The Math Forum @ YourSchool: Example

Example

Varnelle Moore, a kindergarten teacher in Philadelphia, and Suzanne Alejandre, a Math Forum staff member, have collaborated to create Varnelle Moore's Primary Math Activities. The following letter is example of the e-mail correspondence that Varnelle and Suzanne exchanged to create the Web pages:

This letter written by Varnelle is referring to the first three lessons in the Introduction to Measurement for Primary Students unit.

Dear Suzanne,

Here are my latest thoughts about the manipulative activities for the first three lessons.

1. Building Houses: Ask each child or pair of children to make a house with
the rods. After each child has completed a house, compare the various houses.
Ask questions such as:
  Tell about your house?
  What colors did you use?
  How many rods did you use?
  Compare the sizes of the rods
  What should we build next?
Students will use an integer bar applet written by Jacobo Bulaevsky to
reinforce... concepts of size, color, shape and position. (tall vs. short,
horizontal vs. vertical) ten colors to choose from, rods of the same color are
equal in length, rectangles.

2. Designing Bridges: Ask students, to describe what they know about bridges.
Collect pictures of bridges to share with the students. Identify the sequence
of the beams above the bridges. Discus the order of the beams and the line of
symmetry. Ask each child or pairs of children to build a bridge. 
  What rods were used? 
  Where is the line of symmetry? 
  How are the rods ordered?
The concept that I'm trying to address here is ordering by size.

3. Measurement: Students form cooperative groups of five students. Each
student is responsible for discussing, what rods were used to measure their
object (pencil, book, spoon, scissors, crayon). Students exchange objects and
follow the same procedure.

....that's all I have time for today....

Varnelle