Building Mathematical Comprehension, Chapter 3

     I'm a couple of days late posting. I spent last week at Student Life church camp in San Angelo, Tx with our high school students. I had so much fun and enjoyed being in God's Word with our students. I meant to take the book with me so I could read chapter 3 on the bus, but I forgot to pack it.

     I loved this chapter on making connections. Sammons emphaisized the importance of activating prior knowledge and accessing schema in math. I'm planning on incorporating the the schema roller activity to teach what schema is at the beginning of the year (page 97). I also liked the idea of incorporating math stretches as part of activating their schema and/or background knowledge. When introducing a new concept, I like to use schema charts. I give each student a sticky to record their schema about the concept. We discuss that schema is what we think we know about a topic. While we are studying the concept, students are given the chance to add new learning to the chart as well as to move their schema sticky to the misconceptions section if they discover their schema was incorrect. Here's an example of a schema chart we made when studying volume. I try to use different colors for schema stickies and new learning stickies. You print off schema chart labels for free from my TpT store here.  I like to laminate my labels and use them again and again. The pictures shows the chart made on chart paper; I also make these charts in a pocket chart as well.

     Making connections is one of my favorite things to teach when I teach reading. I'd never considered teaching math connections the same way I teach reading connections. I also liked the emphasis Sammons put on modeling making meaningful connections. The point of making connections is making connections that aid in their understanding of the concept or their ability to solve the problem, not just making as many connections as possible. I made a sheet for students to record their connections; you can download it for free from my TpT store here.

     I liked the idea of having a current events board, where articles are displayed and mathematical connections are discussed. This could also be done at home with students writing a brief summary of how math was used in the article after they discuss it with their parents. One easy way to get students making connections is to use fiction or nonfiction literature. I like how Sammons emphasized that it doesn't have to be a book written specifically to teach a math concept for students to be able to connect to math. When I taught fractions in kindergarten, I liked to use the book, The Little Mouse, the Red, Ripe Strawberry, and the Big Hungry Bear, when teaching about halves. I would then pass out a strawberry and a plastic knife to each student. Then they would practice cutting their strawberry in half and sharing with their partner just like little mouse did in the story.

     I'm excited to start the next chapter about questions. Don't forget to link up and share your thoughts!