Estimate Everyday!

What is estimation? Let's see what my dictionary widget says:

Estimation is a valuable part of your classroom routine daily life. I often say, "Estimate everyday!" I was pleased to see that Dan Meyer agrees in in his recent blog post where he offered making estimation a part of your daily routine as "one of the steps we can take to acclimate our students gradually to new ways of learning math."

Luckily we have the materials at our fingertips to make this happen fairly easily. All it takes is a photo! Check out Andrew Stadel's Estimation 180 project for some serious inspiration. Just a quick flip through some of the photos and you can see that there numerous connections to measurement, whole numbers, fractions, and the math list goes on and on! Class discussion about how students predict their estimates will reveal how students are thinking about number and the connections they are making among mathematical ideas. 

Sometimes our elementary students really need to count and touch concrete materials to prove their estimates. Just the other day I was inspired by Rayla Rucker through my twitter feed. Check out the process of estimating she took the students through:

     

       

Then, Rayla tweeted out what the students were saying:

If you are a parent, start estimating with your child today. Show a picture or give a jar of beans and ask, "How many?" Then, show your child you value the process by talking about reasonableness, strategy and well, math!

If you are a teacher, start collecting photos and collections of objects to estimate. Are you still in touch with your class via twitter, a blog, etc? Then, I challenge you to do a summer estimation station via social networking!

If you are a student, run an estimation contest with your family and friends during your break from the pool. Don't forget to put those estimates on a number line!

Let's stay curious this summer and have some fun sharpening our estimation skills!

Guest Blog: Preventing the Summer Slide

We are thrilled to have one last guest blog for the 2012-2013 school year from Rayla Rucker, a dedicated 4th grade teacher at Pleasant Hill Elementary and math teacher leader! Other topics she blogged about were Transforming Math Homework and Transforming Math Instruction. This time, Rayla gave some inspiring and insightful advice to her students and parents on how to "Prevent the Summer Slide." Thank you, Rayla, for offering fellow educators, parents and students a chance to read this advice on how to keep learning happening throughout the summer in all subject areas-not just math!

Preventing the Summer Slide
Summer slide happens to kids that spend the summer having fun, but forgetting completely about school.  As parents, we have the best intentions, but I know from experience that giving a couple of weeks off can lead to an entire summer of stagnancy that results in low beginning of the year performance.  These kids have worked too hard this year to leave learning alone for two months.  

So, what is Mrs. Rucker’s prescription?  Make learning fun and stress free.  Even better, make them feel like they did not do any learning at all while enriching their Summer experience.

Here is a list of suggestions and links to cool websites.  The only slide we want is on a playscape or at a water park!

Language Arts:

Read, Read, Read, Think, Create

Keep a journal throughout the summer.  Record your thoughts, dreams, adventures, favorite parts of books or movies.  Keep your brain active through writing.

Read, Read, Read

Guys, reading is fun!  It is it’s own adventure. Don’t stop.  You owe it to yourselves, your present families, and your future families.

Great Places to Find The Latest and Greatest Books:

Mr. Shu is a librarian and he blogs about awesome books!

http://mrschureads.blogspot.com/   

Scholastic.com has great books at great prices!

http://www.scholastic.com/home/

Leander Public Library:  Find out about summer reading program and learn how to be a Library card carrying Texan!

http://leander.librarycatalog.info/polaris/

Math:

Find the math in the world all around you!

Seriously, ask your parents to redecorate your room...We are redecorating Chloe’s this summer.  You’d better believe she’s going to be figuring out the square footage of our walls and calculating the amount and cost of the paint we will be buying.  That’s as real as it gets!  

Do Your Own Number Talks

Lead your parents through them.  Don’t let them lead you.  :)  Let them see that there is more than one way.  Remember, they were taught to remember ONE WAY...isn’t that crazy.  :)

Excellent resource to prevent math slippage. 

http://www.nctm.org/resources/content.aspx?id=23220

Problem Solve Every Day...it doesn’t have to be a written problem.  Help mom or dad figure out how much you need to spend on groceries, or how many ingredients you need when a recipe needs to be doubled.  Or how much weekly allowance do you need to save for that sweet new ipod 5?

Fractions and decimals aren’t going away.  Next year you have to know equivalent fractions without the pictures.  Practice. Practice. Practice.  When you eat pizza, cut the same size pizza into different sized slices and think about pizza as fractional parts!  

Science:
Wonder about life.  Wonder about nature.  Experience it.  Hike, bike, play, explore, but also think about why things are.  Research. Learn.  Have fun with life.

