Ep 46: Consolidation and Reflection For K-2 after Math Tasks and Problem Solving Sessions

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Reflection, consolidation can always be tricky timewise for anybody, making sure you have the time to do it.

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Also for younger kids, sometimes they just don't have the stamina or attention to get to it.

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Today we're going to talk about three different ways you can use consolidation in your classroom

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with younger grades after you've completed a problem-solving session.

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Hello and welcome to Making Number Sense Make Sense, a podcast for elementary teachers,

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specifically early elementary teachers, looking to really make an impact in the number sense of their students.

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When first starting a building thinking classroom style makeover, I guess, to your classroom and the way that you teach problem-solving,

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you're really just trying to get through the first toolkit.

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Something I was never really sure about was the whole consolidation piece, reflection piece, however you want to call it.

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Just because I know myself, time runs out sometimes and sometimes after your kids have been doing something for so long,

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it can be hard to kind of pull them back.

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So I've tried several different ways to kind of make this work for my students and I'd like to share those with you today.

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The first is the good old check your understanding question, so the mild, medium and spicy questions that I present to the students

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and they can choose the one that they want to do.

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This is great because it really gives your students an opportunity to kind of pick the difficulty of what they want to work on,

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what they feel comfortable with, and you can really see like what is really sticking for them and clicking for them

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and what might you need to work a little bit harder on or come back to at a later date

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if you're noticing the same kind of errors in your students.

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So that's always a good go-to, just three different problems that you can have for the kids.

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For younger students specifically, it can be a little challenging because oftentimes if it's a word problem,

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they wouldn't necessarily be able to read it.

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So having visuals there or a sheet that they can kind of refer back to can be helpful.

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If that's something you want to try but you're kind of running into the but they can't read what's on the board situation,

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that might be something you want to try.

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Kind of along the same vein, some tasks I found just don't necessarily lend themselves to check your understanding questions,

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but I still want them to practice and reinforce the things that they have been working on at their boards.

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So that's when I like to throw in a game that goes with what we're doing, maybe a little more challenging,

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maybe just as a review, maybe it's style to kind of go with whatever the theme of the question was.

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So it kind of feels like it's a continuation, but it's something that might be a little more hands-on,

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a little more game-like, so it feels a little different, but they're still practicing the skills that you had been working on.

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I like this a lot and it bonus doubles as a math center that you can use the next day

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because your students already know how to play, it's making a connection, building connections to what they had worked on previously,

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and who doesn't love center time? It's one of my students' favorite times being in stations, being in centers,

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so anything I can do to kind of bridge the gap works for me.

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And the final consolidation, which I wouldn't necessarily use too often for kindergarten because writing can be its own challenge,

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but you can definitely use the notes, creating notes, meaningful notes strategy,

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where your students will have a fill-in-the-blank section and have examples of different strategies that they saw that they liked,

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or that made sense to them as well as their own strategy that they used,

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and kind of reflecting on what strategy might they like to use in the future,

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and kind of an overall reflection of different things that might be helpful when they're using this skill,

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or things that their forgetful self might need to remember if they're doing a similar problem,

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so their future self has a little reminder or cheat sheet.

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The example that comes to mind is if I'm doing a task where students have to measure things twice

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with a smaller object and a longer object, kind of like the cube queen and the popsicle stick king task that I talked about previously,

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there's a time when using cubes might be better for measuring if you're measuring something small,

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whereas using popsicle sticks would be better if you're measuring larger things,

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so that kind of knowledge can help them reflect on what they did and when it might be best to do something different in the future,

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and even though it doesn't necessarily have too much to do with numbers in a literal sense,

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that kind of thinking can also help them when they're doing other kinds of problem solving,

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like when is it best to use a counting on strategy versus a double 10 strategy or a jump strategy,

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kind of creating that flexibility, metacognition about the way that they are going about problem solving,

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so none of these ways are perfect, they all have their time and place,

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but these might be things that you might want to try if you're looking to change up the way that you consolidate

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or be purposeful, questions that are related to what you just did, so check your understanding questions,

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a game that might be something a little bit different, exciting that you can use in a different day,

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or creating meaningful notes that don't have to be giant, especially in the younger grades,

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they're not going to be writing a ton, just something simple that they can do.

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Also remember you don't have to do every single section of every single thing,

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maybe for notes they're just doing a fill in the blank, or they're just picking one example

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that somebody else did that makes sense to them, just little bits here and there as they build up

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their stamina and as they get used to reflecting on the work that they've done. Let me know if you

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try any of these consolidation types with your kids and which one worked best for you.