Welcome To Kindergarten Night

This past week I was invited to be a part of General Crerar's Welcome to Kindergarten night. The principal (Heather) and the kindergarten teacher (Chris) had set up several stations for parents to visit. These stations were: Math, Public Health, Toronto Public Library, and a Teacher station where Chris had some activities set up for them to do with her.

The math station consisted of two games for parents to play with their children: Part, part whole bingo and a shake and spill game using the 10 frame mat.

 
 
Each child also got a "math goodie bag" which had the two games in it, plus a few other math items for them to use at home.  The bags cost under $1 per child, and were made up of items that were purchased at a local dollar store.  The items in the bag were:  A deck of cards, 10 two sided counters, a large die, stickers, part-part-whole bingo game, a ten frame, a piece of sewing elastic (to make shapes with) tangram puzzles, and a piece of foam to make the tangrams with.
 

 It was great watching the parents and their children do math together.  As well, it gave me the chance to share some fun cooperative learning games with them, so they can help their child grow as mathematicians.  Great job Chris and Heather.  The night was a great success!

Congress and Assessment

In Lisa's Grade 4/5 class I was invited in to co-teach a lesson with her. Her school is doing a math pathway this term and her pre-assessment task is "The Checkerboard Problem." The question asks students how many squares are on an 8 x 8 checkerboard. We posed the question to the students, handed them checkerboard templates, and then set to work making notes on our Assessment for Learning (A for L) tool.

All of the students quickly got the answer of 64 - none of them got the correct answer of over 200.  But what amazed us was how many different strategies the students were able to use in order to come up with the correct answer.  Lisa had told them she wanted them to try to solve it in at least two ways.  Many of them were able to solve it in more ways than just that.

Many of the students shared their strategies with us.  We were able to see that the students had a lot of different strategies to call upon when solving a problem.  After they described what they did, we used a different colour marker to give that strategy a name that they could remember it by.  One key strategy was missing, so at the end of our congress I shared with them how to make a table to help them find an answer. 

When our congress was over, we then let them know that although they had really good strategies, none of them got the answer correct.  We told them that there are more than 200 squares on the checkerboard.  At first they looked at us with an "Are you kidding" face - But then one student piped up that she could see some of them that she hadn't before. 

The congress allowed us a chance to see what strategies the students already had in their schema, and then the A for L tool helped us see which ones were most commonly used.  At the end of the pathway, it will then be interesting to see if the students are still using the same strategies, or if new ones have become a part of their problem solving tool kit.