Giving Thanks – 2019 Year in Review
Graphing the Holidays
Teaching between Thanksgiving and the winter break can be a challenge. How do you keep your students engaged in meaningful math learning while embracing the season? Introducing graphing and data analysis might just be the answer.
Imagine starting your day in first grade with a question about favorite holiday treats. Students can answer the question and instantly you have meaningful data that can be organized into a tally chart, picture graph, or bar graph for students to analyze. Or, students can build a bar graph with post-it notes as they make their choices. Then, spend some time analyzing the results.
Ask 5th graders if they traveled over Thanksgiving break. If so, how far? Now use this data to find mean, median, and mode, or to create a histogram for students to analyze. Or, chart the temperatures over the course of a couple of weeks and use this data to create a line graph.
Third and fourth graders could tally the number of candles in their homes for the holidays and use this data to create a line plot. Fourth graders can use their line plots to explore finding the median.
Planning a holiday party? Survey the students on what should be served and what activities should be included. Students can present the findings in a graph and use the results to determine how much and what needs to be donated or purchased to make the party a success.
The holidays are a great time to share family traditions. Why not use that information to meet some graphing and data analysis standards?
For other ideas to keep students engaged in learning read Mental Math Breaks from December 2017.
Who’s doing the talking?
A new school year brings new commitments to improving our practice as teachers of mathematics. One tip I often share with the teachers I coach is, “Ask more and tell less.” Well, that’s easy to say, but what does that look and sound like in the classroom?
Often times, the teacher’s guides are written following a more traditional, lecture-style of teaching. They encourage the teacher to model, or work problems, while the students watch, and then the students are asked to mimic what the teacher did with a similar problem. I challenge you to flip the script and replace the word “show” with “have the students model” and replace “tell” with “ask”. When your teacher’s guide says to show the students the difference or similarities between problems or concepts replace that with, “ask the students what they notice?” It’s these little tweaks that will go a long way toward engaging your students in meaningful discourse and ultimately deepening their understanding.

A fourth-grade teacher from Aurora, Colorado shared her strategies for engaging students in math talk in her classroom.
While this appears to be written for the students to follow, it also suggests some great questions for teachers to ask to generate more discussion.
As students are working through a task ask:
- How did you solve that?
- How do you know that’s correct?
- Can you solve it another way?
- Can you build a model?
- Can you use numbers and symbols to explain your model?
- Is that the best (most efficient) way to solve that?
- Is your answer reasonable?
- Do you agree or disagree with your partner’s answer?
So, who’s doing all the talking? Give some of these questions a try and let us know how it goes.
Word Problem Wednesday – Marbles
This month’s Word Problem Wednesday problem comes from an article in the Daily Express, a UK newpaper.
The headline teases: This is the maths puzzle that is baffling everyone – but could you solve it?

Yes, we can! So, don’t lose your marbles over this one.
This appears to come from a Maths No Problem! workbook, probably 2A as the article states it is a problem for 7-year-olds. The author interviews a math professor:
Math expert, Dr. James Hind, of Nottingham Trent University, said the confusing question is above the level it was set for and to reach a conclusion it is best to try a number of equations.
Dr. Hind then proceeds to use a guess and check method to solve the problem. Maybe they asked the wrong expert.
Programs based on a Singapore Math approach start bar model drawing in either 2nd or 3rd grade, making this a challenging problem for many 2nd graders, but not a guess and check problem. Visualization of problem-solving actually starts in kindergarten!
See if you can solve this one like a 7-year- old. Submit your solutions by the end of the month!
Our last Word Problem Wednesday problem was from the chapter on the “Model Method and Algebra” from The Singapore Model Method for Learning Mathematics.
We had several correct answers submitted. Here’s a worked example from Shirley Davis:

How did you do?