On Tuesday I had a particularly memorable teaching moment. My second graders have been working with money (coins, specifically), in addition to making numbers different ways. They have struggled with combining these two concepts during a worksheet task earlier in the year. So, this week we decided to put partners in pairs and have different stations set up around the room. At each station was a fun item, such as a puzzle, with a price tag on it. Each pair of students was given a ziploc bag with a multitude of coins in it. There task was to work together at each station to figure out if and how they could pay for this item, then write it out either as a number sentence or actually draw/label figures to represent the coins used. If they finished before it was time to rotate, they had to try to pay for the item a different way. My students were so incredibly excited and motivated; we talked about why this was important to learn (we use money every day, we go to the store with our parents, etc). Students were focused the entire time, even my more distracted students, and worked collaboratively with each other. They were learning and thinking and visibly enjoying this activity. When we had to stop to pack up for the day, they were so disappointed about not having visited every station and immediately asked if they would be able to finish the next day.
I think this lesson was so successful for several reasons. One, my students are so used to completing worksheets that they recognized this was a special activity. They were able to get out of their seats and move around, which is incredibly important for seven year olds. Second, they were using actual coins vs. just looking at/drawing them on paper, in addition to pretending to purchase tangible, real-world items in comparison to a worksheet with animal trading cards from the Math Trailblazers book. I feel that this made the content itself more manageable to them; it wasn't some abstract process, it was something they've seen done before (i.e. mom looking through her purse and using whatever coins she has to pay for an item). Third, this was such an open-ended task. Students didn't have to try to find the "magic" two combinations that the worksheet's answer key required. There were numerous ways to reach the total cost of the item using their bag of money. I think the students picked up on this and felt less pressure to be "right." They didn't give up, even if some of them were struggling at a particular station; instead, they worked with their partners and utilized our skip counting number line. Overall, this was a very rewarding day of math, both for the teachers, and the students!
It is incredibly valuable to reflect on learning experiences like these to try to distill what seemed to work. This way, you can distill the important, more theoretical or general principles that you can apply in the future.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I think it is important to analyze this activity not only for the engagement, but also from the angle of student learning. Specifically, what was your mathematical objective for this lesson, and how do you know that your students accomplished it? This is an important feature of instruction that should not be overlooked, even though we are always incredibly satisfied when lessons come off as engaging and motivating. I would encourage you to continue to attend to both dimensions as you continue to experiment with your instruction.