LauraEvans-TechniqueUsed

Last week,a lady named Joyce Evans came into the kindergarten rooms to teach a math lesson. Her lesson dealt with a 100's chart and a visual story problem. She began by cutting a large piece of paper into a pumpkin and as she counted, she had the students count how many times she made a cut. I liked this because it kept the students engaged and busy while she was cutting. Next, she asked the students to think of their favorite number while looking at the 100's chart. She called on a student to pick a favorite number and that was the magic number of the day. Then, Joyce began to tell a story problem about how her mother would only allow her to have nine pumpkins on her porch. (Nine was the number that the student chose.) The next part of her story was that a friend gave her four pumpkins, and how many more does she need to make nine? The students were prompted to refer to the 100's chart to find the answer. Joyce did this several times using different numbers as she wrote the equation on the pumpkin paper. As Joyce taught this lesson, she let everyone have a chance to answer and she encouraged them whether they were right or wrong. I really liked the idea of the lesson and the techniques that she used throughout. After the lesson, my mentor teacher and I decided that we would like to try this teaching technique and that we would continue to use this in the classroom. The next day I taught a similar lesson about slices of pizza using the 100's chart and it went really well. We are going to continue these math lessons and hopefully improve the student's math skills.