It was great to spend time with my second graders this week! They really were shining bright as they completed their pre-assessment for computation! I was very impressed with how well they could show their thinking in pictures, numbers, and words!
After completing the pre-assessment, it was time to use ordinal numbers to uncover a secret message! Students were given a set of boxes going vertically along the right hand side of their page. There were 20 boxes in all. Using clues, students placed letters in the boxes to reveal a secret message!
Here are some examples of the types of clues students used:
Put the letter U in the 17th box from the bottom.
Put the letter E in the 7th box from the top.
When all letters were placed, students found the secret message - "You Are A Mathematician!"
The best part of this activity was talking about strategy! Students discussed the ways they started to tackle this challenge - most of them just took a clue and counted up or down the column to find the correct box each time. While this approached worked, it was time consuming. So, we then discussed what a better strategy would be. Several students realized that if they had numbered the boxes from 1-20 (going down on one side of the column and up the other side) finding the correct spot for a letter was much easier. We talked about how to work smarter, not harder, and how strategy helps us do this! It was a great discussion!
After completing the pre-assessment, it was time to use ordinal numbers to uncover a secret message! Students were given a set of boxes going vertically along the right hand side of their page. There were 20 boxes in all. Using clues, students placed letters in the boxes to reveal a secret message!
Here are some examples of the types of clues students used:
Put the letter U in the 17th box from the bottom.
Put the letter E in the 7th box from the top.
When all letters were placed, students found the secret message - "You Are A Mathematician!"
The best part of this activity was talking about strategy! Students discussed the ways they started to tackle this challenge - most of them just took a clue and counted up or down the column to find the correct box each time. While this approached worked, it was time consuming. So, we then discussed what a better strategy would be. Several students realized that if they had numbered the boxes from 1-20 (going down on one side of the column and up the other side) finding the correct spot for a letter was much easier. We talked about how to work smarter, not harder, and how strategy helps us do this! It was a great discussion!