Our Math Journey Begins

As many of us think back on our own Math experiences, our hearts often start to race as we remember those long stressful hours of memorizing the steps to complete different questions.  Many of us sat and watched as the teacher taught us everything we needed to know and then we would spend the rest of the class trying to practise these new skills.  Math is so different now.  Just like in Science, we want the children to be the thinkers and problem solvers.  We want to get them excited and involved in creating  and sharing their own learning.   I believe it is all in the approach.  As a teacher, if I approach the problem excited and oozing with enthusiasm about the next new challenge, the children will naturally join in on my passion for learning.  

Much of our Math learning is done through problem solving.  At the beginning of the year, we focus on providing the children with opportunities to build on the strategies they can use when they come to a problem.   Our lessons follow the same basic format:

      1. Pose the Problem

·      Allow the children an opportunity to ask questions, seek clarifications, share possible strategies.

2. Exploration/Conferencing/Assessing

·      Children are given an opportunity to solve the problem independently, with a partner or in a small group.

·      Children are able to access whatever manipulatives they need to solve the problem (unifix blocks, egg cartons, rulers, 100’s charts, calculators, base ten blocks, ten frame cards).  All the manipulatives are kept in so the students can access what they need independently.

·      While the children are working, the teacher will circulate around the room and conference with the children.  This provides the teacher with the opportunity to listen and assess where the children are and then ask questions and provide meaningful feedback that will assist the children along their mathematical journey.  It is from these conferences that the teacher will get the information to guide future lessons.  In other words, this is the assessment for learning piece.  What is it that the students can already do?  What are the challenges?  What are the next activities/problems should follow that would meet the current needs of the class and assist them in reaching the big math ideas or curriculum goals.

3. Sharing

·      Children are given an opportunity to share their questions, challenges, strategies and successes.

·      By sharing their thinking with others, it allows children to reflect and understand what they have done as well as see other possible ways to solve a problem.  By seeing other methods, children come to see that there is no “right” way to solve a problem.

·      By listening and watching each other, children are learning new strategies that they can build on or use in the future.

·      This sharing time also provides the teacher with another opportunity to listen and assess the students for planning future lessons.

Now a chance to see some of our Math thinkers in action!

For the first problem, I began by reading the children the story, The Enormous Turnip.  After reading the story, I asked a few kids to come up and act out the different characters.  Once I knew they were very familiar with the story and events, I posed the first problem, "How many hands helped to pull out the turnip?".  I knew this would be easier problem for many of them so it would allow them to try and use different strategies to solved it.  I reminded the kids that they could use pictures, numbers and words to solve the problem.   

After giving them time to work on the problem on their own or with a partner, we shared different strategies they came up with.  I used to think I had to directly teach the strategies before we began problem solving, but I am always amazed and excited when they come up with the strategies on their own.   The learning is so meaningful and so much more memorable when they discover it for themselves.

Here are some of the strategies they came up with:

After solving the problem by making an equation, I then challenged this student to solve it in another way.  They counted by 2's (looking for a pattern) and then drew a picture. 

This student kind of combined a few strategies (finding a pattern and drawing a picture).

This student also challenged herself to solve the problem using different strategies. 

Although all the students were not able to solve the problem in numerous ways this first time, they did get to see others strategies during the sharing time.  Many only drew a picture but OOPS I didn't actually take any pictures of those samples!!!  I promise I will have better samples that show the full range of the students work in the class next time.  What can I say, I'm the rookie blogger in this partnership!

Science- What is a Scientist?

We love science.  We love teaching science to our kids.  We want our kids to be as excited about science as we are.  Over the past decade there has been a change in how we teach science.  The focus has shifted from teaching kids facts to memorize or regurgitate to a focus on what we like to call the "doing" of science.  We want our students to understand the processes of science.  We want them to act like scientists and explore like scientists.

We begin most school years with a science unit to develop background knowledge, encourage curiosity and a sense of wonder while focusing on the processes of science.

During our first lesson, we access their background knowledge.  We want to know what they already know about science.  We focus on what do scientists do and what do scientists use.  One of the books that lends itself to this topic is What is a Scientist? by Barbara Lehn

After the first lesson, we sit down and plan four or five science tasks that will enable students to act like scientists while exploring the different things that scientists do.  We start an anchor chart titled, "A Scientist is Someone who" and after each task added to our list.  The focus is on hands on activities and discussion so for these tasks, the students do not do any writing.  The richness of the discussions helps build their background knowledge.  We want to give our students lots of opportunities to be curious and to observe using their senses.  So that when we launch into our other science units for the rest of the year, they know what a good observation looks like and sounds like.

