start representing the interests of school children.”
To read more click here.
Free Printable Number Discs
With second grade right now, students are doing a lot of place value activities and are using base ten blocks as well as math discs. I made these printable math discs for the kids to represent and compare numbers. If you would like to use them they are available for a download. I am copying the ones on white, the tens on red, and the hundreds on orange paper to represent the math discs. Students are going to cut these out and glue them down to represent a number.
How Do You Motivate Students to Learn Their Math Facts?
I am trying something new this year to help motivate students to learn their math facts. I heard about doing Math Wars from another math coach. Each class will give themselves a name for a team. The team could even be alliterated for more fun. For example, Mr. Bowers Brains or Ms. Elwick’s Elephants. Having the students take ownership in what they name themselves promotes more motivation to work towards the goal of learning their facts.
Classes challenge other classes to beat them on their fact races. Grade levels can challenge other grade levels too. For the first Math War at my school, I have decided to just have classes compete with other classes in the same grade. To determine the winner, I am calculating the total amount of items that are correct and taking a class average. This way all of the students are working towards doing better, and there are no tears or frustrations if all of them are not answered. Students will be answering all of the facts in the race, and I will give them two seconds per problem. If there are 60 problems, then students will have 2 minutes to answer all of their problems For the next war classes may compete outside their grade level; 4th graders may challenge 5th graders, for example. One of the teachers at my school suggested putting up schedules like when football games are played. So working with this suggestion, I have placed posters on the walls to add to the anticipation of triumphing over another team. This has added to student motivation since I hear students saying that “we are gonna beat Ms.____’s class”.
For trophies I tried to think of something that would reflect the idea of math and that I could spray paint gold. After brainstorming with several colleagues, someone suggested an abacus. So now I have the GOLDEN ABACUS (angels singing in the background). The golden abacus will be traveling to the winning classes and will go to follow the next champion. I bought several abacuses so that each winning class could have an abacus for each WAR.
Need an Engaging Way to Introduce Equations?
The first grade teachers at school absolutely love introducing subtraction and addition number sentences to their kids using the book Ten Flashing Fireflies by Philemon Sturges. I discovered this book in a lesson recorded in a Math Solutions book entitled Minilessons for Math Practice K-2. There is also a similar lesson (I think…not positive) in another Math Solutions book entitled Teaching Arithmetic. In the lesson students model the action of gathering fireflies into a jar using snap cubes. In the book there is a jar printable to use or the lesson suggests using a sheet of blue construction paper to represent the night sky. Not only is this lesson good for introducing the action of subtraction and addition, but it is also good for discussing one more and one less. Because this is such a beloved book that builds a great foundation for addition and subtraction, I worked on building this free SMART Board lesson to accompany the book this weekend, and so here is an example of this lesson. Just click to download the SMART Board lesson for free.
Wow, Cute Way to Chart Parts of Speech
I came across these posters in a fourth teacher’s room at my school. She decided to display parts of speech on a shape poster to help students think about what types of words they use when they write. She made a poster for nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. She had displayed a house for nouns, a blob shape for adjectives, and the kite below for verbs. For some reason my other pictures didn’t turn out, but the kite picture managed to turn out, which is my favorite. Also, pictured below is another chart which she made entitled “RIP” for ‘dead words’ or words that are overused.
Quick, Cheap, and Easy Share Chair
Inside a First Grader’s Mind…
Today the secretary came to me and recounted the following story to me which had earlier occurred in the office.
‘Michael’ came to her with a scrap of folded up paper on which his phone number was written so that the secretary could change his personal contact information. He read the phone number out loud to her. As his eyes peered from behind the scrap of paper he read, “five, one, five minus six, two, two, seven.”
I am sure the secretary had a grin on her face when he finished. 🙂 I am just glad he can recognize his numbers.
How Can You Use Literacy to Introduce Multiplication?
I have come across Amanda Bean’s Amazing Dream by Cindy Neuschwanderin several of Math Solutions lesson books, however today is the first time I have read the book. It wasn’t until last year that the book actually was ordered for our library. The book is about a little girl who counts EVERYTHING. She counts so much that she dreams about counting. Her teacher and her mother encourage her to multiply because it works better for counting large numbers. Towards the end of the book Amanda realizes that multiplying REALLY is better than counting everything. This book would also work well for teachers who are using CGI strategies with counting collections because on each page there are multiple illustrations of objects to count like squares in window panes, food, wheels, legs, sweaters etc. Arrays and things that come in groups can easily be discussed after looking at the pictures. Now I am going to recommend this book to all the teachers who are teaching multiplication.
