Week 1 Activities

Here is the story problem we "played with" this week: Joel's Mystery Phone Number. First, I covered each sentence of the story with strips of construction paper. Then we removed the paper strips to read the story sentence-by-sentence, transferring pertinent information into a KWC graphic organizer. A KWC is divided into three columns asking the folliwng questions: K - What do you know for sure? W - What are you trying to find out? C - Are there any special conditions: (Special rules? Tricks to watch out for? Things to remember? Then after our thorough analysis of the problem, we summarzied what we knew and paraphrased the question. At this point, we started brainstorming ideas on how to solve the problem in our cooperative groups. What I quickly realized was that students had the right idea (of substituting in the odd numbers) but there was not rhyme nor reason to what they were doing. They needed help in organization - a very typical trait of this aged learner! :) So I stopped the cooperative groups, and we had a whole-group brainstorming session on how we could effectively organize this information. Eventally, they came up with the idea of having an organized list, which I took a step further and put into a table format. After much thought and discussion, some of the students concluded that if they could find all of the possible combinations for "1" as the first odd digit, then they would know ALL of the possible numbers because each subsequent odd digit would have the same number of possible combinations! At that point, many of them used the number sentence, 12 x 5 = 60 to solve the problem - 12 being the number of possible combinations per digit and 5 being the number of odd digits (1, 3, 5, 7, 9).

This was very rich story problem which spurred a lot of mathematical discourse among the kids. The key to the success of this exercise was to not rush it! We took the time up front to make sure we really understood the problem (also know by some as "front-loading"). Then we organized the information into three categories as demonstrated on the KWC. This thorough understanding allowed them to strategically formulate a plan, thereby leading them to the correct solution.



At the conclusion of the week, we wrote reflectively about the problem answering these three questions: How did you solve this problem? Why did you solve it this way? Why do you think your solution is correct and makes sense? This challenged them to explore their ideas further and to internalize their thinking on a deeper level.

On top of our "story problem" focus, we also worked with the concept of measurement this week. I asked the kids to consider the surface of their hands (the area). Then I posed them with this question: How could we measure the surface of our hands? They all had some really creative ideas, mostly involving non-standard units of measurement. Then I took the question a step further: How could we measure the surface of our hands so that we could accurately compare our measurements? This question led into a really great discussion about non-standard vs. standard units of measurement. After much thought and debate, one student came up with a brilliant idea! "We could use that grid paper to trace our hands!" So that's exactly what we did! To integrate data collection and interpretation into this activity, we also took area measurements of our feet, and recorded all of our data on a large chart. Prior to making these measurements, I had the students predict (or estimate) what they thought their measurements would be. Also, I had them predict whether they thought their foot or hand would be larger. But the learning doesn't stop there! Next week, we will taking all of this a step further by comparing our data, as well as finding the range, mean, median, and mode.

Skills are also important, so we spent some time working specifically on these as well. Students played games focusing on mulitplication facts and place value. They also spent time in the computer lab practicing their individual targeted areas for growth. This week, I used a wonderful website that you can also use at home: http://www.rainforestmaths.com/ And don't forget about the music and movement! We learned a Mrs. V "original", The Last Ten and we played Mulitplication Ball Toss! Ask your child about these activities.....