Student Work 6

In this lesson, the students were told that there were eight dots and they were to make four addition problems. The thing I liked about this activity was that the students could decide what problems they wanted to do. They could chose the addition problem. The big idea of the lesson was so the students could notice that there are many different ways to add two numbers together that will equal the number eight.  If they wanted to shade three dots the could or they could shade seven dots. It was open ended in this way. However, I still have some questions that might improve the quality of this lesson:

1.) Would using actual dots or some kind o visual make this lesson easier for the students to understand?
2.) Are the students truly understanding that all of these pairs of numbers equal eight?
3.) Would this be considered memorization?

To try and answer these questions, with the first one I think using actual visuals would help the students understand the concept better because they can move the dots and truly understand the idea of the lesson. I'm still not sure if this would be considered memorization because while the students are memorizing what numbers added together equal eight, they still are learning that different numbers added together can equal eight. In order to answer these questions I can ask my MT what she thinks and I can also talk about it with my classmates and see what they think.

To further my students knowledge on this lesson I would simply talk to them and ask them to explain their work. I would want to know that they knew that there are many different ways to add numbers that would equal the number eight. I would also ask them if they think it is the same for other numbers as well and if they said yes, I would have them do it for more larger numbers. I would want to make sure they truly grasped why we had all the numbers equal eight and why they could shad in any number of dots.