Sunday, January 29, 2012

Problem Solving






We've been working on our new school wide goal of increasing awareness of problem solving in the classroom. This applies for all children in the school from Kindergarten to Grade Eight. In Kindergarten, problem solving in math means using numbers to answer questions.










Some questions we have worked on are:
-What are different ways to make a number? Such as the number 5. There are many possibilities for these questions and not just one "right answer".
-Another example, If Alyssa has 10 fruits and vegetables all together...How many fruits could she have? How many vegetables?
-So we are working with numbers in a real life context. Children have to use their own thinking or work with a partner or small group to activity solve problems and are engaged in the process.







For Valentine's Day, we had the question: Barbie has 3 valentines. Dora has 10 valentines. Diego has moer than Barbie but less than Dora. How many valentines could Diego have?

Again, this is a thinking question that requires lots of thinking and skills to answer. It requires a "working sense of numbers" and a true understanding versus a "closed" question that has only one right answer.

In our class, we call ourselves "Math Wizards". We are all trying to become Math Wizards. We become a math wizard when we use pictures, numbers and words to solve problems. This will be an ongoing goal for all children in the classroom - to become a math wizard!


Here's some random pictures of our math work:

Mrs. Stefani




Monday, January 23, 2012

Random Creative Fun






We have been working on shapes in the last month - beginning with 2 D shapes and moving towards 3D shapes. This includes a square, diamond, circle, rectangle, square, rhombus, star, heart, hexagon and trapezoid.

For 3D shapes we will be working on learning a sphere, cube, rectangular prism, cone, cylinder and pyramid.



Here's some random shots of building with some 2D and 3D shapes.

Thursday, January 5, 2012

Number Sense


Number sense is something that begins to develop very early.

Young children’s earliest reasoning is likely to be about number situations, and their first mathematical concept will probably be of numbers. Even before children can talk, there is a sense that adding something to a group makes it larger, and taking something away makes it smaller.

Number sense is the ability to count and recognize number, identify the relationships among numbers, and understand how to use them in a variety of ways, such as counting, measuring, or estimating.

It is an inner sense about numbers and reasoning that includes counting aloud, one‐to‐one correspondence, and ordinal numbers.

Some math concepts are so natural that children begin to do them - like sorting and grouping things together (making sets), rote counting, passing out one plate to each child at the table (one‐to‐one correspondence), asking friends “how many” they will be on their next birthday.

Children need exposure to math concepts, to learn new vocabulary or terminology so that math because a natural part of life to them and a promising way of problem solving.


In Kindergarten, we have been playing number games with manipulatives, learning how to add numbers together to make a larger set. We've been exploring combinations of numbers that together make a total. They explored their own quantities with the problem solving of "Mrs. Stefani has a bag of jelly beans. Some are red and some are white. How many jellybeans could Mrs. Stefani have?". The children made their own groupings to problem solve an open ended problem.