cdyer31_journal6

Corinne Dyer EDC 452 Friday, April 3, 2009

This week, I was really interested in Mrs. Moniz’s math center. The children were each given two dice: one with numbers 1-6 and the others with numbers 1-10. They were to roll them and then subtract the smaller number from the bigger number. There were ten spaces for ten separate number sentences using their subtracting dice.

I really liked this activity a lot, not just for the creativity in application of subtraction facts, but also because the students are able to control their own problems. I also like Mrs. Moniz’s feedback method; all the students put the worksheets (for any task they accomplish at center time or extra morning work) in the right pockets of their work folders when they’re done. Mrs. Moniz looks over their number sentences and circles any that are wrong and leaves them on the right side so the students know they must correct them. If everything is correct, she puts it on the left side and leaves them for the students to take home to their families. I feel that Mrs. Moniz’s feedback is effective because it is timely, frequent and ongoing (she looks over their work every single night and puts the folders on the children’s desks every morning) and provides useful advice (every student knows what it means when they have a word/number sentence circled). She also writes specific comments whenever she grades something in the work folder, such as “Write more neatly,” “Creative ideas” or “Write these sentences over.” In this case, there isn’t much room for creativity, but the students know exactly what she means when she leaves a comment, and this translates to knowing exactly how to fix the problem. The students are allowed to use their number lines to count backward and subtract, so Mrs. Moniz gives them the tools they need to self-correct. This means they should (hopefully) eventually master the concepts on their own by making their own meaning.

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