Yesterday, Mary and I co-taught a lesson with 3-Act Math to her class of 19 Kindergarteners at Oak Mesa Elementary.

Mrs. Fabela: And it’s okay if you have different ideas, right?
Kindergarteners: Right!
F: Because if we all think the same, we are…?
K: Boooooriiiiiing!

And then we did a @gfletchy task together.
Blog post coming.#elemmathchat #Bonitians

— Matt Vaudrey (@MrVaudrey) April 19, 2018

 

Last month, she sat next to me at CUE as Amanda Haughs showcased a fistful of accessible ways to change math instruction. Mary was quietly scribbling notes the whole time and… I’m not sure who nudged whom, but we picked yesterday for co-teaching a lesson that Mary found on Graham Fletcher’s K-5 repository of 3-act math lessons.

During our chat, we opted not to use the handout I built with some other K-5 teachers, and you’ll see why.

Act One – The Hook

Fabela: Friends, this is Mr. Matt* and he’s going to do math time with us today!
Kids: [stare vacantly]
Vaudrey: Boys and girls, I have a video to show you, and here it is.

Vaudrey: [whispering] Whisper to your neighbor what you’re thinking right now.
Kids: There were eggs and they fell out and she opened the door and it’s probably too full in there do you think that’s his house how old is she I bet that’s his daughter.
Vaudrey: Fold your hands and look at me. Now I’m going to show you the video again, and this time, I want you to think of one thing you notice and one thing you wonder.
Fabela: Wonder means a question that you have, like “What about…?” or “How many…?”

[Show video again]
Vaudrey: Tell your neighbor; what do you notice and what do you wonder?
Fabela: “Notice” is something that you see.
[Kids chatter]
Vaudrey: Raise your hand, please; what do you notice and what do you wonder?

Mary wrote down the Notices and Wonders as students shared them, sometimes helping them to craft their sentences.

Damon: Um.. I think that the eggs felled out of the fridge because they were on the edge and there was too much stuff in there and when she opened they felled out.
Fabela: Thank you, Damon. It sounds like you wonder if the fridge was full, so I’ll write that up here.
Vaudrey: [after a while] Boys and girls, I notice that a lot of us are wondering how many eggs broke, show me a thumbs-up if you’re wondering that, too. [All thumbs up, of course] Okay, how many eggs could fit in that carton if it were totally full?

Kids immediately began to guess huger numbers than their neighbors. “Ten! Fifteen! Thirty! A hundwed!”

Vaudrey: Let’s count together [pause the video and point to the screen] One, two, … twelve! Ohhhh, so the most eggs that could have broken would be?
Kids: [silence]
Vaudrey: Twelve, right? If all the eggs broke, then all twelve would be broken!
Kids: [silence]
Vaudrey: Okay, what if … um…
Fabela: Boys and girls, what number shows us when we have nothing?
Kids: Zero!
Fabela: Right! So if no eggs broke, we can show that with a zero!

Fabela: Okay, boys and girls, I’m going to close my eyes and count to twenty. When I open them, I want everyone at their desk with their whiteboard out and a marker and… what else?
Kids: A smile!
Fabela: Ready? One… two….
[Kids scurry to their desks]
Fabela: …eleven… I think we’re ready… twelve… thirteenfourteenfifteensixteenseventeeneighteennineteentwenty! [uncovers her eyes] Oh, look at everyone ready to learn, I love it!

During this time, I rolled the chart paper easel to the front of the room and stood ready to point at my “barbell” number line. This is where my secondary-focused-brain forgot for a moment that we were in a Kinder class. We spent the next four minutes getting the mini-boards to be horizontal, not vertical (“Hold up your hand and show me vertical… horizontal… vertical… horizontal… make your paper horizontal”) and still 20% of the class struggled. Then three more minutes to get the “barbell” written with 0 and 12 in the boxes.

This stuff takes time and we secondary teachers don’t give K-5 enough credit for how much “decoding directions and following them” is a skill, taught like anything else.

Thank you, Elementary teachers; I didn’t realize my middle schoolers had to learn which way is horizontal. It was also a struggle to get students to realize what the midline represents (between 0 and 12), but Mary came to my rescue.

Okay, so several minutes later, all kids are in their seats with the barbell on their mini-boards and a star on the number line, labeled with their guess for How Many Eggs Broke?

Claudia: [distraught] What if I can’t draw a star?
Vaudrey: That’s fine, honey. Draw a circle, then.

Vaudrey: Now, boys and girls, I have something to show you.

Kids: [silence]
Fabela: Let’s read this sentence together. Ready, go.
Kids: THERE. WERE. NINE. EGGS. IN. THE. crrrtahhhn TO. BEGIN.
Fabela: Wow, I’m impressed so many of you knew this word. Everybody say carton.
Kids: CARTON
Vaudrey: Wow, guess what? My guess was 10 and that’s too big now, right? Because there were nine eggs in the carton, so there’s no way that 10 could have broken. If they all broke, how many would that be?
Kids: [silence]

I forget exactly how Mary saved me here. It happened so often, I started to lose track. There was almost a language barrier between the way I asked questions and the way Mary did. Eventually, we got to this image:

This led to a great discussion about whether four eggs had broken or five.

Vaudrey: Paul, can you come show me where you see five broken eggs?

Dori: No! I think those are the same egg! [Dori draws a big oval around the two pieces]

One of my favorite parts of messy math is wrangling a common answer. With six-year-olds, Mary and I had to give the final word, which felt weird, since arriving together at an answer with consensus is one of the fun parts of three-act math.

Anyway, we drew another line/star/circle on our barbells to represent five broken eggs, and then we had a snack of Goldfish on the carpet.

We’re open to ideas here: what’s a good way to wrap a lesson for Kinder? What could we have done next?

 

~Matt “I prefer Mr. Vaudrey but forgot to tell Mary that and it’s fine” Vaudrey