Everything in its Place

My kids really impressed me today. We started talking about Place Value, reviewing what they should know from second grade -- Ones, Tens, and Hundreds. Usually, despite the fact that this is NOT new material, it's like teaching a brand new topic. Today, though, my kids showed me that they had it down cold.

And not just one class! BOTH classes went pretty similarly, and we sailed right through things. I started off by writing the number 979 on the board and asking somebody to read it. I then asked them to discuss with their partners whether or not the two 9's in the number meant the same thing.

I heard great discussions, and in both classes, kids told me that they were not the same because the first 9 was equal to 900 but the second 9 was merely 9. When I asked about the 7 in the middle, a good majority of the kids were able to not only tell me that it represented 7 Tens, but even that that equaled 70!! That's pretty major!!

I busted out the place value blocks, and the kids started modeling 2 and 3 digit numbers. For the most part, they did this with ease, and one great surprise was how well they worked with their partners and did not just play with the blocks (with one or two unsurprising exceptions).

But then I posed a tricky question. I asked them to model 63, which they were able to do easily. I then asked them to show me with the model how we could represent 63 - 5. I asked them to take away 5 cubes from their model.

Most of the kids had difficulty with this one. However, in my morning class, I heard one of my kids immediately launch into a PERFECT explanation to his partner of how they needed to "exchange" one of their ten sticks for ten ones cubes and then they would have 13 ones and they would be able to take away 5.

Color me incredibly impressed. After a few minutes had gone by, and it was obvious that the other kids were stumped, I had that kid come up to the overhead and share his explanation with the whole class.

In the afternoon group, nothing was quite as powerful, but I observed a few groups doing the right thing. When I asked them to explain, it took a little bit of coaxing and drawing it out of them, but they had the right idea.

Tomorrow, we introduce Thousands, and Thursday, we'll introduce Ten Thousands and Hundred Thousands. I can only hope things go as smoothly then!

Accountable Counting

This year, the Dallas school district has made a really big point of stressing "accountable talk" among the children. This means that the kids are supposed to explain how they got their answers and discuss their strategies with the other students.

This is often quite difficult for many of my kids, since they are used to just saying a number when I ask a question or shouting NOOO! at another kid when they disagree with his or her answer.

Frequently, I will say, "Please raise your hand if you know the answer," and 15 hands will shoot up. But when I add, "and if you can explain to me how you got your answer," 12 of those hands go back down.

Anyway, the kids have lists of accountable talk prompts taped to their desks to help them remember how to begin.

These prompts include:

"I got my answer by ____________."

"To solve this problem, first I _______________, then I ______________."

"I'd like to add more to what __________ said."

To be honest, my kids very rarely begin their sentences any of these ways. However, the two prompts that they really DO seem to have latched on to are the ones that begin with, "I agree with __________" and, "I disagree with ______________."

So it was very funny to hear the way in which these prompts came into play on Wednesday of this past week.

We were completing a name graph in the Everyday Math journal. To construct this bar graph, we had to first create a tally chart that showed the number of letters in people's first names. I was standing at the center of the class asking the kids to raise their hands if they had 4 letters in their first name, 5 letters in their first name, etc.

When I got to the "10 or more" category, I had one little girl who raised her hand, saying she had 11 letters in her name.

With our tally chart completed, we moved on to the next step, but that's when a boy in my class raised his hand and said, "I disagree with her, because I counted the letters in her name, and there are only 10 letters in her name."

Immediately, the little girl raised her hand and retorted, "I disagree with him, because I know how to spell my name, and there are 11 letters in my name."

Let no one say that my kids aren't talking accountably...