My Personal Learning Path

When I was researching a game for the assignment, I came across several that I thought would be fun to implement in my future classroom.  I am going to post my main one to the week 10 discussion forum, but I wanted to share another one that I came across as my PLP for this week. Math Facts Race Combine math and physical activity in this fast-paced fact fluency drill. I liked this particular game because it can be adjusted to fit many different grade levels.  For instance, in the earlier elementary grades you can use it to practice addition facts, and in the mid-level grades you can have them practice multiplication facts.   Common Core Standards for addition: Grade 1: CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.1.OA.C.6 – Add  and subtract within 20, demonstrating fluency for addition and subtraction within 10.  Use strategies such as counting on; making ten (e.g., 8 + 6 = 8 + 2 + 4 = 10 + 4 = 14); decomposing a number leading to a ten (e.g., 13 - 4 = 13 - ...

After my PLP last week, I feel like I have a better handle on using the chip model to add and subtract integers.  Now that I understand it better, I wanted to learn more about how to teach it to my students.  I felt that using a real-life example would help them to conceptualize the use of the chips more easily.   I found a video from The Teaching Channel that I thought was really helpful.  The video aligned with the Common Core state standards: MATH.7.NS.A.1C a nd MATH.7.NS.A.1D.  In it, the teacher uses the integer chips to represent hot and cold, and the students work on changing the temperature of soup.  The children decided that the red chips would represent “hot” or positive 1 and the yellow chips would be “cold” or negative 1.  After a brief group lesson, the teacher then has the children work in pairs to complete a worksheet.  She notes that pairs work better than larger groups because the children are more li...

For this week, I decided to move away from fractions and decimals.  I think I have a better handle on the topic after working on it for four weeks.   During our class last week, I was intrigued by the idea of using chip counters for adding and subtracting integers.   This was something I had never been exposed to, and I found it a little confusing.  I wanted to dig deeper into the topic so I could better understand the process.  I wanted to see more examples of how it is done, so I found a video at LearnZillion.com  that I found very helpful.  I was able to conceptualize the adding with counters, however, I found the subtraction confusing because of the addition of the zero pairs.  Now I understand that no matter how many zero pairs you add, you do not change the value of the original number.  And you need to add those zero pairs when you need to subtract and you do not have enough counters to do so once you lay out the original pr...