WEBINAR K-3 Portland

The K-3 Webinar will be at Riverton School, Tuesday, Nov. 4. It will be in the Discovery Center. Enter the School, not the community center, turn right and head down the hall. The discovery center is on the left just before the library.

I need your help!

Do you have any information on color blindness and how it effects a child's spacial sense?
I'm using Investigations for the first time and the children have been building staircases using a set of connectiong cubes labeled 1-12 with partners. After building all the steps they were asked to put them in order. (This was done over time). All went well with counting the cubes and putting them in order by looking at the set of cubes labeled 1-12 but when asked what was added on to each number to get the the next and to transpose what they had built on to graph paper, one of my students could not tell or show me what he had done. He really couldn't see the staircase. I had him feel it and he acknowledged it was different but.....

Going back to mangoes.

This is the kind of post Maggie encouraged me to make on Saturday, so here it goes.
We have been working on factors and multiples. After working together to find all the factor pairs for 100, the students were asked to figure out the factor pairs for 200, 300 etc. What I knew from observing the kids was that some (a few) intuitively knew the factor pairs for 100 and, perhaps one or two of those few would know how to use what they knew about 100 to figure out the pairs for the next groups of 100. What was really bothering me was that I knew most of the students did not have nearly enough experience "playing" with materials to see, let alone, discover the relationships between the groups of 100. So, I stopped the paper and pencil work for two days and had the students build the factor pairs for the 200s, 300s. What happened was great - the kids started seeing the "groups of" that made up the multiples and discovered they could figure out all the factor pairs and consequently discovered the patterns involved in seeing the relationships among the multiples. This is really hard to explain without feeling that it sounds silly and simplistic, but it wasn't and I am a happy that I dropped where the program was sending me and took the time to serve some mangos.

Impact of Computer Games

Deb Smith and I got together to blog on our early release this afternoon. We began discussing play and how important it is for children. (We are strickly thinking of 5 and 6 year old children.) We read the article Piaget Development Statagies and I fould it fasinating how children move from stage to stage.
The following is the site if you would like to read it.

coe.sdsu.edu/eet/Articles/piaget/start.htm

Our world is changing and I wonder how video games, "the wee", computer games and the lack of playing games at home will effect children moving from the different stages. I have been amazed to hear from some kindergarteners this fall that on the weekends they play video games or are 4 wheeling.

I also wonder about Special Ed students (say Elementary) do they ever move from Preoperational Stage to Concrete Operational Stage or do they flip flop back and forth until they are in Middle or High School.

Pondering Play and Developmental Stages

I have been thinking all week about our Saturday morning’s MTM play session and watching my kindergarten students. Instinctively I understand the value of play, play that is not always incorporated into the lessons of many math programs (or at least not enough play). Or perhaps it is the time in a school day that does not allow for play. (For the purposes of this blog I am using the word play similarly to the way Maggie speaks of investigations.)

Basically, what I have been thinking is how easy it is to forget how children/students build their understanding of mathematical concepts ( through real world play or investigations). One of my favorite theorists on cognitive development is Jean Piaget. Here is a website Gay and I found on googling one day that discusses age/stage theory in relationship to cognitive development, specifically mathematical development:
http://coe.sdsu.edu/eet/Articles/piaget/index.htm

Added thoughts to Sat. 10/18 classGeoboards

We began with this question: How many ways are there to make a square on a 5x5 geoboard? The we asked:
Is there a numerical pattern or formula that can be used to determine the number of squares contained in any geoboard square?
Deb & Gene

Clarity of Purpose

It was helpful to me to hear Maggie (and others) declare that we are trying to learn to teach conceptually rather than procedurally. These words helped me to clarify my efforts

Ethnomathematics at Bates

Hi Everybody,

For those who went to the Ethnomathematics talks at Bates, could you share what was discussed please? I was not able to attend but am curious about what went on there.

Thank you so much!!
Ina