Week 3 Reflection Questions

How does the information and the tasks presented in chapter two connect to the videos of lessons you viewed as part of challenge 5?

The information and the tasks present in chapter two are about understanding number concepts and number relationships. The video that I watched about classroom norms discusses children's different approaches to solving the same math problem. The teacher emphasizes to the students that they need to understand their classmates approaches to solving the problem, as there are several different ways to combine numbers to reach the same answer. In this video, the teacher's objective is to have students understand that numbers can be combined in different ways to make the same result. In Chapter 2 of the text, there are four methods described to help students develop relationships among numbers 1 through 10. This relates specifically to the video I watched; in the video, one of the students points out that "5+0", "1+4", "4+1" etc all add up to 5. The text states that "the principal tool that children will use as they construct these relationships is counting" but counting will become "less and less necessary as children construct new relationships," which they were doing in the classroom norms video. The teacher in the video wanted students to understand each other's solutions to the problem, because if they understood that the different number combinations (ie 4+1, 2+3) all added up to 5, they also understood something about number relationships.

What task (activity) in chapter two was most interesting to you? Why?

One of the activities in the chapter that captured my attention was Activity 2.10: One-Less-Than Dominoes. I thought this activity would be great to use when teaching number concepts because it is a game. Students will likely be engrossed in playing the game and will not be focusing on being in math class. In this activity, students play dominoes in the regular way (which may need to be explained before starting) but instead of matching ends, a new domino can only be added if its end is one less than the end of the one on the board. There are also variations of this activity that can be played, which are mentioned in the book. For example, the game could be played for one more, two more, or two less. I think students will enjoy this activity and it can also help them develop their understanding of number concepts. It will help students think of numbers in different ways. For example, they may start thinking of 3 as "one less than 4" and also as "two more than 1."