Welcome to K and 1st Grade Support
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August 2013
We have new curriculum maps that have more information, Common Core Standards on the document, as well as coding to match the PARCC Content Frameworks. The links to the right are the word documents. We will continue to build these maps. |
2013-2014
October November notes
General Recommendations ·
Specifically for 1st grade – students were working with using the doubles strategy to learn different facts. The students were able to identify the double fact for it. The suggestion is to be a little bit more open ended. Show the fact, as 6 + 7, then let students see what strategy they can use to solve it. It could be doubles of 6 + 6 + 1 = 13 or it could be 7 + 7 – 1 = 13. What to do . . .
October November notes
General Recommendations ·
- Provide more opportunities for students to interact with the problems by presenting as open-ended problems (not the teacher demonstrating right away how to solve it) – put up the problem and let students begin to think about how to solve it. Try not to show everything first. Students need to begin developing a sense of learning mathematics by trying different strategies, not just learning steps to get to a right answer.
- Fluency is a problem for students. Teachers can spend some time – about 15 minutes only- building fluency with higher level games, number talks, fluency practice. The focus should be on the strategies. Students need to be able to explain the strategy, show how it works with concrete materials, before applying to “naked” math. Send home some of the fluency practice sheets or the transition guide resources for homework.
- Try to keep the book closed during the teach/learn. Have students work on brainstorming different methods to do the mathematics. Elicit “lots” of student telling and describing.
- Use visuals – concrete, pictorial, abstract – to build understanding of the concepts. Students have to be able to manipulate the concrete, then draw it on their own, before going to abstract. Do not pull the old naked math worksheets. Students need more time with the concrete and describing the processes.
- IEP students or the struggling students – much more time developing the concept of the mathematics (apply fractions to real-life problems), estimation, placing numbers on the number line.
Specifically for 1st grade – students were working with using the doubles strategy to learn different facts. The students were able to identify the double fact for it. The suggestion is to be a little bit more open ended. Show the fact, as 6 + 7, then let students see what strategy they can use to solve it. It could be doubles of 6 + 6 + 1 = 13 or it could be 7 + 7 – 1 = 13. What to do . . .
- Show a number in the ten-frame, as 8. Have students tell you all the different ways they see 8, as 5 and 3; 4 and 4; 10-2.
- Present the problems with double-ten frames and see what strategies the students can develop. Students should be using doubles for 8 + 7; 8 + 6; and making tens for 9 + 5; 8 + 9. Keep writing the problem in multiple ways.
- Spend about 10-15 minutes a day with the ten-frames and counters doing a few problems each day.
- Students need to show how the strategy works with the counters, then begin writing the fact as 9 + 7 = 9 + 1 + 6 = 10 + 6 = 16. You can use the number bonds to show this.
- 10-15 minutes a day of this will help them develop and practice the strategy. Lots of practice with the ten frames daily will help build conceptual understanding and then put it into long term memory! Remember, the students have to be talking and discussing the using the different strategies.
- Set up stations with different activities for students to engage in building understanding of the strategies to operate! Students need lots of practice with counting and hands-on activities. This link provides hands-on activities with dot patterns and ten-frames to build fluency. http://www.edplus.canterbury.ac.nz/literacy_numeracy/maths/numdocuments/dot_card_and_ten_frame_package2005.pdf
Previous notes from 2013
February 2013
This was the last time we would meet this year. Please remember to email me if you have questions or concerns.
Fluencies to work with - K working on all combinations of 5 mastered, counting from any given number to 100, counting on from the largest number, and writing and knowing their numbers through 20.
Remember to follow the pacing we have worked on. We have cut the chapters that do not meet Common Core Standards. The goal is depth and mastery of the standards, so less content and more depth will help our kids!
1st Grade - Mastering the addition/subtraction facts is an expected fluency. Work with double-ten frames along with the number bonds to help move students to the abstract. Students need to be fluent with the strategies of making tens, using doubles, commutative and moving away from the counting on strategy. During Book B, remember to have students continue to practice these strategies each day. These are the chapters to finish for this year - Chapter 12 Numbers to 40; Chapter 13 Addition and Subtraction to 40; Chapter 14 Mental Math Stategies – once this is completed, continue to use these strategies everyday during the Number Talks; Chapter 16 Numbers to 120; Chapter 17 Addition and Subtraction to 100; Chapter 15 should be covered with the Everyday Counts – if time permits in the year, return to this chapter at the end. The regular pacing can be found here!
Next year, we will be able to follow the regular pacing. I will be sending a list of mastery expectations for students so we can begin next year with appropriate number talks and strategies to build student understanding and skills.
Strategies
Kindergarten - Remember to have students actually practice the counting of the objects. We cannot just have students turn in their workbook pages in a few seconds. Ask questions on how they got the quantity, have students count to each other, share some of their strategies.
1st grade - We discussed ways to engage the students more into the teach/learn session. Have the students do think/pair/share activities. They are involved with the manipulatives during the teach/learn. Have students use whiteboards during the lesson to write the numbers, representations, and problems. We focus on the different models with the blocks, ten-frames, and number lines. Remember to focus on the strategies.
Assessments
We have developed a spreadsheet that can be used to grade/assess the unit tests. The partial spreadsheets are linked below. I will continue to add the chapters for the year.
Kindergarten rubric
The assessment point system can skew the data for the student scores. We have developed a scoring for the assessments, basing most of the assessments on 10 problems.
- 4 – Shows evidence of how many (quantity) through 5 and can write the numeral that matches the count. Score of 9-10
- 3 – Shows evidence of how many (quantity) through 5 and can write most of the numerals that match the count. Score of 7-8
- 2 – Shows evidence of how many (quantity) for most of the numbers through 5 and can write some of the numerals that match the count. Score of 5-6.
- 1 – Shows little evidence of how many (quantity) for the numbers through 5 and can write one or two of the numerals. Score below 5.
- We sorted the problems into showing understanding of the concepts – problems 1, 2, 3, 4 are procedural lower level problems, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11 (two circles) show conceptual understanding; problems 5, 10, 11 rest of circles are applying new knowledge to new situations. We can break up the problems into different areas and assess the students understanding of math.
- We broke out a chapter 3 test to see what would be a 4, 3, 2, 1 with 4 all or ½ wrong; 3 as three or less wrong, 2 with four or more would be wrong, and 1 if over half the problems are incorrect.
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