Yes I know its June. If you are a teacher who is teaching in "UNITS" you might be teaching fractions. I know we touch on concepts throughout the year and the students are familiar with what a fraction is but this might be a time you are digging deeper. So how can we support our learners at home and the learners we have at school and engage them in fractions. We know that fractions are important to understand. We use them throughout our lives so understanding them is bigger than knowing what a numerator and denominator is. Its bigger than knowing about equal parts. How can we build this understanding when some kids at home might not have a lot of access to manipulatives? There are some great resources that build on the high yield routines. I recently came across this WODB from the NCTM100 days of Professional Learning ( June 1 ). The good news is if you missed it, the webinars are all archived with the slides. Representation, Computation, Communication: Purposeful Use of Routines within Curriculum Materials (Grades 3–5)June 1, 2020 7:00 p.m. EDT | Speaker: Kristin Gray and Jody Guarino This is an amazing opener for discussions for your students and you could facilitate a discussion in class and online. For more WODB fraction puzzles if you go to Fractiontalks.com there is a great mix of WODB and Fraction talks. Another important concept when we are teaching our students about fractions is to have them develop an understanding of the fraction in comparison to a whole . Being able to benchmark a fraction or place it on an open number line can be super challenging for students. Challenging our students with open questions will create far deeper understanding and promote rich math discussions. If you are looking for some consider checking out Marian Smalls Open Questions or Carole Fullerton's Good Questions ( She has one for Grades 2-4 and for Grades 5-8). As you can see both questions below would generate classroom discussions. I love Fullerton's use of the "Would you Rather". She uses this strategy throughout her Good Questions Open Ended Problem solving book. https://gfletchy.com/2016/12/08/the-progression-of-fractions/ What are some manipulatives we could use to teach fractions? Pattern blocks are great for teaching the basic fractions of 1/2, 1/3,1/6 - sorry no 1/4 and of course the yellow hexagon represents the whole. I love Kim Suttons Roll to Zero fraction game using dice that are labelled with 1/3,1/6 and 1/2 getting students to take away until one of the players can remove the last piece. The cuisenaire rods are another fantastic manipulative to teach fractions. Carole Fullerton offers detailed lessons on how to use cuisenaire rods to teach students fractions. If you do'nt have access to her book she has a PDF on Cuisenaire rod tasks. https://mindfull.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/cuisenaire-rod-tasks.pdf Of course if you are lucky enough to have access to fraction circles or fraction squares these are also yet another handy fraction manipulative. The Math Learning Centre has access to lots of free virtual manipulatives if you are teaching this remotely. https://www.mathlearningcenter.org/resources/apps Whether this post has given you something new to try or helped you retrieve something that you had tucked away in your memory bank please just remember that we need to continue to engage our students - and booklets of identifying the fraction based on the shaded area are NOT inspiring nor are they engaging. Here's a quick list to recap: Fraction Talks. , Graham Fletchy progression of fractions, Math Learning Center, Carole Fullerton http://fractiontalks.com/ https://gfletchy.com/2016/12/08/the-progression-of-fractions/ https://www.mathlearningcenter.org/resources/apps/fractions Don't forget about all the great books and literature that you can use to support fractions : The Cookie Fiasco is a favourite of mine, And.. of course how can you possibly teach fractions without touching on MONEY !
