During the month of March, there were two activities at Bishop Elementary School designed to engage first grade families in the mathematics curriculum and how learning takes place in the classroom. During Math Morning on March 19, caregivers were invited into the school to learn more about, and experience, what their students are learning.
Approximately 45 adults attended the session, which Math Coaches Carolyn Gaffey and Emily Veader began by sharing the trajectory of mathematics over the course of first grade and beyond. Then attendees were introduced to two games currently being played in class: Five in-a- Row with Three Cards and Five in a Row: Subtraction with Three Cubes.
In first grade, students tend to discover that rather than counting all the objects when adding or subtracting numbers, they can count on or back. On Math Morning, the math coaches talked about the importance of giving children time to trust this new strategy. Students need many opportunities to test whether counting on will always give them the same answer as counting all. As students become more sure of counting on, they start to employ a new strategy: using a fact they know to solve a new fact. Examples of representations that students use to make sense of counting on or counting back which were shared with parents during math morning are shown below.
The games proved to be a perfect way for the attendees to observe the students using the strategies when they joined their children in the classroom and got to see them used first hand. As the coaches walked from room to room, they heard the caregivers commenting, “I just saw my son do just what you said. He said, ‘I know 5+5 is 10, so 5+4 must be 9.’” Bishop Principal Eva Liner reports that participant feedback has been very positive, with the attendees enjoying learning how math is taught in first grade and playing the math game with their children.
Twenty-two families joined Math Evening on March 26, either in-person or online. This session was also well received, with one mother commenting, “Now I understand what my older child was doing.” This comment reflects why Principal Liner and the Bishop Math Coaches wanted to hold these sessions. Their goals included:
- Making caregivers feel comfortable using the place value strategies that their children will use, so they can continue to have mathematical conversations with them
- Getting adults excited about the discoveries around mathematical operations and our number system that their children are already making
- Having the participants leave with questions to ask their children as they continue to make discoveries in first grade and then move from adding and subtracting numbers within 10 to addition of two digit numbers
- Providing an explanation of why the mathematics standards have teachers wait until fourth grade to teach the US Standard Algorithm, that being that students need several years to build strong number sense before they are taught a shortcut in which place value is harder to detect
- Giving adults the knowledge they need so they will support the schools in spreading the message that everyone is a learner and a “math person”.
Math Morning and Math Evening were such successes that Principal Liner and the Math Coaches are considering holding these sessions for the older grades.