more Math

In math today, I had the students look for prime factors (the lowest prime factors of a number, i.e. 8 = 2x2x2). This was the next page in the book that I'm using. Unfortunately, the book has a really confusing method it proposes. After staring at it for a minute, I could barely make sense of it and feared that my students wouldn't fair much better. I shared it with another volunteer here, who just graduated from college with a degree in elementary education. She said, "Why don't you do a factor tree?" And I said, "Great idea!"

So, after reviewing prime and composite numbers, I introduced the idea of a factor tree. To my surprise, some of the students got it immediately. Without mentioned or suggesting they use the shapes they drew to represent the factors between 1-20, I saw a student go back through his notebook and check the factors for 9. I was really excited. I could see my plan of laying a conceptual foundation working. The student didn't see this as an isolated task, as they often do, he connected it with his prior learning (see pic above).

The school day consists of a morning class and an afternoon class of different students. For the morning class, we have 2 1/2 hours of instructional time. I usually split it between two subjects. For the afternoon, we only have 1 3/4 hours. Therefore, my afternoon class does not get the depth of the morning class. Plus, it's in the afternoon, which apparently is a universal energy-zapper for young children. Morning is just a better time for learning, it seems.

Another reason for the success of my morning lesson was the student's participation in the math games. As I started my lesson for this afternoon, I was filled with confidence from the successful morning class. I began by reviewing what we knew about prime and composite numbers. You could hear the crickets. Nothing. Perhaps its just the afternoon, I thought. I threw out numbers, between 1 & 10, and asked if they were prime or composite. It was 50/50 for each one. They were obviously guessing. It was then that I realized that I had not introduced the math game to them. Because of the limited time, I guess I saw the math game as a "fun" extension and not an essential. Standing in front of the students, who could not tell me about prime or composite numbers, I realized how crucial introducing that game was for my morning students.