Primary School Update: Math, Minute by Minute

It’s everything in one lesson,” says Math Department Chair Maura Oare. “You’ve got hands-on math, gameplay, discourse, and direct instruction on key skills. It’s fast-paced, differentiated, and the kids are up and moving.” The benefit of combining such a variety of teaching and learning strategies into the structure of each class is that it offers students multiple entry points to the same concept. Students might be more comfortable with collaborative gameplay and find sitting down independently to communicate their mathematical thinking more challenging. However, both skills are essential, and each class offers the opportunity to stretch students’ math muscles in necessary ways.

 

Primary math lays a strong foundation for how math is taught from Primary School through grade nine at Fay. “We are striving for that balance between conceptual and procedural understanding,” says Maura. “We're not just solving algorithms or completing addition and subtraction problems. We are learning how to communicate our mathematical thinking in writing, we are incorporating models to support our understanding, and we are getting up and sharing our approaches to problem-solving.”

 

To see how we teach math in Primary School, let’s step inside Willa Gustavson’s second grade math class for a minute- by-minute breakdown of a typical math class in action.

 

Each math class starts with a speedy, skill-based, group warmup. For example, this class is working on subitizing numbers, which is recognizing and naming a number without counting. This activity, done using a rekenrek, asks students to identify the number shown and explain to the group how they know their answer is correct. The activity builds math vocabulary, number sense, and essential mental math skills. The goal is to get students talking about math and listening to their classmates’ ideas so that everyone can contribute to building the group’s understanding.

 

The lesson for the day often entails listening and observing teacher instruction and then tackling a problem or doing an activity together as a group. This class is working on all the different ways to express the number 12. In this way, students develop the skill of visualizing numbers in different ways. “Whether they visualize coins or fill up a ten frame, this activity helps students build number sense, and for students who already have that, it deepens their understanding,” says Willa. In this class, each student was asked to express 12 in one of 15 ways, including standard form, an equation, tally marks, dice, a hundred chart, base ten blocks, and expanded form.

 

In math journals, students synthesize what they have learned in class by working independently on problems aligned with that day's lesson. Each day’s journal work also contains math boxes that spiral in concepts from a few days, weeks, or months ago. The spiraling nature of the work supports a fast-paced learning environment. For example, counting money is not a stand-alone alone unit. It is a recurring theme that returns within the context of talking about counting by 10s or the number 100. “It’s great because the kids see things in the context of how they can actually use it,” says Willa. While students work quietly and independently during journal time, this is also an opportunity for students who need extra support to ask questions and receive one-on-one instruction. Some students might stay on the rug and work in a group or sit at Willa’s desk to ask the occasional question. Willa also circulates through the room, checking in with students and sharing helpful strategies with the group.

 

Students finish class each day with gameplay that reinforces number sense and allows students to practice their math facts in an enjoyable way. Games include Snap using rekenrek cards, where students practice number recognition by trying to call out the number pictured on the card first to win it; Addition Top It, where students flip over cards and the highest sum wins; and Salute, where two students hold up cards that they cannot see on their heads and knowing the sum players try to be first to call out the number of their card. The games are accessible to all the students and are self-differentiating as students with stronger number sense can play faster or with larger numbers.