Chapters 4 and 8

Chapter 4 has a lot of connections to the things that I am seeing in my practicum setting. I am in Mrs. Phillips' first grade classroom. The section of the chapter about addition and subtraction facts are very pertinent to what my students have been learning in math. The students have spent most of the year developing their number sense. They spent a day on each number. They would find ways to use other numbers to "build" each number. The students would talk about the way in which all of the numbers related to one another. The students have also spent time learning about how numbers can be related to five and 10. For example, the students spent several days learning how to count on from 5 to make other numbers. The students would write the number five and then draw how many more dots were needed to create a specific number. The students have also had a lot of exposure to the tens frame. The students fill in a tens frame each day as part of their calendar time. The class talks about the different ways that the frames can be counted.. They look at what each tens-frame looks life for each number.

Along with number sense, the students have also spent a lot of time with beginning addition and subtraction. The students have learned a wide variety of strategies to solve addition problems. The students are discouraged from using their fingers and are encouraged to use other methods to solve addition problem. The students are beginning to make these connections to subtraction problems as well. These strategies are the same ones that were mentioned in chapter 4. These include doubles plus one or two, using five or ten, and counting on. The students have also worked with one more and two more problem.

At this point in the year, the students have been working with addition facts through ten. I believe that they will begin to extend these facts. The students are becoming very fluent with strategies for solving their problems. They will be at the stage to be able to drill for some of these strategies in the near future. I can see from the lessons and from the students achievement that this is where the math curriculum is leading.

The multiplication and division part of this chapter along with the chapter on measurement has little to do with what I have seen in my field placement. The entirety of the math lessons up to this point have involved number sense and beginning addition and subtraction. Some measurement has been added in to the calendar curriculum for this month. At this point, the only thing that the students do with measurement is to compare two objects. The students are instructed to pick an object, and then find one that is either longer or shorter. The students have learned that the objects need to be lined up in a way that they have the same orientation and start at the same place to make it easier to "measure" or compare the two objects.