This week the math activity that interested me most was from today. My mentor teacher was out of town today, and while there was a substitute in the classroom with me, I taught for the entire day. The math activity today was based around a board game shared between two students who would take turns spinning and then count the number of spaces their piece got to move. I walked around taking notes on how each student was working and when I saw the way Stephanie was counting her spaces I was afforded an insight into her mathematical skills and also got to see a very interesting interaction between Stephanie and her partner Christopher. Stephanie would spin the spinner, see her number, and say it correctly...then she would count aloud and move, not using a one-to-one correspondence. Stephanie could see and recognize each of the numerical symbols but was missing an abstract understanding that as we count objects (gameboard tiles), we can only count each one once.
I then heard her partner, who clearly had an incentive to make Stephanie understand because he wanted to win the game and have a partner who was playing fairly, explain to her that "each box is only one, you can only use one box for one." I then saw Stephanie start using each box as she counted more slowly, one for each number. I thought this was a great window into students teaching each other as well.
Good. A good lesson in giving students the opportunity to talk to each other, as well as having them interact with the mathematics in the context of completing a meaningful task. Also think of other ways that you might assess this student's understanding of the concept in the future.
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