Gifted Kinders Start

Yay!  Today was the first day of kindergarteners coming to group! I walked across the hall and saw the adorable glowing face of M. and picked up sweet J. in the room next to me and off we went.  

Seeing as I only had a half an hour, I had to make the most of my time with the kiddos.  We sat crisscross applesauce on the carpet of rainbow stripes and started with one of my favorite books, Beautiful Oops.  It was the perfect way to open a new group, as we talked about how it was okay to make mistakes, learn from them, and move on.  

The kids both smiled and squealed with delight (and so did I) as we saw fun mistakes being turned into creative and interesting pieces of art.  As an extension, I asked the students if they would prefer to make art out of their own beautiful oops marks or if they wanted to do math.  

Ultimately, my new kids enthusiasm for math won out.  We went to the whiteboards and begun our work right away.  I put the problem _____ + ______ + _____ = 10 on the board, and we immediately began to find solutions with multiple addends.  The kids were searching for as many solutions as they could find and grew in excitement with each discovery.  

What ended up happening, is that the kids starting building off each other's ideas and connections in strategies that generated many solutions.  These patterns and rules that the kids were discovering were fantastic ways to have deep conversation about math and think more critically about our work together. 

 Math Practice 7 (looking for patterns) and Math Practice 8 (explaining rules) are some of the easiest ways to go deeper.  We were able to analyze this one problem for 20 minutes and the kids were itching to explore more with subtraction.  

It was such a fun way to start the year and I am so glad I get to work with these great kids!  I'm looking forward to more math with them in the future. 

If you are looking for more open problems like the ones I described here, you can check out my resources here:  

Analyzing Our Dry Ice Data

My students successfully created dry ice bubbles out of three various solutions last week.  They created a bubble solution out of lemon scented Dawn dish soap, another out of Palmolive, a mixture of the two, a solution with additional glycerin, and a final one out of school brand soap.  They placed the dry ice in bubble machines that they engineered and created bubbles full of carbon dioxide from the dry ice.

Soon, I watched as my fifth graders were gleefully bouncing bubbles on cloth and counting the number of bounces per bubble.  We did multiple trials in our science inquiry and soon had data for all soap types.  What do you do with gifted students and lots of data?  You analyze of course!

Today we began to analyze the data using measurement standards.  Students found data landmarks like the mean, median, mode, range, maximum and minimum.  They also began to graph their data in line plots, box and whisker plots, and also histograms in order to prove which dish soap brand was the best.  Students examined their averages and maximums and looked for outliers in their data to prove their thinking and push their analysis to the next level. 

We are still finishing our conclusion paragraphs tomorrow and making sure our findings are scientifically accurate.  This was a great way to go deeper in the measurement standards as the students were able to apply their mathematical understanding to a new concept as they engineered the boo bubbler, created bubble solution mixtures with L, mL, grams, and weight, and now are graphing and interpreting findings from labs.  

How to Make Problem Solving More fun : Turn it into a Game

When I taught 3rd grade, sometimes my students would get overwhelmed with problem solving days.  I remember when they would turn to the next lesson in their problem set, and they see that it is a day of complex word problem after complex word problem and they would groan.  

I looked at the teachers manual, and it wanted me to walk through problem after problem with the students and no independent work. Blah.  Definitely not my favorite, or the kids' favorite, until I turned it into a game I named, "Level Up!"

The game is quite simple, all I did was take the word problems in the problem set, put in my students 's names and type them on new paper. Each problem got a different color and a different level.   Student worked in partners, and when they solved a problem, they would bring it to me and I would check it.  If they needed help, I would help, and then I would exclaim, "Level Up!!"

The students loved it.  They enthusiastically worked on word problem after word problem to Level Up! in the game. It was the simplest and easiest tweak in the world, and all of a sudden my kids were eagerly solving math problems, drawing models and collaborating on solving challenging problems.  

I am turning my Level Up! game into a problem solving game for St. Patrick's Day in case someone else is interested in trying it out.  I am trying to make each level a little harder than the last, and include some communication problems, open problems (with lots of answers), modeling and other compare and contrast problems.   

Additionally, when students Level Up! with my new game, they get a puzzle piece and when they collect them all it says, "Happy St. Patrick's Day!"

I'm looking forward to playing my game again soon. :) 

What Does Digging Deeper In Math Mean for Gifted?

 When I go online to a Facebook Group on Building Thinking Classrooms and mathematical mindset, I see teachers often giving each other advice about gifted kids.  I hear the phrase, "Go deeper with your kids rather than accelerate." However, I find that many people aren't sure what going deeper means or how to teach in that manner.

When I think about how to go deeper in a concept, the Math Practice Standards come to mind.  

Many times my students have memorized an algorithm that is above their grade level and know when to apply it, but don't understand what is happening with the numbers within the algorithm.  It becomes apparent when I ask them to explain why the partial product strategy works, or why you can take a one away from the ten.  This is why place value charts, models, labeled diagrams, and the like are important. 

In this dynamic world, my students need to be flexible thinkers and problem solvers as they work on complex problems.  It is imperative that they explain their thinking to others, so collaboration can occur and we, as a society, can discover multiple solutions to problems and chose the most effective one.

One way we work on this is through Math Talks in the debrief section of my lesson, which gets at Math Practice 3.  I ask students to explain someone else's work based on their notes on a whiteboard or worksheet.  Students have to be able to interpret what the student understood and find places to "nudge" them a little further in their learning journey.  

For example, yesterday I pushed into a classroom for some problem solving.  I allowed students to chose from 4 different problems and work in partners or groups on the problems.  There was a problem about splitting brownies, which was similar to one we already worked on, a complex problem about how many ways can you solve a problem, a communications problem where student wrote a fraction story, and finally one with constraints and rules to find a mystery number.  To find similar problems, click here.

