Common Core Math Task

Thursday, June 27, 2013

This common core math task that I'm going to share with you is thanks to a class I've been taking these last couple of weeks for a math grant. Our school, another school in our district, and a school from another district were offered the opportunity to be a part of this lesson study grant through K-State.

Of course I had to doodle and "pretty up" my binder! :)

It's a two week class about fractions and all of the building blocks built into the common core to help students in the upper grades truly understand fractions. I feel like I've learned so much, but each day has been extremely exhausting! We sit and listen to lecture about fractions from mathematicians in the morning and attend break out sessions. Then in the afternoon we focus on the common core and applying it to our classrooms. Last week we made the math task I'm going to share with you in our small group of kindergarten teachers. This week we have been planning out our lesson that we will teach during the school year to our students. For these lesson studies, someone in the group teaches the lesson while everyone else observes. Then we debrief and rewrite the parts of the lesson that we feel need it and someone else in the group teaches it again with the revisions. I think it will be very beneficial and exciting to see how this all plays out! I'm also excited because I feel like I really understand the Common Core Math standards much more than I did before. I know there is still so much to learn and grow on, but I know we're getting a great start! In fact, my school has been implementing Common Core in K-1 for the past few years and we are still changing things as we learn more about them.

Okay, so on to this math task that we created and tried with a group of 10 kindergarteners. One of the instructors introduced us to a sight called Illustrative Mathematics. The sight is fairly new, but it has some tasks (like the one we created) on there for free. All you do is look under the standard you are interested in teaching, click show all, and if it says "see illustrations" next to it then there are tasks available. We decided to do our task under K.OA.3 which deals with decomposing numbers and that is a huge building block for fractions.

We used number bonds and counters as a tool to decompose numbers 4-10. After our introduction (which is included in the lesson plan online), we had the students in groups of two where they took turns being the teacher and the student. The student would count out the number on the their number bond and then decompose it. The teacher had to make sure the student was doing it correctly. Then they both recorded the equation they made on the number bond mat and filled in the number bond on their sheet with dots/numbers. We only had about 25 minutes to complete the entire task with a group of students we never worked with before.

One thing we found the students struggling with was that the equals sign came at the beginning of the equation (i.e.; 8=4+4). They are obviously used to always putting the addends first and then the sum. It's so important to show equations in a variety of ways otherwise students gain a misconception about the equals sign. That's one thing I know I need to do better at this year. All in all, it was a cool experience and we now have one more tool to put in our toolbox. If you think this math task would be helpful for your kiddos next year, you can get it on my TpT store for cheap. The lesson plan, number bond sheets, and recording sheet are all included so all you would need is some type of manipulative/counters!