Social Studies:  

Start studying your states and capitols.  You have to memorize them in 5th grade.  Be curious about history and community.  

Love you all!  Have an excellent summer!

Math Toolkits Spark Math Questions!

Last night at LEO conference center in Leander, TX, several enthusiastic high school students helped our math department fill and pack "Math Toolkits" for 3rd and 4th grade students to take home with them this summer.

While packing the toolkits, we all were noticing all of the math problems around us!  

How many decks of cards in this bag? 

How many equations can you write from this image?

Each bag has 12 decks of cards. How many bags would fit into this rectangular prism? 

How many decks of cards?

About how many books in each stack?

 

Estimate: About how many cards?

How could we make these cards easier to count?

We have 16 boxes for 3rd grade and 16 boxes for 4th grade. If there are 1,000 math toolkits, how many toolkits would evenly fit in each box?

What questions do you have when looking at these dice?

If there are 25 toolkits in each box, how many boxes will we need for 1,000 toolkits?

Additionally, as everyone began packing the toolkits, several different strategies emerged. Some people choose to do two or three bags at a time, while others did five at a time. One person had a system for knowing how many bags went into each box by counting out the number of bags beforehand. As we shared ideas, the math educators in us were making many connections to the math classroom. One parallel is that we all naturally came up with our own way or strategy to tackle the problem. Granted, some strategies were more efficient than others, but we all shared our ideas, valued each other and celebrated the hard work we accomplished.

A sincere thank you to all of the volunteers who helped us fill and pack all of the toolkits!
We appreciate you! 

Pass the Power

At the beginning of the year, our Superintendent Bret Champion, charged the Leander ISD staff with "Passing the Cape."

He actually took his cape off and passed it to a student! This powerful passing of the cape symbolizes how we as educators need to give students the ownership in their learning.

I was reminded of this powerful speech at an RTI Math Symposium at the University of Texas with Barbara Dougherty and Karen Karp. Both professors are NCTM Board Members and certified teachers of Elementary Mathematics, Secondary Mathematics and Special Education. Throughout the day, these ladies emphasized the importance of having students communicate their own math learning. They talked about "Passing the Power" in the math classroom by using a simple tool:

Here is how you "Pass the Power":
1. Teacher selects a student to share mathematical thinking.
2. The teacher exchanges the "Power" (in this case it's a pen) by handing it over to the student.
3. The teacher sits down in the student's seat and becomes part of the class.
4. The student has the opportunity to share their thinking.
*5. Remember, the teacher should not say much of anything and let the student talk, ask and answer questions of the class!

*Note: Step 5 is the most important.

Remember, the person doing the talking is the one doing the learning! Next time you ask students to share their mathematical thinking, try this technique. Comment below and let us know how it goes!

Guest Blog: Number Talks in a 3rd Grade Classroom

Magen Schott, 3rd grade teacher at Knowles Elementary, is our guest blogger this week! She has been using number talks with her students, so we asked her if she would share her thoughts on the topic. Thank you Magen, for sharing your learning and inspiring others through your experiences.

"Since beginning Number Talks in my classroom, my kids are able to have great conversations about their mental computations. It's easy to have a conversation in Language Arts class about the main idea of the book, the author's purpose, etc.  Before reading Number Talks, we never had REAL conversations in Math about numbers.  It has been amazing to listen to my kids discuss numbers in this way.  Students have learned to reason with numbers, and their mental math ability has greatly increased.  Our classroom is a "safe" place for the kids to be wrong, and they are open to admitting their mistakes.  They all learn from each other, and most have begun to try out and adopt different strategies that others are using.  I feel that they think about numbers differently now-- that numbers can be taken apart and combined with other numbers to make new numbers.  They have great conversations about manipulating numbers to make the problem easier and organizing numbers into groups of thousands, hundreds, tens and ones."


Below is a impromptu video recorded during a recent school improvement visit.  Watch Magen's class in action!

Comment below how you use number talks in your classroom...

4 Tips for Math Manipulative Storage

Need some ideas for how to organize your math manipulatives? Here are 4 quick tips to get you started:

Tip 1: Label, Label, Label!
Label all of your manipulatives! This helps students clearly see what and where the item belongs. Simply put the name and picture of the manipulative on the outside of the tub or under the spot the shelf.

Here is how Math Teacher Leader, Amber Danhauser, 2nd grade teacher at Plain Elementary, labels her tubs of manipulatives.

Tip 2: Have a Manipulative Hospital
No matter how organized your classroom systems seem to be, it never fails that items break or little pieces cannot find their way back to where they belong. Make sure that you have a "Manipulative Hospital" for those misplaced and broken pieces. When pieces are found, they can be placed into this tub to be organized and replaced at a later time.

