Student Work Blog - Amy Tenbrink

My elementary didn't have school on Friday, so I'm going to talk about another one of their math stations. The math station that the kids like the most is the computer-based math station. This one lets the students use computer to figure out math problems in a program. The program they were doing the day I observed was one based on figuring out how to bundle tens together. In the program the theme is a candy shop. The customer orders a package of candy in a certain number, say 14. Then, down the convaery belt comes 14 sticks of candy. The child has to then put ten sticks in the 10's column, and the rest in the 1's column. Then, once they have gotten this right, the candy is boxed up and shipped to the customer. This task is not really a high-level task, but it shows the students how to bundle into tens. The repetition and use of different numbers throughout the game shows them that different amounts can still have the same number of tens, like 13, 14, or 15. I asked the students to explain to me what they were doing, and they tried to explain it, but didn't really seem to understand the concept yet, they just knew they dragged candy sticks to one side and the other side until they got it right.