Student Work #6

This is a photo taken a couple weeks ago, while my 1st grade class was exploring math centers.  In this particular center, the students would place two object into an egg carton and shake it up.  When they opened the container, each cup was labeled with a number.  They would look to see where the objects had landed, and then they would have to add those two numbers together.  For instance, the student who shook this specific egg carton would be completing the problem: 3+4=7.  The students were to then write the problem on a piece of paper and do this until the timer went off to switch to a different center.  

Some questions I have regarding this activity are:
1) Aside from practicing addition, what purpose does this activity serve?
2) Are the students actually understanding and learning the addition problems?
3) How could this activity be changed to advance student thinking?






I might try to answer these questions by talking to the students about the activity.  I would want to see if they knew why they were actually doing this and what it helps them to learn about math.  I think that by doing this, they would start to think of the center as less of a "game" and more of a learning activity and the focus of the assignment would transfer from shaking the carton to adding the numbers together.  Though this activity does help the students practice addition, I think that it could be further advanced to help the students do math other than addition.  Because this class is only 1st grade, they would most likely just be able to do addition and subtraction problems, but as they got older and progressed in their math learning, I think this activity could be used for multiplication and division problems as well.