Student Work # 5

In my Kindergarten classroom, my students play a math game sometimes in the morning. This game is called “monster squeeze”. First, the teacher picks two students to come up to the board and she shows them a number that is on the number line. Then the students sitting on the carpet guess numbers in between the monsters until the pick the right one. It is the job of the monster holders to make sure that when a student guesses a number that is too high or low they put it on the outside of the monster. The purpose of the game is to “squeeze” the number the teacher chose. This task helps students become more familiar with numbers on a number line. It also helps the monster holders to determine if numbers are bigger or smaller than one another.

This task could be used as a quick warm up for a math lesson, but this is usually used for a fun game in between literacy lessons. Students could struggle with determining which numbers are too big or too small. During the activity the teacher has to remind them where to put the monsters on the number line. The task could be problematic for the students guessing if they do not know all of the numbers on the number line. You can eventually guess the number that was picked by the teacher, a student would just have to look at the numbers between the monsters and guess one.

This math task could show the teacher if a student understands the number order and what it means to be “bigger” or “smaller”. Also monster squeeze could show a teacher if their students need to practice their number recognition. A way to make this task more challenging for students is to pick a higher number line for them to work with. A teacher could also make a number line with more numbers to make sure students are able to squeeze the correct number.