Investigations Blog
“That Seems Way Too Big”
On a recent visit to a small district in the Midwest, I got the chance to visit a third grade class that was working on division (3U5, Session 3.4). When I joined Nicole, she was in the middle of working on the following problem: Gil loves toy cars. He saved enough money to buy 32 toy cars. How many 4-packs of toy cars did he get? (SAB p. 333) Below the problem, Nicole had written I asked her to tell me about her thinking. She said she wanted to start with something she knew, which I agreed...
read more“What Was Thomas Thinking?”
I often think about a lesson, captured on video some years ago. Liz, a fifth-grade teacher, gave her students two-digit multiplication problems—12 × 29 and 36 × 17— and asked them to come up with strategies other than the conventional algorithm to perform the calculation. For 12 × 29, Jemea thought about twelve 30s and then subtracted 1 for each of 12 groups. 360 – 12 = 348. For 36 × 17, Duane thought of 36 bowls, each holding 17 cotton balls. Ten bowls hold 170 cotton balls, and there are...
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