The Passionate Educator: a blog by Mrs. Obach: More Math Discovery

Now that we're back into the swing of things with math discovery, I'm wondering why I ever stopped providing discovery learning opportunities for my students. (I seem to have fallen off the discovery learning wagon from about June 2014-December 2014 as I transitioned to teaching Grade 2 for the first time, after looping up with my Grade 1s). Now that math discovery has made a comeback in our classroom, it's exciting to watch and listen as my grade 2s tackle new and more challenging math tasks. When comparing to our math discovery in grade 1, I'm noticing some changes. For example, students are more confident exploring math ideas with larger numbers and they are tackling more challenging operations (such as multiple addend addition). It's fun to see them try new things and there have been some great teaching moments when a student goes beyond what they know they can do and tries something really tricky that I can support them with!

If you're ready to try out discovery learning, check out the blog posts I mention here and visit my Pinterest board for inspiration to develop your own discovery tubs!

Here are our tubs from this week:

Discovery Tub Contents:

numeral cards for 0-20

numeral cards for 21-50

numeral cards for 50-100 (at a student's request!)

number word cards for 0-20

These were all classroom materials that I already have made in my classroom. We use them regularly, so I have each set organized in mini baggies from the dollar store. I make my sets in as many different colours as possible so that they are easier to sort again when students are done with them.

Students can: sequence numbers, identify odd and even, sort numbers by attributes, compare numbers, match numbers to number words

Discovery Tub Contents:
Power of 10 cards
small blank booklets (made from scrap papers stapled together)

Students can: practice making ten, write addition and subtraction sentences, experiment with multiple addend addition