Noticing Blog-Montague

This week was a rather crazy week with conferences on Tuesday, classes on Thursday and only going to school for the first couple of hours today for personal reasons. The hours that I was at school today was spent getting students ready for picture day and collecting field trip money/slips therefore I really don’t have much student work to analyze this week. I will do my best with what I saw on Wednesday although I do not have any physical worksheets at all to analyze, just going off of memory from what I saw with the math activity. Once again, this may not even be accurate because I was busy putting together a literacy center on a huge poster board that my MT asked me to do so I didn’t even get to observe this lesson attentively.

The math activity for Wednesday that my MT taught started with the students on the rug. First she finished up the mini lesson on weight that they had done the previous week and did not get to finish. Then my MT continued by reading a literature book that has math in it to introduce them to the topic for the day. The topic for today was comparing numbers (which is bigger, which is smaller?). After she read the book, she continued by discussing what the lesson was and discussing words such as more than, less than. She also introduced the signs > < and explained how to use them (the teeth always want to eat the bigger number). She modeled this by herself for the students then continued by doing one example together as a class. After they had done it as a class, she moved on to the game for the day. The game is called Number Top It. The game is meant for two students to work together, they split the deck and lay cards down, whoever has the bigger number tops it and gets to keep the cards. The winner is the one who gets all of the cards at the end of the game. She modeled how to do this as a class with another student working with her. Then she had two students come up and the rest of the class sit/kneel around them to watch how they played. After she thought they had enough experience/instruction with the game, she partnered them up and sent them off to work on their own. While students were working, she noticed that more than half of the class simply did not get it and were not playing it correctly. She pulled them back together and explained that she may have let them go off ont heir own too fast and that they still needed more work with this before they were ready to work in partners. By the time she got them back to the rug, the time for math was over therefore that is all I saw.

I am not sure how she continued with the lesson the next day because I was not there however, after observing the class on Wednesday and seeing that they clearly were not grasping the concept of the game, this is what I would consider doing first. Before working with the game, I may do more in class activities where we work as a whole group and compare numbers with objects. Having students actually hold the manipulatives, up in front of the class and giving them practice with the goals of the lesson before sending them off on their own may be more beneficial. That is only if they were not understanding the idea of more than/less than. Another possibility for the confusion could be because this is the first time playing with cards like this (on their own) therefore, one quick game may not have been sufficient enough. What my teacher did, by recognizing they were not ready and pulling them back together, was a smart move on her part. I think I would have continued the next day by having another set of partenrs come up and show the class. They wouldn’t have had to play the entire game, just enough so we can check for understanding and correct/guide them. This would help ensure that they are ready to go on and play with partners without teacher supervision. Also, for those that are simply not getting it no matter what and those that do get it, I would consider partnering off the ones that have a good understanding so that they can work quietly with each other, giving my MT and I more time to work with those who need the help.