Addition and Subtraction Strategies Math Huddle (Bansho) Lesson

We have been doing a WHOLE lot of adding and subtracting in my class these days! Whew. Here is a look at some of the things we have been doing. (This post is very picture heavy.)

Addition and Subtraction Anchor charts.

Addition and Subtraction Math Huddles

We started with these 2 questions, the first was designed to get the students thinking about regrouping and the second was a typical addition word problem. 

My math huddles are set up so that the students have a minds on (Getting Started) type question that we discuss together. Then we share the lesson problem and often discuss possible strategies together. 

Then I send them out to work on it...usually in pairs or groups. 

I post up most of my student's own work and use that as the teaching point for discussions. 

If there are any gaps then I fill in with what I want the students to learn. 

I often recopy my student's examples so it is a little easier for everyone to read and on the day after the "Working on It" we revisit the learning and annotate the learning. **This can also happen right on the day of working provided that students are able to reach the solutions to the problems within the class time. **

Once we started to feel good with the addition strategies we moved on to subtraction, and the lesson cycle repeats again. 

Getting Started

Lesson Problem

Working On It- this was added underneath the addition examples from our earlier lessons

Finally, anchor charts of big ideas are created or shared. I actually used the annotations on each strategy as the big ideas for this math huddle and then posted these anchor charts that I found online at the Jordan School District. 

And now we practice!! Even though the majority of my Grade 3 students are proficient using the traditional regrouping algorithm for 3-digit addition and subtraction I have insisted that they practice all 5 strategies we studied. It's amazing how many of them have memorized the steps but are unable to communicate their knowledge of place value by using a variety of strategies. The work continues!!

A Look into Our Literacy Workshop

So many things have been going on in our Literacy Workshop classes...we are just a whirlwind of activity these days!!

This is the first anchor chart/activity we did for inferring. We read "The Little Red Pen" and inferred the character's traits based on their actions and words.

We are also working on answering reading comprehension questions using evidence and details to support our ideas. The Grade 3's in Ontario all write a standardized test in the spring and this is part of the process in getting them ready. I cut up four possible answers (an A, B, C and D graded answer) and then had the students decide what grade each answer should get. You can see the votes for each question on the right hand side, with the actual mark being highlighted in orange. It provided some great discussion as the students really had to give a reason for their grades and we took some time to dive deeper into what makes a B a B and an A an A!!

We are working on narrative writing and so...we had a funeral for said! I was very surprised by the amount of coaching my students needed for this! It took a lot of time to coax the ideas out of them and even then some really struggled with giving a different way of saying "said"...something to come back to for sure. 

This is our narrative writing anchor chart. The small paper you can see to the right is a sample story that we colour coded according to the 4 elements on the chart.

We have been continuing with our Book of the Week, but a lot of the work has shifted to the students. We are no longer working in small groups and answering orally but working towards writing our answers out on paper. A big jump for some of my little 3's.

Here is some great predicting/inferring my students have been doing as well! I was so proud with how much they came up with before we even read the book. Just from the cover and the title. 

Here's the beginning of our chart showing how we add our evidence to our schema to create an inference. For this we used the book "No, David!" (always a favourite!). The rest of the chart will be filled in by the students in small groups which I will then assess to see where we are and how much more teaching is needed. From there I will be moving into more independent inferring activities in order to assess this reading skill. 

Whew!! And that's that.

What are you working on in literacy?

Have any great inferring lessons/activities I should try?

What are some great picture books for inferring??

Jelly Bean Data Management (Freebie)

My students and I are still working our way through our Number Sense and Numeration concepts...and it's not taking forever, but I thought it would be good to spice things up a little with another math strand (also, because I need to get the other 4 strands done too!!). Data Management is always a fun and interesting unit, no matter what grade you teach. 

On a separate note, I decided my shelves were looking a little messy so last week after a full evening and morning of parent-teacher interviews I decided to fix them up.

Then I decided I wanted more "wall space" to hang anchor charts in my class, so I put up some sticky hooks on my shelves and ...presto!! More space to hang chart paper. 

Keep reading below to see the charts I hung here. 

I've decided that graphing and sorting will become the main focus of our math stretches, math tubs and hands on activities but that I will continue to teach the needed number sense concepts during my guided math lessons. 

We have been doing a variety of different data collection math stretches since the school year started and have created a few graphs together. We discussed the parts of a bar graph, and created an anchor chart for a frequency table, pictograph and bar graph using the same data. We also wrote some statements about our graphs to analyze the data.

Ta da!!! Data management charts hung on my shelving. 

And finally....the freebie!! Enjoy.

I plan to create a second activity to go along with this one so check back soon. 

Fractions Part 1- Diagnostic Talking Picture and Anchor Charts

We have started learning about the dreaded fractions in my grade 4 math class....arrrgh! You can practically see the terror on the faces of my students. Nooooo!! Not fractions!

I don't remember being scared of fractions as a kid but I can't say that I am that excited to teach it as an adult either. I definitely didn't help that I was being evaluated during this unit....le sigh. But let's not talk about that shall we?

Except....for my evaluation I needed to show examples of how I give feedback to my students so I thought that I would try the Talking Picture strategy and the GLOW/GROW assessment again. I displayed a chart showing the objectives for our unit on fractions and decimals as well as a vocabulary list. I asked my students too use the objectives chart to draw a "talking picture" showing their knowledge of fractions (mainly) and decimals (if they could). I outlined that I wanted my students to show their knowledge using words, numbers and pictures....AND colour. Other than that anything they wanted to draw was fine with me.

For the GLOW/GROW assessment I used the amazing Jen Runde's chart and poster set. Awesome. It was a great complement to the diagnostic assessment.

The second day after completing the diagnostic task we created an anchor chart together in class.

I am pretty proud of how things are going since it is my first time teaching fractions. The majority of my class seems to be following along quite nicely and the formative assessments I have looked over show a good deal of understanding!! Yeah!!

The one thing that I did notice was that even though my students understood that the numerator indicated the parts of the fraction that were counted, eaten, shaded etc and that the denominator represented the total number of parts that the whole had been split into, they were missing the word "equal" in a lot of cases when describing the denominator. So we had a quick mini-lesson to recover this material before we moved on with our study of fractions.

I posted this picture on the document camera...without any of the green circles or X's. The students discussed with their table groups with pictures represent the fraction and why. I am was happy to hear that the students really did understand that the part of the whole had to be equal...and I made sure to specifically ask the students who had missed this vital point on their formative assessment!

I hope this is valuable and interesting for you all. I have a second post in the works involving the problem solving and math talk lesson from my class this past week. If you have any suggestions, ideas or questions please don't hesitate to comment.