Imperfect and Unfinished
Imagine a football team operating like a faculty at a school site. Players (teachers) gather at the beginning of the season (school year) for some team-building and some pep talk (fall PD) about goals and visions for improvement from their coach (principal). The players then study a playbook (curriculum) and some plays (instructional strategies) and … Continue Reading
I worked with a team of amazing 2nd grade teachers this week as a part of an ongoing lesson study. They were in the latter chapters of their curriculum where the Measurement and Data content is often stuffed away as an afterthought because they aren’t “Focus Standards.” And it’s a drag too because there’s so … Continue Reading
Have you seen the amazing visuals over at Number Talk Images? These pictures are ideal for any teacher looking to get all students talking about numbers and mathematical reasoning, regardless of ability levels. We used this image as a number talk to launch a lesson that focused on first grade students making statements about a data display. Inspired by … Continue Reading
Have you seen the amazing visuals over at www.fractiontalks.com? They’re ideal for any teacher looking to get all students, regardless of ability levels, talking about equivalent fractions (4.NF.1), comparing the value of fractions (4.NF.2), and expressing mathematical reasoning. This activity could also work for 3rd grade students that are exploring fraction equivalence (3.NF.3). We used this … Continue Reading
Have you seen the amazing visuals over at www.fractiontalks.com? They’re ideal for any teacher looking to get all students talking about fractions and mathematical reasoning, regardless of ability levels. We used one of the images to introduce fractions to some 3rd grade students. We learned a lot and the students did too! We’d like to … Continue Reading
For the past few months, I’ve been using a “clothesline” as an instructional tool in lesson inquiries to help teachers find ways to engage their students in: thinking about whole numbers and fractions on a number line, reasoning proportionally, wondering about the value of expressions, and solving equations. The clothesline is a simple low-tech visual … Continue Reading
I hope that there are other 6th (and 7th) grade teachers out there that might find this analysis useful if they are looking for ways to increase student engagement, thinking, and discourse around percents, fractions, and proportional reasoning standards. This engaging learning opportunity can be used at the beginning of a unit as an inquiry-based exploration … Continue Reading
It’s my hope that there are other elementary teachers out there that might find this analysis useful if they want to use this compelling and fun lesson by Graham Fletcher in their classrooms to engage their students in exploring addition strategies with regrouping (2.NBT.5, 2.NBT.6, 2.NBT.9). This engaging lesson is very open in the middle. Students have a wide variety of addition strategies they can use including concrete models (base-10 blocks, place value discs, etc) and abstract strategies (arrow method, decomposing, bar method, etc).
I had a chance to use Steve Wyborny’s tile images as a part of a 3rd grade lesson inquiry. The tile problems are an effective tool to engage students in discourse about their mathematical reasoning. Furthermore, it allows teachers to identify student misconceptions about partitioning and calculating area. These misconceptions often prevent students from understanding how to use the area model to reason about fractions (3.NF.1).
This lesson write-up is for teachers who want to engage their students in exploring division reasoning and problem solving strategies (3.OA.2, 3.OA.3 and 3.OA.7). It’s appropriate to use before and/or after students have explored division and allows for many different conceptual approaches to a solution including using repeated subtraction or repeated addition, equal groups with or without manipulatives, number lines, arrays, bar models, and multiplication or division equations to model a real world problem.
This write-up contains a lesson pathway with specific questions/moves to consider, analysis of the opportunities for student learning, and other wisdoms and insights we learned from teaching this lesson as a part of a lesson inquiry.
Give it a try with your own students. And then tell me how it went. Let’s make it better together.
