Chocolate Does Wonders For Grade 1/2 Students

Lisa teaches a combined Grade 1/2 class.  Her students have been working on measurement.  Lisa wanted to do an activity with them that would not only be meeting curriculum expectations, but also be interesting to them.  Chocolate came to mind (who doesn't like chocolate!) and a great lesson was born from there.

For her minds-on the students had to decide what pencil to get rid of.  She scribed their thinking as they discussed what their answer would be.  Notice how she has the success criteria (in very friendly Grade 1 language) at the bottom of the page.  A great way to keep it handy and make it be able to refer to it quickly and easily.

For the action is where the chocolate came in.  She gave them this problem:

The students were shown two different chocolate bars.  Lisa had made a ruler using linking cubes (which she alternated into two different colours to make the counting easier) and then the students used the ruler to help them measure the two bars.  Because there were only two chocolates, Lisa had taken a picture of the chocolate bars with the rulers underneath them.  She then created their worksheet with this picture and the question on it.  This allowed the students to write write on the photo to help them with their strategies.

To consolidate, Lisa chose a few students to come up and share their work.  She then had the class give oral feedback as to what they did that was really good, and what they could do better.  The students were really positive with each other, and listened to feedback that was given and used similar feedback with the next person.

Co-Planning, Co-Producing

Carm and Jan invited me in to co-teach with them a lesson on area using non-standard units.  Carm teaches Grade 1 and Jan teaches a combined Grade 1/2 class.  Jan and I met to plan first and decided to use an idea from the curriculum document as the action part of our lesson.  We made it a parallel task so that there was a slight difference between what the Grade 1 and Grade 2 students did.  This was done to meet the needs of the two different curriculum expectations.  When Carm and I met to plan she had already seen the lesson from Jan and we decided to use the same lesson for her Grade 1s.

Here are the learning goals that the two of them had created for area:

Minds On:  The students used large sheets of construction paper to help measure the area of the learning carpet.  Before they began, they were reminded of what estimate meant and several students took turns sharing their estimates:

When they were done estimating, they found the area and shared how they came up with their answer.  This was recorded on the bottom of our chart.  You can see that the students shared 4 different ways of counting the sheets of paper to find the area.  Great examples of how they applied what they already knew to this task.

Action: 

The students quickly went to work using square of paper to help them measure the area of the op of their desk (The paper was super cheap:  550 sheets for $1.25 at Dollarama)

The students then had a picture of their desks taken, and then they used this picture to help them complete their answer.  We saw that the students used the strategies that we talked about to help them show how they counted up to 48 to get their final answer. 

Consolidate:  The students talked about how they got their answers with a partner.

We had two great lessons in two great classes!  The students were engaged and really able to demonstrate a lot of prior knowledge when solving this task.

Birthdays Lead To Multiplication?

Zahra teaches a combined Grade 1/2 class.  Her Grade 1s have been doing addition and subtraction and her Grade 2s have been learning about making equal groups leading up to multiplication.  Drawing on a problem she had done with a previous class, Zahra decided to do an activity involving birthday candles on a cake for the PLC lesson study.

For her minds on she used magnets and a picture of a cake to have the students represent different ways to put 6 (and then 12) candles on a cake.  She recorded their thinking beside the cake on the dry erase board:

Because it is a combined Grade 1/2 Class Zahra chose to do a parallel task type question.  However, instead of letting the students choose what task, she assigned one for each grade.  They now had to find different ways to put candles on a birthday cake:



When the students were done it was recess time, and as they headed out to play, the teachers at the lesson study headed out into the hall to Bansho the work that was done.  We chose to do this on our own and not with the children only so that we could have more time to talk about the work that we were noticing, and see the progression of strategies that the students used.  Here is a picture of what the finished Bansho looked like:

As a group, it was easy to put the strategies at the outer most ends of the Bansho down.  They were very clear in what they had done, and where it was along the spectrum of strategies.  However, where we had some of the best professional dialogue was around what pieces went into the middle of the Bansho and why.  We found ourselves really looking at what was on the paper and really comparing it to other examples of work.  We looked for what was similar and what was different in pieces.  As well, we discussed what we considered more sophisticated, and what was not as sophisticated and why.  We also found ourselves really looking at the math and not the right answer.  While yes, the right answer is part of the bigger picture, knowing how they got there and being able to work that out is almost a bigger part of the picture.  After much discussion here are our final strategies that were decided upon:

Used counters - not yet able to move past the manipulative onto paper

This strategy was to draw pictures to represent the candles.

Pictures and numbers to "talk" about what the pictures mean.

Making Equal Groups (not always the correct number as per the question, but equal groups)

Used pictures, number and started to use the terms "groups of"  The group decided to call this "Making Groups With Proof"

Multiplication

What we found interesting was that within the multiplication group we had several different "styles" of multiplication.  Here are some of the "styles"

Making Arrays (Grade 2 expectation)

Using "groups of" as well as repeated addition and a multiplication sentence.

Groups, Addition and Multiplication

A great morning filled with professional dialogue, discussion and idea sharing.  Thanks to all who participated.

Measuring Length

How do Grade 1/2 students learn about non-standard units?  The answer to that is easy:  They just do it!  To help our Grade 1 PLC get some ideas and have some discussion around measurement Ranald offered up his classroom to the 9 teachers for us to use to get some ideas and brainstorm some solutions on how to tackle our measurement hurdles.

Ranald wanted to try something a little different with his class, so he decided to do his lesson as a Bansho.  When you do that, you have everything from your learning goals and success criteria right through to your highlights/summary sheet all in one spot.  Usually this is done on brown craft paper or mural paper.  Here is what his finished one looked like:

He began with putting his learning goals up for his students to see. 

Then was his Minds on activity.  In this lesson they were deciding what non-standard unit would be the best to use when measuring various classroom objects.  You can see they had to estimate first (a skill that many students struggle with) and then they did the actual measurement based on what unit they chose.

 For the action, the students were given a piece of paper and rolled a number cube to see how many cubes they would be using to measuring.  Ranald chose to do this as a way to help speed the process along to get the students measuring objects around the room.  The students then got to work moving around the classroom finding things that were about as long as their "ruler."

As a consolidation, the students then shared how long their ruler was, and then what they measured in the room that were about that long.  You can see some of the things that they measured from the classroom:



 The class also created a highlights sheet of things that they need to remember when they measure objects. 

What the group found interesting was that the highlights that were created had more to do with the minds on than the action part of the lesson.  That lead the group to a great discussion as to what we could have done different to pull more highlights from the action than the minds on.


Seeing the lesson, and another person's classroom, is just part of the experience.  Talking about the lesson and what changes we would make is a greater part of the experience.  When we talk as a group we are able to flush out other lessons, and talk about where we think the unit can go and how to move the students along. 

Thank you for a great morning Ranald!