Tip 3. Let the manipulative fit the problem
Okay, this may sound basic, but it is important. Ask yourself, "What is the mathematical purpose of the manipulatives you want your students to use? What mathematical understanding am I building with these models?" Often times, students are required to use their base-ten blocks to solve a problem, but they have no idea how those blocks represent the base-ten system. The manipulative is not a math strategy, but it is something students can use to model their mathematical thinking. When you and your students are clear on the purpose, then you can decide if it should be pulled out for daily use or for a special problem.


Tip 4: Place manipulatives in a spot so they are readily available for student use
Math manipulatives help build conceptual understanding of mathematical concepts. They should be encouraged, although not forced, to be used regularly. Therefore, manipulatives should be placed in an area that is easy to access. This could be on shelves in the math area of the room, a cabinet that is designated for math, etc. Whereever this spot is located, ask yourself, "How quickly and efficiently can your students get their math materials and begin working?" Visualize your students. Are they bumping into each other, are they all grabbing frrom the same place? Plan your system so that these types of errors don't eat up precious instruction time.

How do you organize your math manipulatives? Comment below with your tips/ideas!

Guest Blog: Transforming Math Instruction

Rayla Rucker, a dedicated 4th grade teacher at Pleasant Hill Elementary, recently wrote a guest blog on Transforming Math Homework. Parents, educators and students throughout our district were positively impacted by this post. Rayla has agreed to write another post about her journey as she continues to transform her math instruction. Thank you, Rayla, for offering us your insights and expertise as you commit to problem solving every day!

"Mrs. Rucker, can you give us that in a word problem so we know how to solve it?” EL, 4th grader

Sometimes you never know when or if you’ll have a breakthrough, and sometimes the evidence comes in a simple question from one of your students.

This year I decided to make a change in math.  Problem solving every single day. I was skeptical. I didn’t know how I would “fit that in”.  All I could see was the hundreds of millions of skills I am supposed to teach my class of twenty-four 4th graders in a period of 9 months, more or less.  Oh, and also throw in those awesome Number Talks every day!  And Estimation! And Vocabulary! And on and on and on...

It is quite daunting when you look at every single thing you want to do for your kiddos.

The first valuable A-Ha moment for me was realizing that the skills and the problem solving weren’t two separate things in most cases.  Duh?  Right?  A little slow on the uptake sometimes...So, I thought, at the very least, I could tailor my student’s learning around those skills contextualized into word problems, the more real world the better.

And that’s what I have done.  Every single day we do problem solving...Every. Single. Day.

Believe it or not, my kids actually look forward to it.  I find that they are becoming very adept at knowing which operations and in what order they should use them.  I don’t use HIDE or any form of problem solving Must Do’s.  We start on Monday with a brand new skill.  We unpack the problem and show/share our strategies.  Every day during the week, we use a similar, but increasingly higher level, multi-step(ier) problem.  And on Friday, we have an assessment on that problem type.

Not saying this structure will work for everyone, but it works well for us.  

More recently, I have been tailoring the problems around the Number Talk strategies.  So, those two aspects of my math workshop have melded together quite nicely.  I also use problem samples from the units of study.

Here are some things I have learned from this grand experiment.

1.  Change is super hard.  

We know what has worked for us in the past, but sometimes what works for us is not what works for our students.  Deciding to change is easy for me, that’s the type of person I am, but that doesn’t mean it has been a piece of cake.  In the beginning, I felt as though these changes were not working and wanted to give it up, but I stuck with it.  


2.  It gets easier.  

My class is in a groove with problem solving.  It has become second nature, and they actually smile and get all giddy when they know that’s what we are about to do. If I’m being honest 95% are giddy....I still have about 5% that can’t stand it...but we’re working on it!

3.  You will see success.

First and foremost, I have students who are excelling that never thought they were good at math.  It makes them feel so good about themselves, and that makes me very happy!  Secondly, and not nearly as important, I spoke with some other teachers that are problem solving every day.  Everyone I spoke with had more success on the problem solving on their 18 week benchmark than ever before!  Oh, and don’t forget... When I give a naked number problem, they ask for it in a real life situation!  That is the greatest success, isn’t it?

4. Our students will have to be problem solvers for the rest of their lives.  

We really do owe it to them to give them as much experience in this area as we can.  It really isn’t just about math, it’s about thinking, and creating thinkers is what this business of teaching is all about.

So, if you aren’t problem solving every day, I challenge you to give it a try.  I committed to it, and it has made all the difference.