We began today with a good discussion about the fact that we feel there are certain benchmarks that help us in teaching reading. There was a question about whether there has been research on something like this for mathematical knowledge. I did some research today and found some articles that were interesting but of course I have not been able to dig very deeply. The one that fascinated me the most was https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2FBF03217400.pdf and had some interesting ideas about the structure of math knowledge according to a psychological study referred to as the Steffe model whose key components were:
Building addition and subtraction through counting by ones;
• Building addition and subtraction through grouping;
• Building multiplication and division through equal counting
and grouping;
• Building place value through grouping;
• Forward number word sequences;
• Backward number word sequences;
• Number word sequences by 10s and 100s; and
• Numeral identification.
A couple of other sources I found were:
https://www.merga.net.au/documents/RR_treacy.pdf
https://books.google.com/books?id=JBmOAgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
And Fran Arbaugh from University Park recommended the books:
https://www.amazon.com/Cognition-Based-Assessment-Teaching-Place-Value/dp/0325043434/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1502380549&sr=8-1&keywords=battista+mathematics
We had some great discussion about linear relationships that were both proportional and not proportional and non-linear relationships. We followed up with some challenging questions from Block 4.
The end of our day consisted of a discussion about “Smarter than We Think” and a video about Cena whose understanding of place value might be a bit more fragile than her teacher thought. Here are the ideas I shared about inverse and number sense that you could use in a few extra minutes of class.
“Tell me another way”
- I ask for two number whose product is 40 (or whose sum is 8).
- Then ask to find two other ones.
- After listing several look for a pattern.
- This can even lead in to negative numbers or fractions.
- Functions
- 6→∎→10 what could have happened in the box?
- 6→∎→10→∎→6 what could have happened in the boxes?
□→black box that multiplies by 2 and adds 4→ △ fill in the square and triangle with values.
- “What’s the process? – function of 2 variables”
- I put 2 and 3 in the black box and get out 5, what’s the black box doing?
- You can build on that with all sorts of processes.
- You can then have another box and have it undo the process of the first.
- Other ideas:
- I am starting with the number 7. I add 3 and then divide by 2 to get ______. How do I get back to the number 7 using the same number of steps I used?
- I am starting with the number 100, subtract 50, divide by 2, take square root. I end up with ______. How do I get back to 100 using the same number of steps I used?