Guided Math by Laney Sammons Chpt 3

Think about how your students begin their day in your classroom. Is there a mathematical connection? Does it involve more than a work sheet?

The students in my class start the day off with a whole class activity ~ this is now student led.  The children get seated with their books and wait for the ‘hot spot’ game. I have spent the last 6 weeks introducing them to 3 different games:

• ·         Bowl a Fact – helps for practicing addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.
• ·         Rocket – practices ordering of numbers.
• ·         Number Hangman – practice saying and identifying ones, tens and hundreds (moving to thousands).

Student led Number Hangman.

Student led Bowl a Fact.

A students example of Bowl a Fact working in her book.

We spend 10 minutes on the ‘hot spot’ warm up and then move off into the group rotations.

The book makes reference to an activity called _______ Makes Me Think Of….. I am really pleased as I did this with my class (slightly different) and achieved a satisfying result that I can refer back to and build on.

 

______ Makes Me Think Of .......

Why is it important to help students recognise the link between math and their own lives? What are you doing in the classroom to help students make this connection? How can you make the link even stronger?

It is important that children know the connection so that they can transfer it into their own lives as we use maths so often. At the moment I am looking at equal sharing with a group. They have made the connection to equally sharing money or food between their friends and that it is important so that fights don’t break out (their interpretation). When I work with my guided groups I always ensure that I give the children problems that relate to real life so they can transfer this.

After reading the chapter I never thought to incorporate a calendar board as all of the ones I have ever seen are aimed at the younger classes however there are some really good ideas for developing more complex activities and these help reinforce the learning children have done during the year.
I will be setting activities such as estimating, predicting the temperature, solving a number problem and a word equation. I will be adding to this every couple of weeks to keep children engaged.