For a math task last week, my kindergarten practiced with
calculators. The learning goal of this task was to teach the students strategies
to help them count quickly on calculators. The task also helps with giving the
students more experience with calculators. I am not really sure how this task
was designed to elicit student thinking. Perhaps figuring out how the
calculator works during the exploring phase. One different way to represent
this problem could be to link it to word problems and have the student try to
figure out the word problems using their calculator.
Some anticipated responses would be that same students might
feel scared to use the calculator because they have never used it before. Or
perhaps a child might feel frustrated when using the calculator and “shut
down”.
The task started off with my mentor teacher handing out the
calculators to the children. She said you may explore the calculators and
practice using them for five minutes. Then she brought the class back together
and started by adding 2+2=4. Some students were having difficulty because
either they missed the first instructions, or they were having trouble with the
buttons, or they couldn’t read/understand which button was which. There was a
lot of needed support by my MT, myself, and the other student teacher in the
room. After added 2+2=4, we went into skip counting by 2s. Most of the children
thought that was pretty neat. Then we skip counted by 5s and then into 10s.
After practicing on the calculator, the class had a discussion on how
calculators have a purpose outside of class. My MT asked the students if they
had ever seen their parents using a calculator; most of them had. Then they
talked about why they would use the calculator, for grocery shopping, paying
the bills, and planning out a trip. My MT then told them to ask their parents
why they use the calculator next time they see them using one.
One student approached this task by listening to the
instruction; they were successful in the calculations. This tells me, the have
listening skills that meet the expectations of the class and that they will be
successful with the calculator in upcoming calculator tasks.
A way to advance this lesson could be to have the students
use a calculator to solve word problems. The students could also solve addition
problems using two digit numbers.
Three questions I still have:
1.
At what point will student really start needing
to use the calculator to figure out problems?
2.
Do student need to be proficient with the
calculator by the time of the MEAP in third grade?
3.
What is the best way to introduce the
calculator?
I could ask my MT at
what point does she think the students need to really know how to use the
calculator. We could also discuss the point at which students need to proficient
and if they use the calculator on the MEAP test. Lastly, I could ask her the
best way to introduce the calculator, because as a kindergarten teacher she has
most likely had to introduce most students to calculators.
These are all good questions about an essential issues - how and when to introduce students to the use of a calculator. There is no easy answer, but indeed the best way to go about it involves what you are doing...consulting the common core / state standards, as well as the context of the school preparation, and, perhaps most importantly, math tasks that support and encourage the exploration of numbers through the calculator.
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