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Its June.! This June sure looks alot different than any other June - that is for sure! Teachers in my opinion are the silent heroes. Prior to Spring Break we anticipated a "maybe" some remote learning. Insert Spring Break and all of a sudden teachers are creating plans for remote learning. As the continuity of learning evolved so too did the willingness of many teachers to step out of their comfort zone and reach for the stars. I was struck by a comment on twitter where a teacher said he spent time with his students talking about remote learning:
"Today my students listed about 20 things they actually like about remote learning, and we quickly turned the list into changes I need to make to my classroom next year." Perhaps for some it was a blessing in disguise - it pushed some out of their comfort zones, for others it gave them permission that perhaps they were seeking to do things outside of the box, and for some hopefully they at least dipped their toes in and embraced slight change in their teaching. I know this wasn't the case throughout as I heard about students who were doing exactly what they were doing in class. Taking notes, answering questions and then doing a test were also part of remote learning :( . I wont say much more ... Enter June 1st - blended learning. Small groups of students in school. Some students at home. ESW students in the schools possibly 5 days a week. 30% of the provinces learners attending school. And its June. And we just kind of got a handle on this whole remote learning dynamic. Did I mention that its June and teachers are tired and anxiety is high ( for students and teachers) . I was back in the classroom this week supporting teachers and I saw joy in kids and my colleagues working their magic making sure students were safe and happy. I was so grateful for Dr. Jody Carrington reminding us - don't worry about the literacy and the numeracy - collect and connect. I know I have talked about infusing high yield routines in to remote learning. The Math Learning Center has created some at Home Learning activities. It is organized by grade and provides educators with some ready to use activities. It has suggestions on how to make things like spinners and dice. It is a very user friendly site and IT IS FREE! It may not completely correspond with our curriculum but has some good ideas. https://www.mathlearningcenter.org/home-learning#Math at home I love the section on Family Games! Many of these could work for remote and at school learning. There's bingo games, card games , fraction games. In some of them you might have to adapt or modify slightly but it might be worth a look. https://mathathome.mathlearningcenter.org/family-games George Couros reiterated “as we have been making difficult choices in these weeks about schools & education as we transition online, we’ve been reminded of those things that we value most: relationships, community, the curiosity of kids, & the power of real learning." We need to remember when Fall approaches that it wont be about filling the gaps but rather about embracing a new and better normal , providing choice and voice for our learners and taking a look at what we truly value as educators. A favourite high yield routine of mine is Which One Doesn't Belong. It has students thinking about the connection between 4 items and they have to figure out why each one doesn't belong when comparing it to the remaining objects. When I first did this routine with a class, especially on the early years I really had to be very specific about my instructions. One trick or tip is to start with a visual, picture type first . The WODB website has lots of these and they are free! https://wodb.ca/ So when we look at the above picture we can ask which one doesnt belong. ( taken from WODB website) A student answer might answer
1. The cake doesn't belong because it is the only one that's a square. Is it a square? Or is it a rectangular prism. We want to be specific. I often use the line "It is the only one... " . The cookie doesn't belong because it is the only one that is pink or it is the only one that has sprinkles. The hope is that they will be able to come up with at least one ( possibly more) reason why each one does not belong. I have done this on a whiteboard using a document camera and I have also done this activity by slipping the image into a pocket folder and the students have used white board pens and worked with a partner to come up with some solutions. A slightly more trickier option is to get students to create their own WODB using materials. This is another great opportunity yo work with a partner. Using concrete objects like dice, dominoes, cards, money, cuisenaire rods, place value materials or pattern blocks opens up the door but it can be challenging. It is easier for the younger ones to find the which one is different while 3 others are the same. There is also a WODB book by Christopher Danielson (who by the way is the creator of the website) . Don't be fooled - his hardback and soft cover have different covers but are the same book. I recently came across a post on twitter which would guide upper intermediate students through how to create their own WOBD.Just remember it will be important to DO lots of these before they create their own. You likely want to create a few together first. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBQ1Y0pZdiM&feature=youtu.be If you are a twitter follower you can search WODB and people are often posting their WODB puzzles. Its just another way to engage your students in talking about numbers, shapes or fractions. I hope you give it a try! Building a math routine into your daily math time is hopefully something you have done either done or strongly considered. Just to clarify, I'm not talking about a math drill to start off your math time. I'm talking about rich math routines that allow students the opportunity to exercise mental math, communicate with their peers and really deepen their understanding about numbers. They focus on our curricular competencies - communicating. estimating, and reasoning. Routines such as number talks, esti-mysteries, fraction talks, Which one Doesn't Belong and a variety of number of the day activities help students develop their mental math skills and computational fluency. So what does a number talk look like during remote learning? If you have a scheduled on-line meeting with your students why not hook them in with a number talk or number talk image to start off the meeting? Just some ideas: Have them fold a piece of paper into 4 parts . In the first part have them solve the question in one way and in the second box solve it a different way. Now.. wouldn't it be interesting to see if they could identify the strategy that they used to solve the question? Could you have them create an alternate question? If they are younger and have an adult with them they could ask an adult how they would solve the question reminding their adult that we do this in our head. Challenge - could they come up with a context or story? If we are NOT online, could you reproduce this and give this to your students as an activity? Fawn Nguyen has some amazing resources on visuapatterns.com and https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mkFhrrzlyLJeXKkD_L9g--RNI9hWUra_UEFmdd3dvwQ/edit# As I've mentioned in my previous blogpost kids like choice. If you are providing them with a number of the day activity, remember just as we provided more than one number for students to choose from ( because we know they are NOT all working at the place ) we need to remember to do that when we are having students do these routines remotely.
