Investigations Blog
Puzzling Through Making Fraction Sets
Last year I volunteered in a third grade class. The school mainly uses Investigations 3. During a visit last spring, the class was working on the second session of the fractions unit. I was excited to find out about the students’ beginning understandings of fractions. I sat with a group of four students who were working on making fraction sets. Their task was to fold each of 5 sheets of paper into two, three, four, five, and six equal parts and then to label each piece. The students made 4...
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...
read moreIncomplete, inarticulate, ill-formed, incorrect: Brilliant!
Over the last decade, much of my work has been focused on mathematical argument in the elementary classroom. Observing in our collaborating classrooms, I was struck again and again by how teachers supported students to build on each other’s incomplete ideas. Constructing a mathematical argument is difficult and challenging for elementary students and, therefore, necessarily collaborative. When students are learning what it means to make an argument, not just about the solution to a single...
read moreFrom “Uh Oh!” to “Aha!”
Over 20 years ago, just out of college, I applied for a job at TERC after seeing an ad in a newspaper. A project called Investigations in Number, Data, and Space was looking for a classroom observer. I had spent most of my college years volunteering in an elementary classroom once a week, so I sent a writing sample – from a course I’d taken with Ted Sizer – and got an interview. The last step? Meet Susan Jo Russell, the Principal Investigator of the project. We chatted and...
read moreIt’s Not What’s New; It’s What’s Old
People often ask me, “What’s your favorite part of the new edition of Investigations?” My first inclination is to blurt out “That it’s finished!”, despite the fact that the development stage has been over for almost a year. While many aspects of the revision were engaging and rewarding, I’m sure that someday soon I will not cringe when I hear the word deadline! That said, I think I can honestly say that my favorite part of the 3rd edition is also my favorite part of the 1st and...
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