My Personal Learning Path

In response to last week’s presentations on concept games and this week’s reading on technology in the classroom, I’ve been inspired to dive further into two different computer games and investigate their usefulness. I recognize I devalue computer games a bit based on my preconceptions of what “real math” is. That definitely comes from what was available when I learned math (and how it was taught). This week I am trying to break out of that and reorganize my thinking.   Game: Alien Addition (Math Playground) This game mirrors space invaders. The student is defending against an alien invasion and must shoot a laser at the spaceship that is labelled with the addition problem that adds up to the number given on the bottom of the screen. This game would help a tremendous amount with fluency.  Content Standard: CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.2.OA.B.2 Fluently add and subtract within 20 using mental strategies. 2   By end of Grade 2, know from memory all sums of two one-digit numbers. Math...

Today I decided to work on second grade geometry. This is something that I recognize needing to refresh myself on so here we go! I watched a Khan Academy video  and completed an Education.com worksheet that you will see below.  Standard: CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.2.G.A.1 Recognize and draw shapes having specified attributes, such as a given number of angles or a given number of equal faces. 1   Identify triangles, quadrilaterals, pentagons, hexagons, and cubes. Here is the worksheet:   Reflection: I think it is nice that I’m beginning to realize what I DON’T like about activities/worksheets. I realized this worksheet was low-level and somewhat unclear at times. Specifically, the cube shape up there I was confused myself about when I saw it. What I would do for my students is label which shapes are 2D or 3D OR have actual blocks of the shapes that they could hold and inspect. I would also ask for an explanation as to why it would be that shape (which characteristics). That po...

Based on our async work this week, I decided to focus on division. I, personally, was having a difficult time identifying the difference between the partitive and quotitive approaches to division. So today I reconstructed two Khan Academy visuals using arrays.  Standard: -         CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.3.OA.A.2  I nterpret whole-number quotients of whole numbers, e.g., interpret 56 ÷ 8 as the number of  objects in each share when 56 objects are partitioned equally into 8 shares, or as a number of shares when 56 objects are partitioned into equal shares of 8 objects each. For example, describe a context in which a number of shares or a number of groups can be expressed as 56 ÷ 8. Partitive: Quotitive:  Reflection: Even as I was constructing these arrays, I had a few issues. Specifically, when I was trying to verbalize the partitive approach, I stumbled on wording multiple times. And then it hit me: I have always instinctively approached ...

I’ve been focusing a lot on third grade content but today I wanted to look at teaching content to younger students. I took Professor Bromley’s advice and checked out the Illustrative Mathematics Tasks website. I investigated their activities related to K.CC.B.4: Understand the relationship between numbers and quantities; connect counting to cardinality.   Activity 1: The first activity is called counting mat . The teacher gives students the counting mat and many small objects to count with. It’s their job to match the number of objects with the number of circles on the mat: Activity 2: The second activity is called goody bags . The students are given bags with different amounts counting objects in them. The students count the objects, record the number on the post-it note and stick the post-it note onto the outside of the bag. Activity 3: The third activity I particularly love because it incorporates reading and comprehension into a math lesson. It’s called The Napping House . Th...

This week I continued studying three act math activities and wanted to take a crack at composing one myself. I really loved perusing whenmathhappens.com and the Dan Meyer lessons. I appreciate how there is a real-world connection and excitement embedded in these lessons. I found myself particularly drawn to the lessons that incorporated sports as I am a bit of a fanatic myself. The two that really stuck out to me were King Clutch that focused on ratios ( https://whenmathhappens.com/2014/01/18/king-clutch/ ), and Paul Sturgess that focused on fractions ( https://whenmathhappens.com/2014/04/17/paul-sturgess/ ). I composed a 3-act math lesson based on my beloved New York Yankees and comparing two numbers. I would envision this for a third-grade class. This is an outline, and I haven’t put together the videos just yet.  Act 1: I will show a video of two Aaron Judge home runs—one short home run and one long home run. The question I would look to answer is how much farther did the second...

Today I came up with an extension for the activity I devised in my first PLP post. As a refresher, that activity was a drama game for math where the students would act out a word problem that was given to them. Today I have devised an extension that I hope would focus on Math Practice 4, modeling with mathematics. Here is the activity: Students work in groups of two or three. They are given a straightforward problem (e.g., 5 + 7, 20 X 5) and they must come up with a real-world situation in which they would have to apply that math. They then act out this situation for the class and we discuss and solve the problem as a whole class.  5 + 7 example :  Jonathan is setting up for his birthday party. 5 kids from Ms. Ganley’s class are going and 7 kids from Ms. Posada’s class are going.              Dialogue:                   ...