Professional+Development

=**Summer Session June 2, 2008 Notes**=

Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching -the biggest problem with teaching math is that teacher's didn't take math classes in high school or college and don't know how to teach math. -our goal is to prepare teachers so they can teach it.

-be explicit about language and practice(if we use wrong vocabulary we are confusing the students

-you need knowledge of the curriculum and be prepared to teach the lesson for the day. This can be a time factor, but in order to teach you have to be prepared.

We took a short quiz to assess our kindergarten mathematical knowledge. Our discussion about the quiz told us that there is a lot to know in order to teach kindergarten MI.

We read the article "What Do We Count and Why?" pg. 163 //Counting and Comparing//

Kindergarten focus is counting and counting well. Count natural\counting numbers 1, 2, 3, 4,. . . .*This is the K focus. Count whole numbers 0, 1, 2, 3, 4. . . *Only bring this in when students need 0. Rationale numbers won't come until we need numbers that come in between Integers - whole numbers and they can be positive or negative.

We discussed what success we had with the benchmarks for K. Most students could count a set of 10 objects. Students are really struggling with one more and one fewer.

The game One More, One Fewer. Break the steps down. Maybe focus on one more for a few days, then move to one less. Then make a mixed pages. Use Kathy Richardson numeral cards. Modify as needed. Writing in starting number. We will make a gameboard that has these modifications.

Math Investigations says that writing numbers is a handwriting lesson. Use your Handwriting without Tears or whatever handwriting program your school uses to teach students how to write the numbers. The focus of math is counting these numbers.

We discussed the + (plus sign) and the - (minus sign) and how they need to know it. They do need to know it.

We need to find the correlations from Kathy Richardson that would help students with these concepts.

Activity Sheets
We created scaffolded activity sheets for Roll and Record, and One More/One Fewer

Activities we identified as needing new sheets: Unit 1, Attribute Cards, too many concepts, make the color words in that color, 4 centers based on shape, color, thick and thin, etc. Mix concepts later

=Counting Books= Should we have a zero page? Consensus is NO - zero is not a number we count by. This is a great opportunity to teach kids about why "zero" is not a counting number.

Classroom model Counting Books. We want to have a "competition" of sorts in which model pages are selected to represent each counting number to 10.

Counting books are ongoing - put into browsing bags.

why are kindergarten kids writing numbers to 100?

=+++++++++++++++++++++++++ AFTERNOON ++++++++++++++++++++++++++=

Exploring Materials: Introducing Math Vocabulary
Geoblocks Color tiles Attribute blocks buttons connecting cubes pattern blocks

teachers must spend time in the groups

exploring can be "boring" if kids feel that it is getting repetitive. Keep it fresh by: introducing limits (explore today, but use only green triangles and yellow hexagons give specific numbers of items (use only green triangles, yellow hexagons, and TWO orange triangles!!!)

Buttons: spend time talking about what buttons DO, many of our kids have no experience with them! Come back to this activity later. If kids are only attending to the color of the buttons, that is ok!

Attendance Stick Routine
Name/Face tags are non-negotiable! Not every student can recognize their name, but they all know their face!

Variations: give girls one color, boys another color. use to compare groups within the class forward/backward counting are more here or are more absent? later in the year, have students assemble their attendance stick so that it makes an AB pattern, etc.

(cubes should be kept in stacks of 10, eventually stacks of 10 divided into 2 groups of 5)

1. Who Is In School Today? 2. Counting and Comparing 3. What Comes Next? 4. Measuring and Counting 5. How Many Do You Have? 6. Sorting and Surveys

--- Nice to Have: -- 7. Make a Shape, Build a Block

Our thinking is that this geometry unit is easily integrated into other units throughout the year. There are not many standards for geometry at the K level, and they are easily addressed in the very first unit. We can now devote more of our time in getting to the meat and potatoes of Kindergarten work: Counting, comparing, and measuring.