It was wonderful to share the Friday morning session at the
Calgary City Teachers’ Conference with so many new friends! I hope you walked away with some ideas for helping your students understand mathematics is a deeper way. Congratulations to
Shannon Muir who won the math coaching session in the draw!
If you remember one idea from the morning, I hope it is one about building understanding in math.
Students need to make sense of the concepts using first concrete materials, then with pictorial representations, and then with symbolic (or numeric) representation. Rules for manipulating numbers are not remembered well if they are not based in meaning. Caine and Caine report from their brain research,
“The brain resists meaninglessness.”
As promised, I am posting here the tools we used and referred to for your easy access.
100 dot arrays (1 large)
100 dot arrays (6 per page)
100 dot arrays (12 per page)
ten frames (teacher size)
ten frames (mini blank ones, 40 per page)
base 10 grid paper (enlarge as needed)
fraction & percent circles
fraction pocket chart (link here for more discussion about these)
I think that is everything. If I have missed something let me know. And I would love to hear how this all makes a difference for your students!
Mathematically yours,
Carollee
It was wonderful to share the Friday morning session at the Calgary City Teachers’ Conference with so many new friends! I hope you walked away with some ideas for helping your students understand mathematics is a deeper way. Congratulations to Shannon Muir who won the math coaching session in the draw!
If you remember one idea from the morning, I hope it is one about building understanding in math. Students need to make sense of the concepts using first concrete materials, then with pictorial representations, and then with symbolic (or numeric) representation. Rules for manipulating numbers are not remembered well if they are not based in meaning. Caine and Caine report from their brain research, “The brain resists meaninglessness.”
As promised, I am posting here the tools we used and referred to for your easy access.
100 dot arrays (1 large)
100 dot arrays (6 per page)
100 dot arrays (12 per page)
ten frames (teacher size)
ten frames (mini blank ones, 40 per page)
base 10 grid paper (enlarge as needed)
fraction & percent circles
fraction pocket chart (link here for more discussion about these)
I think that is everything. If I have missed something let me know. And I would love to hear how this all makes a difference for your students!
Mathematically yours,
Carollee
