Student Work Blog Week 12

Last week in my Kindergarten classroom, my students practiced using a calculator during a math lesson. First, my mentor teacher passed out calculators to each of her students and told them to take 5 minutes to explore and practice using them. After that time was up, she started to explain how we compute addition on our calculators. The first thing we added was 2 + 2 = 4. At the beginning, some students were not getting the correct answer or forgetting steps to get the answer. It seemed clear to me that my students had not had a lot of experience with calculators. A lot of needed a lot of support during the lesson. Next, we moved to skip counting by 2s on the calculator. Then we went onto 5s and finally 10s. The students said that this strategy could help them practice their skip counting if they become stuck on a number. They also had a quick discussion and gave situations where we could use calculators to help them figure out the purpose of calculators and understand why adults use them. The purpose of the lesson was to teach students strategies to help them count quickly on calculators. This lesson also helped to give my Kindergarten students more practice on calculators, since they have not been exposed to them a lot.

Three questions I have:

1.     How proficient should Kindergarteners be with calculators?

2.     When do elementary students begin to check their answers with calculators?

3.     Should we introduce calculators at such a young age?

I could ask my mentor teacher how other students she has taught were able to use calculators and how much she had to teach them. I could also ask other Kindergarten teachers if they teach anything about calculators in their classroom. I could also ask some elementary teachers to see when students begin to use calculators to make sure they are getting the correct answers. For my last question, I could ask teachers and read articles that argue that we should/should not teach students to rely on calculators at such a young age.