Math is Everywhere!

Happy New School Year!  We began the year thinking about where we can find math in our everyday lives and came to the conclusion that it is EVERYWHERE and such an important part of our lives! While many of the second graders know each other personally, we decided get to know each other by thinking about ways to describe ourselves mathematically.  It was neat to hear all the ways numbers are attached to us and the second graders had fun sharing their Math About Me projects with their peers! 

 

 

 We continued our Math is Everywhere discussion by reading two funny and engaging stories, Math Curse and Neil's Numberless World.  In Math Curse, the main character finds that "anything can be a math problem" when her elementary teacher puts a math curse on her.  In Neil's Numberless World, Neil can't understand why numbers are so important, but then gets a magic watch for his birthday and all the numbers in his world disappear.  Neil's world is turned upside down and by the end of the story, he realizes how useful numbers are after all.  We had great discussions and of course some laughs about what life would be like if numbers did not exist.


We've also spent time discussing the  importance of building a mathematical community, and practicing what that looks and sounds like.  Our community will spend each day listening respectfully to our peers, sharing ideas and strategies, communicating  ideas through pictures, numbers and words and spending ample time working together as a team and learning from one another.  We're off to a great start in second grade math and I look forward to all there is to come!

 

 

The second grade mathematicians have been working hard as usual, and have just completed our third unit, Stickers, Number Strings, and Story Problems.  Much of the unit emphasized using what the children know to make problems easier to solve, by thinking about known combinations, and noticing that order doesn't matter in addition.  They continue to work on different types of addition and subtraction story problems and on developing efficient strategies for solving problems.  In this unit the students thought about the relationship between the two operations of addition and subtraction and the way one undoes the other and how multiplication is related to addition.  It is quite impressive!
The second graders continue to learn from one another as they represent and share their work in a number of different ways.

 

The second graders also investigated even and odd numbers, using the context of partners and teams, and thought about which numbers made groups of 2, and which numbers made 2 equal groups.  This work then extended into counting by groups of 2s, 5s, and 10s.  We took a real-life approach as we skip counted our shoes, legs, and fingers and noticed patterns within these numbers. In the Counting Bags activity, they counted a set of objects in at least two different ways.  Keeping track while counting by groups is a complex task, which requires focus and organization.  The pictures show the children demonstrating these skills.

                   

There are always opportunities for a little role reversal. Here is our teacher instructing her students, :)

 

Next up, Pockets, Teeth and Favorite Things, a unit on collecting, representing, describing, and interpreting data!

Our Geometric Work

The second graders have closely investigated geometry in the unit, Shapes, Blocks, and Symmetry. The unit developed the second graders ideas about 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional shapes and their characteristics and attributes.  They worked on different ways to sort, categorize, name and think about the relationships between them. They've worked closely with rectangles and rectangular prisms and also investigated symmetry.

They spent several days looking, sorting, thinking and drawing with geoblocks. They particularly enjoyed building small constructions with the geoblocks  and then taking it a step further to draw their 3-d design accurately. The children were encouraged to carefully identify the shapes of the faces on the individual blocks, as well as how the blocks come together. This was a challenging task, but the end result was great!

The geoboard is a popular math tool amongst the second graders, that allows them to explore geometric shapes and designs. These excited mathematicians built rectangles on the geoboard, paying close attention to the angles and length of each side and carefully created geometric designs on their geoboards. You can tell in the pictures how eager and proud they were of their masterpieces!

After much investigation of the rectangle and rectangular prism, the children worked with a partner to make boxes using rectangular pieces.  This activity allowed them to solidify the idea of how rectangles can be used to create rectangular prisms and further develop their sense of its structure. The children worked ever so carefully to build two boxes. They were given materials and first had to plan which pieces would fit together like a puzzle to make a box with a top, bottom and sides.  They each were enthusiastic and worked well with their buddy. Not surprisingly, they all pulled it off in no time!

Here's a glimpse into our geometric world.

Sorting & Categorizing 2-D Shapes

                                                                                 

                                                                

GEOBOARD FUN

                     

TEAMWORK!

            

                                                               

                                                    

                          

                          

The second graders have explored so many concepts in only a few weeks and have almost completed an entire unit on Counting, Coins, and Combinations.  They continue to work daily in their math journals, individually figuring out the best strategy for solving the problem of the day and then sharing collectively as a whole class. Much of our focus and discussion is looking closely at a problem and showing the many different strategies used to solve problems.  Some show their thinking through drawings, or counting on fingers, while others use equations or a variety of ways to show their mathematical reasoning. Everyday we are expanding our minds and learning from one another.  The children are also beginning to build their mathematical language as they share their thinking with their classmates, using words like equation, strategy, and addend. We will continue to add words to our Math word wall and use this language both orally and in our written work to communicate our mathematical thinking.

                                                               

We have begun our year log service project by observing and counting birds.  We  recorded the number of  birds we saw right here in our Parker backyard.  As you can see in the pictures, the children were focused, motivated and stayed as quiet as possible, as good bird watchers do, to not frighten any birds away.  We will keep track each month and graph our results back in our math classroom.

Recording data

We spotted a nest!

Sharing observations!

The children have enjoyed learning and exploring math concepts though a variety of games. Games engage students in many ways, but it is only through the repeated experience of playing a game that they begin to grasp some of the important ideas and skills embodied in the game. Her are some of the games we've been playing the past few weeks.

Collect 25 cents is a game that involves counting and working with coin equivalences. Through this game, students learn to identify and count coins. They are also learning about and using coin equivalences by "trading." For example if I have seven pennies and roll 4 and take 4 more pennies, I can trade my 10 pennies for 1 dime. The more often the students play this game and have opportunities to work with and discuss coins and trading, the more they will understand and use coin equivalences. At times, this can be challenging, but these bright mathematicians persevere even through the most challenging problems!

The second graders have also been learning about combinations of 10 through the games Make 10 and Tens Go Fish. In the game Make 10, players take turns finding a two- addend combination of 10 in a 4 x 5 array of cards and recording a matching equation. 

In Tens Go Fish, similar to the classic game Go Fish, the object of the game is to find pairs of cards that when added together make 10.  At the end of the game, each player makes a list of the combinations of ten that he or she made.

These motivated mathematicians are learning and having fun and that is the best combination! ;)

With the lovely season of Fall upon us, we decided to make our first Fall craft using "apple slices" to represent a number in different ways.  First they chose a number, and wrote that number on the "stem" of the apple.  Then they divided their apple into five parts.  Each part represented the number in a different way: word form, pictures, and the answer to an addition or subtraction problem.  Then they cut apart each of their slices and placed them in a basket.  The baskets were switched with one from another table.  The challenge was to work together to piece the apples back together!  The children worked really well together! See them in action!

Working through it!

Almost done!

"46" Anyway You Slice it!