During the debrief, I asked for students who were willing to put their work under the document camera to be talked about.  A few students raised their hands and wanted to share.  I placed their work under the document camera, and had the student take a seat and sit silently.  The work had great ideas in it and small errors as well. 

When the first student placed her work under the document camera, I asked, "What does this student understand?"  We would talk about how the student was dividing brownies correctly, writing fractions accurately, and distributing them evenly.  Then I would ask, "What could we say to this student to nudge them a little on their learning journey?" Students shared that we need to consider the last brownie (which was left out). 

We did this again with a student attempting to add fractions, but was needing to consider how unlike denominators affect the addition.  I like how students are oriented toward each others' work and communicating clearly, and I also like how many notes need to be on the page for someone else to analyze the work. Students talk with one another and the class as we look at each other's learning journeys and offer tips and tricks. 

It's a work in practice.  Every day I get a little better at facilitating and the kids push their learning a bit further, but its productive and helpful in the long run.  

Math Contracts for Gifted Students

For Free Contracts Click Here.

Sometimes teachers ask me how to differentiate in math.  One of the ideas I suggest is to put that student on a contract.   What this means is that students can test out of a unit of math, or a part of a unit in math, if the teachers administers a pre-assessment and the student passes certain domains.  

Contracts are documents that ask the students to do a few of the problems in the problem set rather than the whole problem set.  Sometimes if a teacher notices that a student knows the majority of the content but needs work in an area or two, they can ask a student to stay with the class on those particular lessons and work on extensions at other times.  

For example, I am working with a fourth grade teacher at Creekside right now who used to teach gifted students with me.  She gave the end of module test to her class before the unit even began to see where all students were at and what their prior knowledge was.  This pre-assessment showed her that all of her gifted students already knew the content.  She also learned that an unidentified student also knew all the content for the upcoming fraction module.  

My teacher friend was able to "put them on contract," so those students could work on extension resources on fractions, while other kids were following along the Eureka lesson.  The gifted kids were able to expand their thinking by applying their knowledge of fractions to a project, in depth problem solving problem, or more complex task.  The rest of the class was able to follow the lesson planned in Eureka.

Now, I am checking in with those students in SAGE (our gifted pull out program) regarding their project and the homeroom teacher checks in with them as well. We are differentiating our content to meet the needs of all students and making sure all kids get what they need to be successful.

That said, it is also important to acknowledge the Practice Standards in math as well.  All students need to be able to engage in mathematical discourse, debate, kindly questioning ideas, developing strategies and finding patterns in math and explaining them.  Sometimes it is necessary for students who contract out to also engage in some math discourse in the lesson to deepen their understanding and push their math behavior forward. 

 I see it as an intricate dance, balancing the needs of all students, which can be done with precision and care.

Here are some free Eureka contracts.

Using Science to Teach Math: Launching a Inquiry Science and Math Unit for Gifted

 Today we dove head first into inquiry in science and math.  We used purposeful play to help students begin to explore and question bubbles.  I watched as my students made bubble mountains, bubble chains, bubbles inside bubbles and the biggest bubble ever!  They broke up into pairs and then decided ultimately to work collaboratively as a group to make the biggest pile possible.  

The whole thing reminded me of how important it is for students to play with the world around them, experiment without direction, try new things, and collaborate with others.  Students develop a curiosity of the world around them and notice things.  

I have been watching a Ted Talk with the older kids this week.  It talked about how creativity was being drained from students and how they are learning to be more and more afraid of making mistakes.  We don't know what the world will bring in the next five years or ten years or twenty years, and in order to meet those needs, one of the most important characteristics a child can have is the ability to problem solve and think flexibly without an adult showing the way step by step.  Actually, many of the students asked me to share the video with their parents.  It can be found here: Ted Robinson. 

We collectively gathered our observations and questions about bubbles.  I will guide the students into developing testable questions and we will create experiments and observations and do research to answer their questions.  Today was a jumping off point for their minds and was used to hook them into the unit.  It worked!

With squeals of delight and sayings, "This is the best SAGE day ever!" I knew it hit the mark.  Now, we begin the harder part of research and tying our findings to math and science.  

Math Talk in the Classroom

 My third graders were excitedly sitting in their seats filling in their mood meter.  I was about to try a new Math Talk routine Thursday, one they hadn't seen yet.  I projected the image onto the screen from this amazing website called NTimages and waited in anticipation:

I asked students to look at the picture and notice and wonder.  What do you see?  What do you wonder? Turn to a partner and talk about it.  The students noticed the characters on the pins, but soon they were seeing the math. 

 It's always so interesting to me to see the way their minds work. I thought they would start seeing fractions in the picture and analyzing the fractions, but instead they found commonalities in multiplication.

Before I knew it, my students got together and were creating and solving their own math problems.  They looked at the image and saw (4 x 2) + (5 x 2) +6 = 24. Next, they pushed each other to represent their thinking with parentheses, arrays, and word sentences. Another student, always the daring rebel, stated that she was going to solve it her own way and said the equation really was (9 x 2) + 6.  

The students talked about how they were both right and how numbers can be decomposed in a multitude of ways. The differences in ideas moved our conversation forward as my students challenged each other, pushed mathematical models, and are learning to respectfully disagree with one another as well.  

At the end, we filled out a Math Talk Checklist, where the students self-graded. If you are interested in the Math Talk Checklist, you can click here to get it for free.  I will send other free resources,  tips and tricks there as well.

The Math Talk is so important because it simulates conversations they will have as adults one day.  They will all have to be in meetings at some point in their life, and they will need to know how to listen, problem solve, interact respectfully, help one another and solve company problems. Math Talk Routines are integral to math but also life outside of school.

Happy Mathing!