Hi My Friends!
Have any of you gotten lost in summer vacation yet? This weekend I totally did - beach weekend with the little family before we become a little bit bigger next month! And I totally spaced that yesterday was Monday - and the day to blog about this week's chapter - EEK. So I apologize - I am late, but hopefully I can make it up to all of you :)
This week we are talking about making predictions and inferences. Making predictions is something my firsties can do pretty well (in reading anyway) by the end of the year, but I can't say we do too much predicting in math. And inferring is something that is on my teacher goals list for this year - I need to get my readers and mathematicians more comfortable with this strategy - So this chapter gave me some great ideas!
One of the first things I took away from reading this chapter was that the more traditional way math has been taught is not a great way to encourage predicting and inferring - Helping kids to realize that there can be many different ways to answer a problem is the key.
This is why I love the math stretch ideas that came up in this chapter:
What's the Question?
In this stretch you give students a math number story and you leave off the question. The key here would be to make sure that the number story is complex enough for students to be able to come up with multiple questions that could be asked and answered.
Facts or Inferences?
This stretch is similar to the one above, but in this case the teacher also adds statements that are facts or inferences from the story. Kids need to label each statement and explain why it is a fact or an inference.
This chapter reminded me why I LOVE math stretches - be ready for some new and updated math stretch packs coming from me in the near future!
See you next week when we chat all about determining importance!!
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