How To Build a Ramp

The Kindergarteners are a community of builders - from large to small building there has been an ongoing interest in various kinds of structures. Using recycled sheets of plywood, children have begun constructing ramps. With the integration of balls of different size and weight, as well as materials to cause friction, they have been exploring force and motion. The large building space in our classroom has transformed into an inquiry based space for theorizing and testing. A space for shared discovery.

With the interest in constructing ramps, we engaged in a whole class writing of a How To Book; How To Build a Ramp. Through this work children are making meaningful connections across content areas. Literacy is an important part of our science curriculum - being able to draw and label a blueprint, orally share your work with your community, explain your process, provide diagrams and labels on your structures - these are all things scientists do! The children eagerly embraced the opportunity to write a class book about ramps, using all that they know about informational writing to plan across pages and provide detailed steps.

How To Build a Ramp

By - The Kindergarten

Date - 4-4-18

1. First you need materials.

 

 

 

 

 

2. Then you need to put the materials together. 

 

 

 

 

 


3. Finally you can add obstacles to change direction or speed!

 

 

 

 

concentric circles - the beginning of a collaborative piece

On Friday during number corner, we revisited what we know about circles, or the attributes of a circle. While deep explorations of flat and solid shapes are part of Kindergarten curriculum early in the year, it is important to revisit concepts throughout the school year. Revisiting learning ensures student knowledge while encouraging progress by building off of earlier concepts and experiences.

Some shared knowledge about what we know about circles;

- round
- flat (2D)
- is a curve line
- smooth 
- looks like the vowel o

I shared a picture of the artist Wassily Kandinksy and one of his famous math paintings; squares with concentric circles. We talked about how the circles he painted had a common - or the same - center. The children have been working with color words, adding them to our word library. We talked about the colors in Kandinsky's work, noticing how some of the colors blended together. We revisited earlier conversations about the difference between a square and a circle. We read the book Round and thought about the beautiful circles in our environment - circles we see every day.

Each Kindergartener had a canvas tile (square) to work on. On their square they drew their own concentric circles using sharpies and crayons. We then added water color over each tile. When placed together, their circles will create a collaborative piece inspired by Kandinsky as well as our work with colors, shapes, and community. It is moments like these, that I am reminded of the importance of art integration - especially in primary classrooms.

When children came into the classroom in the morning and saw the little square canvases, sharpies, and paint their eyes lit up. They jumped up and down and asked, are we going to create art today? Sometimes questions like that sadden me, because children create art every day, and we should be encouraging them to recognize that. We should also be providing classroom environments and learning experiences that inspire, challenge, and excite children. We shouldn't get stuck in the mundane, we must integrate the arts in meaningful and authentic ways. A child shouldn't be surprised by a blank canvas, because they should see every day as a blank canvas.

Look for our final piece hanging in the common area.

 

 

 

 

eggs and legs - opportunities to notice, wonder, and share

The Kindergarten Mathematicians have been engaged in ongoing work with double facts - addition in which a number is added to itself, or doubled. The ability to recognize double facts and use this knowledge to solve a variety of addition problems are important foundational skills for developing fluency. The thinking and work they are engaged in through journal problems and whole group instruction have supported their fluency in addition. When a child recognizes 4 + 4 as having the sum of 8, they can use this knowledge to quickly solve a variety of addition problems. For example, 4 + 5 can be understood as 4 + 4 + 1.

We have used double facts as our morning match greeting this week. If you have "8 + 8 =" you have to find your match, or sum. Half of the students have the addends in the equation and half of the students have the sum. Children sit next to their match and we go around the oval reading each number sentence left to right; 8 + 8 = (is the same as) 16. We have been trying to see how quickly all of the children can find their match! Morning greeting is full of rich and fun learning, too.

While engaging in a variety of work involving doubles, we have also had ongoing opportunities to count by two's and recognize even numbers. Our work with chick math was inspired by a book Cindy shared with us earlier this Spring. The book lives on the shelf by our gathering rug and continues to be reread by the children - it is a community favorite. Using the children's incredible love for this book to guide our work, we have developed a class chick chart and solved a variety of ongoing journal problems involving chicks on the farm. The love for chicks will be further felt when we hatch our own classroom chicks during the month of May.

In the below photographs WM adds a final label to our chick chart - a document that the children have revisited and recorded noticings on. This chart has recently been used as a tool and reference for solving journal problems.

 


Ongoing journal work with story problems has provided children with opportunities to think deeply about a story problem; What is the important information they need to use to solve the problem? What is the question - what are they solving for? How do they show their thinking - what does that mean? 

In the last few weeks I have included different chick story problems during our number corner work. I have purposefully chosen even numbers. These problems have encouraged children to reflect on and use all of our recent work and experiences to solve the problems. The children have shared their strategies with their peers, but until this week, no one had said that you could take the number of legs and cut the number in half - giving you the number of chicks. These problems have been differentiated by using numbers from 6 - 18.

Children continuously talked about using pictures or "number frames" to solve each problem. It's so interesting to look at their work. It may seem messy at first, but with each cross out or scribble over, we get a glimpse of their method. We see how important it is for children to show their thinking - to represent their process of inquiry and discovery. We learn about each mathematician.

A work sheet with double facts doesn't encourage students to explain or revisit. It doesn't show me that some children need to draw the details of every chick, while others can use what they call a "number frame" to quickly and efficiently solve the problem. When ever an answer is written, I always ask the students to include a label, ensuring their audience knows what the number stands for. This connects our math work to all of our literacy work around labels, hearing sounds in words and writing the corresponding letters, and providing writing an audience can read and understand.


Tully went to the farm to see baby chicks.
He counted 6 legs.
How many chicks did he see?

Show your thinking!

 

 

 

Tully went to the farm to see baby chicks.

He counted 12 legs.

How many chicks did he see?

Show your thinking!

 

 

OM shares his work on the document camera. He points to his number frame and states that he noticed 3 if half of 6 - encouraging his peers to begin thinking differently about our chick story problems!