9-19-06

Introduce decomposing numbers and kids go off to do it themselves.

“Let’s pretend you work at an apple orchard with lots of apples growing. Your job is to pick 7 apples and put them in two baskets so you can sell them at the orchard store. Let’s draw the 7 apples. (Draw them on the board.) Hmm, now is this math class or art class? Right, so right now I am trying to get better at math work, not at drawing. So instead of working hard to draw perfect apples, I’m just going to draw circles.” Give this message early on and keep reiterating it throughout the year. “If I spent a lot of time drawing really nice apples, I would be practicing my drawing, but not my math learning. And mathematicians always try to do things efficiently, which means they try to find the quickest way they can to do a good job.”

“Now who could come up and put some apples in one basket and some apples in another basket? Why don’t you draw circles around the apples that go together in one basket and the apples that go in another basket?”

“So, Yamiley put 3 apples in one basket and 4 apples in another basket. 3 and 4 go together to make 7 – it’s like inside 7, 3 and 4 are hiding! Let’s see if we can find any other numbers hiding inside 7. Who can find a different way to put the apples in the baskets?”

Alternatively, have real apples and baskets and have the kids move them around and find a few different combinations of 7. Record on the board what they are doing, using circles for apples and circling them for baskets. (Maybe do this twice or 3 times). Send kids off to work on finding more ways to organize their apples on their own.

Choices: Compare / Staircases for some Snap It! / Double Compare for others

At the end, whole class conversation:

I went outside and saw 3 tables. Each table had 2 apples on it. How many apples were there altogether?

Talk about different ways to count: by ones, by twos, 3 + 3, 4 + 2, etc.

How many groups of apples are there? How many tables with apples on them?

How many apples? Repeat questions.