“This is the BEST math class EVER!”
Oh, math. My most despised school subject for 12 years of education. Who would have thought it would take me being in a university math class to finally feel successful in mastering an understanding of math. And to make it even better, I get to take my new found confidence with the subject and teach a lesson to a wonderful group of grade twos who never fail to make you feel good about yourself!
I must admit that I did not go into teaching my math lesson with as much confidence as I was writing with above. With math not being one of my strong suits, I was constantly second guessing my strategies and understandings of the content I was to be teaching. For this weeks lesson we were working on representing numbers in different ways with a specific focus on using base ten blocks, tally marks, and ten frames. We began our lesson with a fun video with the ever famous Jack Hartmann as he sung about the many different ways you can show numbers. My students absolutely loved this horrendously cheesy video and it kicked off our lesson on a groovy note!
I taught briefly at the front of the class to refresh the students memories and elaborate their understandings on how to represent number using the three different types of manipulatives. To clearly and easily showcase the manipulatives of ten frames and base ten blocks, I found an awesome resource that is interactive and eye-catching for all students to see the examples up at the front of the room. Once we went over some examples of representing numbers in the three different ways, I set up the students into four stations. One station had the tablets for students to interact with the electronic manipulatives, the second station used individual whiteboards to write down tally marks, the third station used rods and cubes from the base ten blocks, and the fourth station had ten frames with bingo chips. I chose a student to draw a number from 1 to 100 out of a bag and each student had to represent that number using the manipulative at their station (First number picked was 100 so that was a long round!)
The students were so excited at each station and I couldn’t be more grateful for engaging with such an accepting, encouraging, kind, motivated, and respectful group of children. My students made my first math lesson one I will never forget and helped to give me the confidence I need to go into each lesson excited and prepared for whatever is to happen! Yay, math!
Click here for this week’s PDP!
Till we meet again,
Miss Hansen
