I have been trying to use visual manipulates when teaching multiplication to my third grade students. I'm finding believe that they need to see the concept in order to understand the process. I started with a small group of five students and asked, "If I don't give you any blocks, how many blocks do you have?" 5 students x 0 blocks=0 blocks. "Now I'm going to give each of you one block, so 5 students x 1 block=5 blocks." I kept this same thread until all students had 5 blocks, for a total of 25. By the end of the lesson, the students had a better understanding of multiplication and one student in particular had increased his understanding dramatically.
The following lesson I used the same block manipulatives and showed how 10 tiles can be broken into 2 piles of 5 or 5 piles of 2. I repeated the same strategy to the small group adding one block at a time, until I reached 20. To my delight, the student that was successful the prior week with visual manipulates shouted "I get it!" He started rearranging the tiles and writing both multiplication equations and division equations on the whiteboard to support his thinking.
When I checked his math homework in the other day, he wrote all of the multiplication equations with the complimentary division equation. This solidified my belief that he had a break through using visual Math!
Monday, February 13, 2012
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Strategies
One of the activities that appears every few weeks is story organization. The teacher reads a story to the class and then asks them to retell the story by placing the events in sequential order. The students receive two pieces of paper, one with a list of sentences from the story and one blank piece of paper. The students cut out the sentences and then glue them in sequential order on the blank piece of paper.
In my classroom, the papers are handed out together and the students work independently to reconstruct the story. The results tend to vary greatly. Some students complete the order correctly while others glue the events onto the blank paper with out cutting or placing in sequential order.
In another classroom, the same assignment was handed out in two parts. The students were asked to cut apart the sentences and place them in order on their desk. They were able to consult the students around them to complete the task. Once they read the final story out loud, they were given the blank page to glue the completed story.
The third classroom used a different technique all together. The teacher grouped the students in threes and gave the students larger font sentence to arrange in sequential order as a group. Once complete, the groups took turns telling the whole class the sentences they placed in sequential order. The small groups not only discussed the story in depth, the whole class discussed the clues that they used to find the appropriate order of the events.
In my classroom, the papers are handed out together and the students work independently to reconstruct the story. The results tend to vary greatly. Some students complete the order correctly while others glue the events onto the blank paper with out cutting or placing in sequential order.
In another classroom, the same assignment was handed out in two parts. The students were asked to cut apart the sentences and place them in order on their desk. They were able to consult the students around them to complete the task. Once they read the final story out loud, they were given the blank page to glue the completed story.
The third classroom used a different technique all together. The teacher grouped the students in threes and gave the students larger font sentence to arrange in sequential order as a group. Once complete, the groups took turns telling the whole class the sentences they placed in sequential order. The small groups not only discussed the story in depth, the whole class discussed the clues that they used to find the appropriate order of the events.
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