Kim's Math Workshop

I am very excited about math. We are beginning the year with Mathematical Thinking and Math with Meaning. The Mathematical Thinking unit will help your child get used to solving problems that take considerable time, thought, and discussion. While solving these problems, your child will be using materials like pattern blocks, cubes, and calculators, and will be writing, drawing, and talking about how to do the problems. Emphasis during this unit will be on thinking hard and reasoning carefully to solve mathematical problems.

During this unit your child will explore even and odd numbers, create symmetrical designs, look for number patterns, and combine and compare different amounts of money or handfuls of objects. This class will also collect and organize data about themselves as a group.

While our class is working on this unit and throughout the year, you can help in several ways:
- Your child will have assignments to work on at home. Sometimes he or she will involve your participation.
- Often children will work out number problems by using real objects. So, when they are working at home, it would help them to have a large collection of objects for counting, such as beans, buttons, or pennies.
- In class, students will be making a set of Addition Cards. The goal is for each child to develop effective strategies for combining numbers. Sometimes for homework, children will choose a few combinations that they are working on and think about strategies for combining number. (For example, What's 6 + 7? Well, I know 6 + 6 is 12, and 6 + 7 is one more than that, so it's 13.) We begin with the more simple problems so students master these strategies and are able to use them with more and more difficult work.

Math with Meaning is based on math strategies used in Singapore's Primary Math Curriculum. These strategies were developed by the Curriculum Planning and Development Institute of Singapore. Again we begin with more simple problems to help students master the topics.

The strengths of Singapore's Primary Mathematics Curriculum are:
- The curriculum is highly coherent; it spirals and is taught in a logical step-by-step manner that builds on students' prior knowledge and skills.
- Fewer topics are taught in greater depth. The goals are conceptualization and mastery.
- The curriculum emphasizes conceptualization before procedures (algorithms) through the concrete-pictorial-abstract sequence of instruction.
- It teaches computation methods that facilitate mental math.
- The curriculum uses metacognition to encourage students to use alternative methods for solving problems and to develop logical thinking.

The above text was adapted from Investigations in Number, Data, and Space by Susan Jo Russell and Karen Economopoulos and Math with Meaning: Resource Book by Staff Development for Educators.