Roll of the Dice

Happy Friday Eve!!!!!

Yesterday I went to a professional development meeting about math. The topic was on CC Math Practice Standard number 1 which is:

Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.

I am working really hard on providing my students with classroom experiences in which they can do just that. The math practice standards are the most important part of CC math, a least it’s what I think. I always look to them as a guide when I’m planning math lessons.

So as I driving home I began to brainstorm the different types of problem solving activities I could do with my students. I wanted it to be engaging on all levels…and boy do I have a wide variety of those. So here is the first activity I came up with. I leveled them so that all of my students could be successful.

First we did a few examples on the Promethean board. Then I handed out the sheets. They had to work for 5 minutes alone, and they could use any math tool they thought would help them. Then after five minutes I grouped the different levels together and they discussed their solutions. Then we shared out as a whole group.

I forgot to snap some photos of their thinking, but they really did well with it. If you’d like to try something like this in your classroom click o the picture and grab a copy. I didn’t do any cutifying but I hope you can use it anyway!  It was quick and easy to implement but I saw a lot of thinking going on. Let me know what you think.

 

Level 1

 

Level 2

 

Level 3

Here is a video we watched on The Teaching Channel…Holla if you LUV The Teaching Channel! Even though she is a third grade teacher I found lots of good ideas I could use with my first graders. I love her Show Three Ways Sheet. I plan on tweaking it for first grade.

 

 

Here is another wonderful video on counting collections. For those of you that use Investigations, this is like Mystery Boxes on Steroids!

 

 

Tomorrow is Pumpkin Patch Field Trip Day!!! Yeah….Lawd help me. Happy Friday!!!!