Mathematical Processes: Place Value Centers

For our Elementary Math methods course with Professor Robert Barry, our first assignment involves a series of Annenberg Media videos available online at learner.org. The first video used in our tasks is "Place Value Centers," based around a first grade lesson taught by Ms. Vigstrom at Palla Elementary in California.

Ms. Vigstrom's lesson is well-aligned with the three-step lesson planning approach associated with teaching through problem solving, but is more teacher-centered at its outset than many problem solving lessons. Early in the video, Vigstrom describes her goals for the lesson: familiarizing students with place value and building their readiness for double-digit addition, subtraction, and associated number patterns through the practice of exchanging ones and tens.

Ms. Vigstrom begins her lesson with a "lead-up activity" drawing on the students' prior knowledge based on their experience of counting their days in school using sticks and bundles. Vystrom transfers this idea to her "giant place value mat," substituting sticks and bundles with cubes and rods, and demonstrates the use of this manipulative using students' ages as a personalized example. She further transfers the concept of grouping tens from the model to a written format. During her introduction, Vigstrom draws on her students to explain strategies such as counting from ten.

The second element in Ms. Vigstrom's lesson plan is a set of four activity centers the students work in pairs to complete. The centers connect the idea of grouping ones into tens using a measuring activity, a sorting activity, an illustrating activity, and a race to connect, group, and count cubes. In the illustrating activity, students interpret a written number using blocks. The number is shown in the context of a 100-number chart (we have seen these charts used for addition, subtraction, and even multiplication activities in other videos, I think one will be a must-have item for my future classroom shopping list!).

The measuring activity seems to be the most exciting ones for students, who are heard making comments such as, "Please measure me, I can't wait all day!" and comparing their respective heights based on the lengths of the rods they create with cubes. I really like the idea of using measurement to explore place value because connections are made between units of measure and counting units.

Extension Questions: Why did Ms. Vigstrom have students work at centers?
What is the value of using different manipulatives to explore the same concept?

Vigstrom shares her idea that using different manipulatives in centers is helpful because each student approaches the topic from a different background and will develop an understanding of the concept of place value differently than a peer will. During their center work, Vigstrom circulates the classroom asking extension questions such as "can you tell me what you did?" and "What is the nine for?" in order to prepare students for class discussion. The students convene to discuss their discoveries and the connections made during the center activities. They test their discoveries in other contexts based on prompts from Vigstrom, who asks general questions as well as more specific concept-related prompts such as "what does the number on the left side [of a written two-digit number] stand for?"

The lesson on Place Value Centers includes the NCTM standards of number sense, measurement, and connections.

i'm back!

I've decided to use this blog again to post my thoughts on technology used both to illustrate pedagogy and to enhance students' experiences in the field. As a fourth-year Elementary Education major in the Curry School of Education at UVa, it will be interesting to compare my reflections as a new education major to the way I think now as a preservice teacher with a growing field experience and knowledge base.