The unit encourages teachers to create an environment where students can find their own ways to solve problems and then share their strategies with others. A good starting point for this in Grade 1 is using dot-cards, where students explain how they know how many dots are on a card without counting them individually. This involves them seeing combinations of dots. Students share different ways they combined the dots to find the total. Some ready-made print outs of these dot cards taken from John Van de Walle's book can be found at http://www.mathcoachscorner.com/2013/07/using-dot-cards-to-build-number-sense/
Currently we're enjoying discussing one dot-card a day in 1T, and students are getting better at using different strategies such as seeing doubles e.g. 7+7 and finding ways to make ten e.g. 5+6 = 5+5+1 = 10+1 =11
Going beyond the dot cards, students can be given numerical problems to solve and then discuss their solutions and how they arrived at them.
The teacher's role is to draw out student thinking and make it visible to others, both algebrically and visually. This may involve 'rewinding' several times until they have understood the student's thinking. Teachers should focus particularly on incorrrect answers, allowing students the opportunity to talk through their work in the hope they will see their mistake. They should also encourage students to see similaries between the different strategies.
One question I'm wondering about is the optimal time ratio between students working alone to solve problems versus time spent listening to class mates share solutions, which falls into the 'sitting and listening' category (apart from when they are sharing their own ideas.)
No comments:
Post a Comment