Using mental routines & challenging traditional approaches

On Monday, I worked with 130 teachers at Golden Grove in Adelaide. The first part of the day was spent trying out mental routines and the way in which they can be used to develop mathematical vocabulary and deep understanding through reasoning.

The 100 square mental routine allowed us to explore ways in which such a simple tool can allow for differentiation during a mental routine and game like situation.

Using the analogue clock allowed for discussion about how traditional approaches to teaching how to tell the time actually impedes progress.

The teachers who gave up a day of their holiday to be there yesterday were terrific to work with so thanks for the great day!

Early years workshop in SA

Hats off to South Australian teachers especially those from Port Noaralunga and surrounds who turned up on their holidays for a day of maths.

The focus was early years, and in the photo below, you can see teachers putting their solution to the muffins problem on the board ready to share and reflect. The teachers were asked to second guess what strategies the year 2 students might use for this unfamiliar problem. The problem is designed to find out what the students already now and can practice prior to actually teaching multiplication. The range of samples was very representative of what I see when I run this problem in classrooms - many rich and meaningful discussions followed.

As always it is a delight to be back in SA.

The story of the problem was:
The canteen workers needed to make 12 muffins with 6 m&ms on each muffin. They needed to buy the m&ms. How many m&ms did they need to buy?

Try it and see what your class understands about early multiplicative thinking.

Enjoy!

Schools Clean Up Day: Friday 28th February 2014

We all know students learn better when we can help them to make connections between in school activities and out of school current events. So let’s live greener by participating fully in Clean Up Australia Day.

A free kit with plenty of lesson plans and ideas is available for free at the Clean Up for Schools website.

There is plenty of stimulus for connected maths and science to be found at this site.

Way back in 1991 Johnny and I wrote a book called Counting on a Small Planet.

We were then and still are committed to doing whatever we can to preserve our environment. One section of the book was called ‘What’s in a Lunch Box’ and we have included a segment from it below. We used a real problem solving model with the class who worked over a period of several days on this problem.

What was not included in the book was the fact that this particular class decided to host a no rubbish morning tea for their parents. They discovered that in the ‘old days’ people took their lunch to school or work wrapped in handkerchiefs or tea towels and that workers took their own tea and coffee in a flask with their own cup.

They also discovered that Cornish pasties had sweet at one end and savoury in the middle and that the pastry was its own container. A lot of planning, problem solving and mathematics went into the morning tea. What a great way to raise parent’s awareness and for them to see how passionate their children were about the ‘rubbish’ issue.

With the event happening in February, it's never too early to start thinking about what else we can do to help children gain a better understanding of environmentally friendly practices that also tie in with learning, in particular maths learning.

Place Value to 100 will be available next week

Working in classrooms, we often notice areas that cause students particular difficulty. One of those areas is place value. We meet students even in Grade 4 who are doing 2-digit and 3-digit additions and, when asked, cannot read the answer correctly, nor do they have any idea if their answer is in the ball park.

Recently a Grade 4 boy was solving a problem using dots as counters, he got to 69 looked up and asked, ‘What comes after 69?’. When prompted, he continued the pattern until he reached 79, and then looked up for help again. Similarly when trying to teach students to use number splitting for value-based computations we meet students who know that the 2 in 27 means 20 but think that the 1 in 12 is just 1 not 10.

Clearly we are moving forward too fast with place value. Much research is suggesting that place value is an issue even in Grade 7.

So what goes wrong?

That was the question that we have been grappling with for quite some time. If students cannot actually count and count on in different patterns, how can they understand the role of digits in 2-digit and 3-digit numbers?

If they have not had experiences making single digit numbers in lots of different ways, how can they then understand that a number such as 36 can be made with three 10s and six 1s or with two 10s and sixteen 1s.

Difficulty with teen numbers is known to persist into Grade 4 - why then have we not paid more attention to developing deep understanding of teen numbers? Why do we rush when 'slowly slowly' wins the race?

The new package focuses on purposeful counting; understanding the magnitude of numbers to 100; sequencing numbers proportionally on an empty number line and solving problems requiring that numbers be grappled with, pulled apart put back together in many ways. Quantification and number sense are the driving forces used to build deep understanding of place value.

We hope you enjoy the package. Watch out over the next few days as videos of the place value games will be released.

Have a great year. Week Zero in South Australia next week and we are really excited to be in Adelaide next week working with teachers and yes you guessed it, showing off our new resources.

3D blocks for mental routines

Like everybody else, we are tidying up and planning for next year. As we did so, we came across the following email from Ann Paine. We don’t know how we missed it earlier but we thought we would post it so that you can get inspired by her 3D objects set too.

Hi Ann,
After your Spacial Awareness training session, I was inspired to make up these 3D Objects Mental Routine kits. One of the parents at my school made the cones using plasticine. I made the pyramids from card. My class enjoyed using the kits. As usual, they love to guess my 3D object at the end of the mental routine.
Feel free to share this idea.
Anna Pain
Light Pass Primary School.

EngQuest new in 2014

STEM Education (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) is gaining ground in schools. Many future jobs, some not even invented yet, will demand high levels of understanding and skill in STEM fields.

Natural Maths is embracing STEM and will be flagging existing problems and activities that relate to STEM as well as designing specific problems and activities to promote STEM.

Did you know that February launches the 2014 EngQuest?

EngQuest is a challenge from Engineering Australia designed to be hands on and cross curricula.
Two challenges, simple machines and water wheels, are already outlined on their website and both have a suite of support materials. Registration to EngQuest is free and there is a free support pack available from Engineers Australia at http://www.forteachersforstudents.com.au/Events/engquest.php. 

Go take a look and get ready for the best school year ever.