Reflections


 * March 9, 2010. **



The grade three class has studied addition and done a few addition story problems from the text __Math Makes Sense 3__. Today they brainstormed what criteria was needed in a good addition story problem and came up with the list above.


 * March 10, 2010. **

We continued discussing criteria for a good story problem and the students came up with the following list of the steps they need to take to write a good story problem:

Statement #1 - needs to be a sentence with a noun and a verb - needs a number

Statement #2 - needs to be a sentence with a noun and a verb - needs a number - needs an adding or a subtracting word

Question - needs to be a question with a noun and a verb - needs a question such as How many more. . . ? or How many left. . .? or How much. . .?

All three parts need to be checked for **COPS**.
 * C**apitalization
 * O**verall Appearance (neatness)
 * P**unctuation
 * S**entences (make sense)

Examples:

Kale had 23 cookies. He ate 17. How many cookies did Kale have left?

Megan had 39 books. She bought 15 more books at the Book Fair. How many books does she have altogether?

We reviewed the parts of a good story problem and wrote the following one together.
 * March 11, 2010. **

We started with the answer: Jordan had 103 stuffies.

Step One: Think of a question for the answer. 93 + 10 = 103

Statement #1 Jordan has 93 stuffies.

Statement #2 Jordan's Grandma bought him 10 more stuffies.

Question How many stuffies does Jordan have altogether?

We checked for COPS in our problem.

The students then wrote story problems of their own using the steps from above. Here are a few examples:

The students practiced writing story problems and solving story problems both from the text and those created by their classmates. I developed the following rubric to evaluate the student's story problems: The students created an addition and a subtraction story problem and turned them into Publisher posters as their final performance task for this unit. Below are some samples: 100% of the students can write a good subtraction and addition story problem but many still needed to work on their proofreading skills.
 * March 12-19th, 2010. **
 * March 22 & 23, 2010. **

We revisited story problems and adjusted our criteria for Multiplication problems. The new criteria looks like this:
 * March 26, 2010. **

MULTIPLICATION STORY PROBLEMS

1. Statement #1 Sentence (noun and verb) Number of groups

2. Statement #2 Sentence (noun and verb) Number of things in each group

3. Question(noun and verb) How many altogether? How many in all?

4. C.O.P.S.

Example: Jessica had three dogs. Each dog had four legs. How many dog's legs altogether?

3 x 4 = 12

The students worked on learning to multiply. They created and solved a few story problems from the text during this time.
 * March 29 - April 15, 2010. **

We discussed how arrays can help in multiplication.
 * April 16, 2010. **

For example: X X X X X X X X X X X X

This array has 3 rows of 4 items. The corresponding multiplication sentence would be:

3 x 4 = 12 or the repeated addition sentence would be 4 + 4 + 4 = 12

Some students had difficulty creating multiplication problems instead of addition problems so we discussed how a story problem for the above array might be:

There are three turtles. Each turtle has four legs. How many turtle's legs are there altogether?

We started working with division story problems and adjusted our cirteria to the following steps:
 * April 23, 2010. **

DIVISION STORY PROBLEMS

Statement #1

- Must have a noun and a verb. - Should tell the total number of things in the problem. (You must be able to divide this number!)

Statement #2

- Must have a noun and a verb. - Should tell the number of things in each group.

Question

- Must have a noun and a verb. - How many groups of things are there?

C.O.P.S.

Example:

There were 16 legs. Each dog had 4 legs. How many dogs were there? April 26 - 30, 2010. ** Students continued to create and solve both multiplication and division story problems. Some students are still confusing addition with multiplication and subtraction with division.

The students continued to practice writing division story problems. We discussed how the placement of the word 'each' is important to determine if you are writing a multiplication or a division problem. Example:
 * May 5 - 7, 2010. **

There were 10 dogs. There are 2 kennels. How many dogs will be put in each kennel?

When 'each' is in the question it is a division question.

There were 5 dogs. Each dog had 4 legs. How many legs altogether?

When 'each' is in one of the first two statements it is usually a multiplication question.


 * May 11, 2010.**

We reviewed writing division word problems. These are tricky as the students need to make sure they can divide the item they choose into groups that make sense. Dividing a dog into legs just doesn't work.

An example of a good division story problem might be:

There were 15 dogs. There were 5 kennels. How many dogs would go in each kennel?

15 ÷ 3 = 5

OR

There were 6 pizzas. There were 2 delivery trucks. How many pizzas did each truck deliver?

The students are able to write problems with help.


 * May 14, 2010.**

The students wrote a test on multiplication and division. Unfortunately the only part of the test that was not well done was writing multiplication and division story problems.


 * May 19, 2010.**

The students chose a multiplication and a division story problem from their work and they created a Publisher poster. Below are some examples:

The students were very successful in creating addition and subtraction problems following an outline that the students and I created together. The students had three sentences in their problems but often did not do a good job of using COPS to proofread their work. I met my SMART goal and 100% of my students could write an addition and subtraction story problem by the end of our unit.
 * Conclusions**

When students moved onto multiplication and division problems the students had difficulty writing the problems. They often confused their problems with addition and subtraction problems. The concept that they had the most difficulty with was in choosing items they could divide into groups. The multiplication and division questions were fine but the sentences were confusing. This is something I'll need to try to make clearer next year. We went from addition and subtraction to multiplication and division without a break and I feel this also led to the students confusion so changing the order of teaching for these units may also help.