What are the Mossematician Mathematicians up to?

In class, we talk a lot about the idea of having a “growth mindset”. Scientific research studies have debunked the myth that some people are “math people” and some aren’t, leading to our “secret” way to be a math person: Step 1 – Do math. Step 2 – Be a person. 🙂 In fact, I struggled a lot with math as a child, starting back in third grade, and it took me until adulthood to feel comfortable with math and to even enjoy it. My goal is to help kids to reach that point a bit sooner than I did.

Our first math unit focused on place value, addition, and subtraction. Students worked hard to learn about different number forms, renaming numbers, finding the value of different places, how to round numbers, etc. We also worked on multidigit addition and subtraction. The first unit math assessment was administered as an online assessment as a pilot. It went well, but we (along with teachers across the country) found that Google’s system for calculating the results was glitchy and needed to be fixed. It took some time to make sure the results were accurate, so those results are just coming home to you now. (You’ll receive an email with more information about how to review your fourth grader’s scores.) Please know that this is not a self-grading setup where I just see the outcome and never lay eyes on your child’s own work. Rather, this is a system in which I absolutely review each and every student response, just as I always would. The hiccups were in how the system adds up the points. I wouldn’t want you to think that we were automating the grading of your child’s unit assessments.

We’re now wrapping up our second unit, which has focused on factors, multiples, and problem solving. Throughout the unit, we worked on applying these concepts in different ways, such as common factors and multiples, prime and composite numbers, and how we can visualize basic multiplication word problems using bar models. We’ll assess this unit later this week, and this assessment will be done on paper.

It’s important that each learner receive the small group, differentiated instruction to meet his or her own, individual needs. In this most recent unit, we kicked off math rotations. In this model, the class works together during a mini-lesson that introduces a particular concept or skill, and then they break up into small groups to continue working. In the small, leveled groups, the students rotate between four stations: a teacher station (in which they continue learning with me), a practice station (where they apply that same skill), a fluency station (in which they review an old skill to keep up their habits), and a hands-on station (in which they play a game or work on another activity that ties into our math unit). These groups allow me to dive in a bit more deeply to provide reteaching to kids who need a bit more support, extension activities to students needing a challenge, and extra discussion opportunities to everyone. (A big focus is TALKING about math and explaining our processes, and this is a core part of math groups.)

Often times, we’ll avail ourselves of teachable moments in class. This year, as we were launching our math unit, we did an estimation activity about the number of eraser caps I had in a large container. We counted how many eraser caps filled a cup, and from there, we counted how many cupfuls were needed to move all the eraser caps. Little did we know that this activity would help us so much with our Halloween fun! Thank you to the PTO for organizing a fun estimation project in which we had to estimate how many candy corns filled a sizeable glass jar. We were able to use our previous estimation work to identify multiple strategies for estimating the number of candy corns. We tried using weight, volume, layers, and other strategies. While our class didn’t win, we did have a close estimation, and I think we all enjoyed diving deeper into estimation strategies!

Posted in Class Updates|By Jon Moss