If you are worried about whether or not your students will be engaged in this activity when it is online, ask yourself if they would be 100^% engaged in your discussion if it was happening in the classroom? Maybe. Maybe not. My closing thought for today from George Couros who reminds us that we need to create a learning environment that has multiple designs and provides our students with choice. - focus learner driven :). I seem to be immersing myself in webinars and twitter lately. People like Jody Carrington and Shelley Moore have been great starts to my morning routine. Both of these ladies make me laugh and sometimes that's exactly what I need to start off my day. If you haven't listened to Dr. Jody Carrington on facebook or instagram I think you'll love her and her book "Kids These Days" is a gem. Now whether it be numeracy or literacy a common theme keeps arising - we can't do traditional in a remote environment. So what can we do ? Now I know not everyone is able to connect with all of their students using technology. This is a reality. I know that. Some teachers are creating worksheet packages while others are Zooming or connecting online in some form. Whatever we are doing we do need to ask ourselves how can we engage our students during this time of emergency remote learning? For some of us it will be messy and make us step out of our comfort zone. Again, we are writing this new script so it's not a surprise that it would be uncomfortable. A friend reminded me that our first responders and health care professionals didn't sign up for this either when they went to school, but they continue to go to work everyday and support us on the front lines so we too need to take the step that educators are indispensable and get uncomfortable. One of the Big Ideas in Numeracy is building computational fluency. Computational fluency is having efficiency, accuracy and flexibility. News flash - its not speed ( although I do realize eventually we want kids to solve 9+5 without using their fingers). How can we build fluency during remote learning. There are numerous online options. Some people are using Mathletics, Math Seeds, Prodigy, IXL, SumDog and Knowledgehook just to name a few. All have their value and allow students to practise math online. So what about those students that don't have access to online supports. Could we teach them a math game using dice or cards? and how can we do this? If your students are picking up work you could provide them with printed instructions or a gameboard. So many families are looking for games and options to play and would welcome suggestions for games. For younger students you might have dominoes lying around which can be a fantastic way to practise adding the dots and subitizing. Older students could play target number where they lay out 5 cards and using all operations try and make that target number. Sometimes we aren't as worried about the computational fluency but we just want kids to be working with strategy and numbers. Parents might have forgotten those classic card games like Crazy Eights or 'Cheat'. A new favourite in our house is 4 card golf where like golf you are trying to get the lowest score.
One suggestion. Some younger students might need a visual reminding of the classroom expectations that you have around playing games. If you have this posted around your classroom, you could post it visually or make a copy for your students. 100 days is a long time for some of our younger students to remember some of our classroom routines and expectations. |
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My name is Marie Fanshaw. In my professional life I am passionate about numeracy and building engagement in mathematics. In my personal life my greatest gift is being a mom to two amazing young men who bring joy to my life everyday. ArchivesCategories |