A three act math discussion Many years ago, my husband’s best friend made this bank for him using and old post office box. They were both postal workers and this friend is no longer with us, so this bank is pretty special to us. We use it to save our pennies. I shared about this on social media a few years…
Last week my class participated in Global School Play Day. I was a bit nervous about an entire day of “unstructured” play with my high energy crowd, but I stepped through my fears and let it happened. It wasn’t completely unstructured, I guess. Our day is kind of broken up into manageable chucks with the placement of specials, lunch, and recess…
For a while now I have wanted to write about this fantastic resource. Well, I am finally getting around to it! YouCubed.org is a site that was founded by Stanford professor of education, Jo Boaler, “to give teachers, parents and students the resources and ideas they need to inspire and excite students about mathematics.” The information and resources here are backed…
Scene 1: In a typical first grade classroom. Student: {staring at a broken pencil} Teacher: Looks like your pencil is broken. Student: {shifts stare to teacher} Teacher: What do you think you should do? Student: {continues to stare at teacher} Early in my teaching career I had a class of first graders in a fairly large elementary school. I don’t recall…
Have you ever had trouble remembering how to “carry the one” or had difficulty understanding what it means to “borrow?” Do you pause when deciding which way to “move” a decimal or how many zeros to “add” to the end of a number? Most people I talk to believe math is a {really, really large} set of rules and steps and…
Featured Photo Credit: Atlas Green Have you ever noticed that when someone holds up a few fingers and asks you how many you see, you don’t have to count them? You just intuitively know that three fingers is three fingers and that five fingers is five fingers. Same kind of deal when you a playing a game with dice. Chances are that…
Dice (or number cubes) are one of my favorite things to use in math class. They are super versatile and can be used to teach and practice a ton of concepts. They also come in all sorts of different shapes and sizes, which expands the possibilities, and playing games is a great way to teach children that math is fun! For…
Do you remember playing with blocks as a child? Wooden blocks, alphabet blocks, interlocking bricks, over-sized cardboard bricks. Building blocks come in all different shapes, sizes, and colors. The simplicity of the idea is fascinating, and yet there are so many things you can do with blocks if you just let yourself dive into the world of imagination. Where you see…