Inside a K/1 Math Workshop

This morning I was leading an admissions tour (yes, they've already started), and during the 10 minutes we spent in Blackberry Creek (K/1), we observed students playing a variety of math games in a Math Workshop period.


Roll and Record is played exactly as it sounds: a student rolls two dice, adds the showing faces together, and colors in a square in the appropriate column of the tracking form (which has columns numbered 2-12). This activity provides a structured way to practice simple addition of numbers one though six, and introduces the concept of gathering and tracking data.


Start At/Get To provides another avenue into addition. Students are given a number line with all the numbers identified except two - one that is the "start at" number, and another that is the "get to" number. The student begins by using the surrounding numbers on the number line to fill in the missing numbers. Next, the student counts from the "start at" number to the "get to" number. Finally, the student uses those numbers to create an equation, in the form of "Start At + Counted Number = Get To" (such as 12 + 3 = 15). This activity introduces the concept of counting on (which is more efficient than counting all), as well as the tools of number lines and equations.


Compare at Home can be played alone or with multiple players. Two (or more) cards are flipped over from among a deck, and the card with the higher number is identified. Double Compare combines the concepts of addition and comparison. Two cards are drawn and added together to create a sum; then another pair of cards is drawn and added together to create a second sum; and then the student identifies which pair of cards has a greater sum (or if they are equal). Besides the explicit practice in addition and comparison, this activity helps students realize that while one pair may have the single largest number (10 + 2), another pair may have a larger total (7 + 7), thereby reinforcing the student's underlying understanding of number sense.


If you're interested in seeing more of games in the TERC: Investigations curriculum, you can check out quite a few of them online.


Bonus feature: The following blurb was written by Sima Misra, the TBS Differentiated Curriculum Instructor who is focused on math this year. Sima is continuing the 4th/5th math club she launched last year (based on her experience launching a similar program in the 6th grade the prior year), and shared this blurb with the 4/5 teachers for their blogs:
  
The 13 students in 4th/5th grade Math Club today were very engaged with a new problem, game, and puzzle today.  Some of the boys in particular enjoyed the new game Intersections, trying to make lines intersect as many other lines as possible.  Many girls and boys pondered the Growing Staircases problem, a classic pattern-finding activity where students try to derive an algebraic function to predict the number of blocks necessary to build staircases, by drawing pictures, using color tiles, and writing expressions.  Some kids were intrigued to find out what an "nth stair" is!  A few students worked on Puzzles, including figuring out how many different shapes one can make with 4 regular hexagons.  How many do you think there are?