Science Task 1:  Bubbles-  Scientists ask questions and try new things.

Give each student a small plate with dish soap and water and a straw.  Allow them to explore.  Have them ask questions.  Give them challenges such as, "Can you blow one bubble inside the other?"

Science Task 2:  Cookie Mining- Scientists use special tools and dig for things.

      Bake cookies with lots of different ingredients.  Add things like raisins, chocolate chips and white chocolate chips.  You could add nuts if you have no nut allergies in your class.  Give students chops sticks, small paint brushes, toothpicks and a magnifying glass.  Ask the students to excavate all of the different items in their cookies.

Science Task 3:  Ooblek/Goo- Scientists explore the unknown and come to conclusions based on their observations and experiences.
This is the ever popular cornstarch and water potion that kids love.  Is it a liquid or is it a solid is the burning question?

Science Task 4: How many drops of Water Can a Penny Hold?- Scientists make predictions and do experiments.
Give partners a penny and a dropper.  Ask them to predict how many drops of water their penny can hold.  Before beginning, show the students how to use the dropper.  Often their predictions are way less than what the penny can really hold.  Have them do the task several times and see if they get different numbers.  Discuss why this might be. We find it helpful to have one person counting while the other is doing the experiment and then switching.

The key to these tasks is lots of discussion and debriefing afterwards so that they students can begin make the connection that these are the behaviours of scientists.  


We are always adding to our anchor chart, but here it is so far.

September- Building Community

We spent a few weeks in September getting to know each other, establishing expectations and building community.

A few activities and the resources we used are listed below:

Getting to know each other and beginning of the year self-portraits:


We love the author Todd Parr and find that his books lend themselves well to the beginning of the year.  While some years, we begin with a full Parr author study, this year we used some of his books to do an art project.  It's Okay to be Different is a great book to begin with.

Image taken from Amazon.ca

After reading several of his books, we did a directed drawing activity, where children were led through the process of drawing themselves on 11x18 drawing paper.  This part was a whole group activity.  Over the next several days, the children painted first the background and then themselves in the style of Todd Parr.  Think bright and bold colours with a black felt outline to finish. We made this part a centre activity, that way we had an opportunity to teach and model some beginning painting skills such as how to hold a paint brush. After a two week stint as our welcome bulletin board, the portraits line our classroom for the rest of the year, accompanied by this quote:

"It's Okay to be different.

You are special and

important just because of

being who you are."

-Todd Parr

Using No David books by David Shannon to establish expectations and classroom promises:

This idea was first spotted on the blog, First Grade Parade.  We decided to use it in our own classroom to have the kids come up with classroom expectations.  It seems all kids love the No David books, especially the part where David runs naked down the street.  After reading the books we establish the two lists.  What is a peacebreaker and what is a peacemaker: 

We decided as a class, that we wanted to be peacemakers.  Each child created a coloured cut out of themselves.  Again, we did this as a directed drawing activity.  Students were given three pieces of 8.5 x 11 paper.  One piece for the head, one piece for the top and one piece for the bottom.  This is a great beginning of the year activity to see how the students are at using scissors.  Once completed, each child was given a peacemaker badge to put on themselves.

How Full is Your Bucket and building a sense community in our classroom:

We came across this book and started using it in our classroom last school year.  The kids loved the book and really understood the concept.

Image taken from Amazon.ca

The idea that what we say and do can have a big impact on the feelings of others is the message of this book. We all have invisible  buckets over our heads that are full when we are happy and empty when we are feeling sad, angry or alone.  We use this book to talk and write about things that fill our buckets because not only can people fill our buckets, but we can fill our own buckets when we do an activity we enjoy or when we help someone else.  We often end our school day by talking about our buckets.  At the beginning of the year, we ask, "Who filled your bucket today?"  As the year progresses and we have introduced the idea of criteria, we may ask, "How full is your bucket today and why?"  In this case we are asking students to give their bucket a rating out of five and reasons for their rating.  Five being full and one being empty.

What are some tried and true beginning of the year activities that you like to use in your classroom? Please share.