This week I observed my kindergarten class during the centers. This week at my particular center they played a math game. They got into small groups of 2 or 3. There was a dice that had + or - a number the highest number being 3. They were to use the blocks and either add or take away the amount they rolled. They were also supposed to count how many blocks they had left after the took added or took away blocks. The big idea of this task was for students to be able to understand adding and taking away as well counting.
While I enjoyed this activity and think it worked with those students who could focus on the math part of it. However, many of the students were more focused on whether or not they had the most blocks or they were more focused on building the blocks then using them for the game. Students started cheating and just rolling numbers in which they added blocks. They were accusing one another of cheating and complaining that people weren't following directions. It got really out of hand. I told my mentor teacher this and she actually made certain students stay in from recess and try playing it again correctly. I'm not sure if there is another way to play this "game" in which the students don't feel the need to compete but I think that would work better. However, for the students who could stay on task and follow directions, they really enjoyed this activity.
One thing I noticed with some of the higher academic level students in the class was they would start counting up or down from the last number they got instead re counting all of the blocks. For example if they had five their last turn and rolled -2 they would say 5,4,3 and come up with the answer three. I thought that was really cool and loved how they didn't need to recount from the very beginning.
To further advanced the students who were able to stay on task during this task's learning I would put all whole numbers on the dice maybe 3-8 and have them make that number of blocks and then say how many they had to add or take away. I think this will make things a bit more challenging. As they advanced, you could change the numbers to larger numbers. However, for those who could not stay on task I would have them continue to work on adding and taking away small numbers.
This is a very good observation and insight...e.g., students paying too much attention to the non-mathematical features of the task, e.g., spending too much time coloring in a poster vs. solving the problem, or in this case spending too long arguing about the rules and trying to win.
ReplyDeleteIt might be interesting to think about the article we looked at earlier which asks students to device their own game with their own rules and their own strategies...this gives the students an opportunity to think about the math involved rather than just following the prescribed directions without having to think about them.