My Kindergarten mathematicians have been building a web about what math is and what mathematicians do. You will notice many new additions since I last shared this. Before reading further, stop and think about what you notice.
Recently, as my students were adding items, we discussed how full it was getting. Because they are familiar with making webs as part of our Project Work, (reference 1) they are familiar with the term “categories” and that webs can be organized into categories. My plan going forward is to cut these comments into individual pieces in order to move them around and organize them with the children before adding more items.
Regularly during math workshop, I invite them to stop and talk about what they are doing. I might ask, “what part of mathematics are we doing right now?” Or, “what are you doing? Is that mathematics?” In-the-moment discussions have helped them attach language to and make connections to mathematics, and to how they are working, exploring, or playing. We then add things to the web as we go along. I try to write the children’s exact words. When we engage with the web, I often point to items and read them back to the children. I anticipate that as we continue, they will want to add onto existing items and also change some.
Often, during center time, students are connecting something they are doing to mathematics or to being a mathematician. Here are some examples:
One girl’s creation while exploring circles and cylinders.
Two students playing with square tiles and cubes and making new shapes. They did a lot of flipping, turning, and fitting pieces together in different ways.
We just finished a geometry unit and some wondering workshops involving shapes and patterns. (To be fully blogged about next week where I’ll write about sequencing work.) You will notice many geometry related items on the web now. After learning about some basic shapes such as rectangles and triangles, they used various building sets to make “new” shapes. I told them that when scientists discover a new planet they get to name it and so when mathematicians discover a new shape, they too get to name it. They were VERY excited about this.
This is a neat one because she wrote this card to go with her shape. Notice she changed from 7 sides to noting there are 11 sides. What a great name for a shape!
“The Jumpri” was created by using blocks from our Spielgaben. (Reference 2)
“The Ram Srems” also created with building pieces from our Spielgaben.
Another interesting thing added to the web includes a note about mistakes and perseverance. One girl said, “when we make a mistake, you can turn it into something new.” There is a lot of depth in these words. A few of the kids were going back and forth with ideas around making mistakes and “fixing” them as well as the idea that a mistake might lead you to another discovery. It is like the idea of stumbling upon something you weren’t looking for. I definitely want to explore these ideas further. They are familiar with the notion of making a mistake and fixing it or figuring something out. However, it would be wonderful for them to experience the “turning it into something new” aspect.
This discussion led another girl to say, “they make sure their work is accurate.” A few kids looked confused and I asked her what she meant by “accurate.” She made a connection to a previous unit we had worked on exploring combination apple boxes that have both green and red apples. (Reference 3) When she talked about the apple boxes, the kids who looked confused were now nodding. Listening to my students make connections to their other work from our previous math workshops was wonderful to hear.
I have begun to add pictures of students at work near our web. The goal being to help them visualize and connect to items added on the web. Pictures on this blog however only include students’ work but not their faces.
References:
1: The Project Approach. Sylvia Chard and Lilian Katz. http://projectapproach.org/
2: The Spielgaben is a lovely wooden box full of different drawers with various building sets, mostly wooden. https://spielgaben.com/
3: “Bunk Beds and Apple Boxes” is a Contexts for Learning unit.
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