counting on fall: math stories

This week I visited Ms Teramura's and Ms McKenzie's Kindergarten classes at Errington Elementary.

We read the first few pages of Counting on Fall by Lizann Flatt and then I role played a math story using a bear and an eagle puppet along with some acorns the bear had gathered for a snack.

The students were then asked to tell their own math stories, using materials set up on tables around the classroom.

 

 

Although many of the students did not specifically tell math-related stories, they enjoyed creating stories with the materials, and the adults in the rooms had the opportunity to ask students to count the different materials they were working with to assess one-to-one correspondence and general number sense. The two videos below were created using the Vine app:


note: click off the red X by the speaker icon in the top left hand corner of each video in order to hear the audio
~Janice

Reggio-Inspired Mathematics: Professional Learning

On Friday, September 27 most of our elementary schools in Richmond had professional development days. We hosted an afternoon session looking at Reggio-Inspired Mathematics. There isn't very much written specifically about mathematics in the Reggio world so I have been thinking a lot about how the elements from a Reggio-inspired approach could mesh with the prescribed mathematics curriculum that our teachers work with. I shared some of the work we have been doing in K/1 classrooms this September and then teachers had a chance to engage with different tables full of materials and mathematical provocations.

K-3 teachers attended and there was much rich conversation about ways to address curriculum in different ways. I shared my thinking around "uncovering" curriculum (instead of the mindset of having to cover curriculum) through invitations with thoughtful design and beautiful materials. The mathematical provocations shared had mathematical intentions embedded in their design and materials but they are intended for students to explore and discover and for the mathematics to unfold.

The following photographs share the series of number sense and patterning provocations that were presented across two rooms to inspire teachers, encourage discussion and connection-making to mathematics curriculum at different grade levels.

Teachers also had the chance to make some wooden ten frames (love popsicle sticks for their versatility!) to take back to their classrooms. This was one of those a-ha moments for me early in September when I wanted to use ten-frames but wanted a more playful, kinaesthetic tool rather than a photocopied ten frame on paper or an egg carton. 

A special thank you to Lenore Dennis for hosting us in her lovely classroom at Byng Elementary!

Our afternoon together was hopefully just the starting point of ongoing collaborative projects as we think about our young students and how they experience mathematics in their classrooms.

~Janice

mathematical provocations in K/1 classrooms

During September I visited Louesa Byrne's K/1 classroom at Thompson and Lauren MacLean's K/1 classroom at Blair. Over several visits we created mathematical provocations for the students to engage with mathematics and allow the teachers an opportunity to assess what their students were able to do in the area of patterning and general number sense.

Can you stack 5 rocks?
Mathematical Intention: one-to-one correspondence, counting, decomposing 5 into parts

What different patterns can you make?

Mathematical Intention: creating repeating patterns using 2-5 elements

What is a pattern?

Mathematical Intention: thinking about patterns in the environment, thinking about repeating, growing patterns, circular, framing patterns, grid patterns

What can you find out about numbers?

Mathematical Intention: one-to-one correspondence, counting, making ten, recognizing quantity arrangements, relate numerals to quantity, represent and describe numbers

How many ways can you make 7?

Mathematical Intention: parts-whole relationships, decomposing 7 into parts, one-to-one correspondence, counting, combining parts, adding

Things we noticed:

Students, for the most part, were fascinated with the simple materials and open-ness and stayed engaged for long periods of time.

We found leaving little clipboards with paper on the tables invited students to record and represent their  work.

By adding a new element to a provocation, students became re-engaged and discovered new ways to work with the materials (ie. adding dice or calculators).

These table tasks create opportunities for teachers to spend time with individual students and talk to them about what they were doing, assessing their mathematical understanding as appropriate.

 ~Janice