Last
week I met with my first grade team. There is a district wide
assessment approaching and we've all been a little apprehensive about
how the students will do. So we spent some time discussing number sense
routines, specifically routines that allowed students to play with
numbers. I shared with them the following experience.
I
spent some time going through chapter 5 and chose "Ways to Make a
Number" since one of the items in our standards (and coming up on the
assessment) required students to think flexibly about a number. I had a
wonderful teacher volunteer to let me come in and try this routine with
her class. We did "Ways to Make 17". I chose 17 because I wanted to
see what the students did with a teen number, to see if they'd draw out
the ten. I was pleasantly surprised by most. One little girl in
particular wrote the following:
I asked her about the last equation. It was clear from her number bond that she knew the fact family. I asked her if her last number sentence was equal to 17. I gave her a chance to revisit her thoughts while I visited other groups. Later, when I returned, she has modified her answer to read 10 + 7 =17.
After 1st grade returned to their classrooms, I received a message from one of the teachers (the same teacher I had visited in the above story). She had decided to use the last 20 minutes of her day using "Ways to Make a Number". She presented the with "Ways to Make 55". Here are some of their responses.
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| Students use manipulatives to explore 55. |
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| Students made a list of their discoveries. |
1 - This didn't take as long as I thought it would. The second time this class did this routine, they did it in the last 15 minutes of the day...WITH manipulatives! Because this teacher has manipulatives available to her kids all the time, it shaved minutes off of this routine because the kids simply pulled from the buckets in the middle of their table and clean up went just as quickly.
2 - Kids love to use these manipulatives! It is ENGAGING!
3 - The students came up with far more responses than I imagined that they would. They were CAPABLE of doing this, they just need the chance to show it! Paper and pencil should wait.
Discussion Questions:
Q1 -What have been your biggest take aways this week as you work through routines with your classes?
Q2 - What are some obstacles that you are currently facing and how you overcome them?
