Progress Toward a Standard: How I'm Making Math Meaningful

My first professor from SPU's School of Education once told me, "Your class's behavior will only be as good as your curriculum is engaging." At the end of the day, if what and how we teach isn't cutting it, the students will tell us in the tune-out method du jour--pulling at their desktags, poking their neighbors, chatting instead of listening...Not great if we really want our students to deepen their understanding. This is why Program Standard 4.3: Designing Coherent Instruction in Learning Activities matters so much. 

When I redesigned a straightforward math task (image below) into something richer for first grade students, I looked for ways to open up the activity and make it more meaningful. Marian Small is a pioneer of math education that is relevant to children, engaging in ways that inspire creativity and problem solving over rote memorization--this task is inspired by her work. The standard requires that "learning activities are suitable to students or to the instructional outcomes, and most represent significant cognitive challenge, with some differentiation for different groups of students."

In this activity, students were invited to use colorful manipulatives (buttons) to learn in a playful way, rather than working through a classic set of addition equations on a worksheet. The tactile element makes the task multisensory, and the description requires critical thinking both to understand the task and then develop original ideas in the form of new equations. Because the activity invites students to use a number line and buttons, opportunity for scaffolding is convenient and natural. 

Although I haven't taught this lesson yet, I can picture it being more engaging to my students because of the playfulness of its design and its simplicity. My experience has shown me that sometimes that cleanest, most streamlined activities make for the most popular moments in a day. The hope is that by engaging in more tasks that require creative engagement during math, students will strengthen conceptual understanding and increase flexibility in their relationship to numbers. If I were to tweak this lesson, I might add more specifics in terms of challenge opportunities for learners who need enrichment. 

I'm looking forward to a chance to test this out in real life--my aim was to breathe life and joy into what might otherwise be a ho-hum part of first grade. 

References

Ernst, K., Ryan, S. (2014). Success from the start: Your first years teaching elementary mathematics. The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, Inc: Reston, VA.

Small, M. (2010). Beyond one right answer. Educational Leadership, 68(1), p. 28-32.