The Primary Years: even and odd

The Importance Of Design Thinking

November 05, 2017

Ever since I started teaching, I have wanted to add some type of “Maker Space” into my classroom. This year, I finally figured out a way to make it happen! I thought it would be helpful to share what I have learned from incorporating this type of area into my classroom and lessons.

1. Organization and easy access are key. First, I put my "Maker Space" in a cabinet. It was too hard for my students to get to the materials and for me to keep up organizing them, etc. Having "user friendly" organization also allows your students to take ownership of the entire space.

2. There are certain simple skills that are helpful to teach to young students (in addition to the exploration time that they have with the materials).

3. Design thinking lessons are vital to adding purpose to lessons that incorporate a "Maker Space."

4. These types of designing lessons can be incorporated with any subject area!

Below are some examples of lessons my students have done.

Reading: My students read "The Most Magnificent Thing" and then had to come up with a problem in their life to solve, just like the main character did. Then they designed something to solve the problem.
Math: When learning about Even & Odd, my students designed and create their own "Even Monster" and "Odd Monster" using items and technology available to them.
Science & Social Studies: When learning about Properties of Solids & Fire Safety, my students thought about the properties of different solids and used those properties to make the tallest ladder they could.

You can also find some other makerspace activities we love to do here.

Hopefully this helps you in your journey to incorporate new and exciting ways to add purpose to what your students are learning!

Oh, and if you try out a new makerspace activity in your classroom, I recommend taking this course so that you can earn Professional Development credit for trying out the lesson!

Happy Teaching!

Even Gleeven and Odd Blodd

October 02, 2016

It's October Y'all! Is it just me or does this little ghosty crack you up? I adore him!

Last week in math we began learning about Even and Odd numbers. It was a very busy week though so we did not quite get to everything and will be finishing up this week - which is perfect because it is October and I love making our "Even Gleevens and Odd Blodds!"

In prepping for the rest of our Even & Odd unit, I thought I would share what we did last year since we are doing some of those activities again.

Back when we first learned about digits, we did learn about which were even and odd. First I had my first graders find a partner and then I told them I had different food items. If the items were even and they could share them fairly then they could eat them. This brought a great concrete idea to the concept of even & odd.

Now onto learning about how to know if a number more than 10 is even or odd.

First we played a game called prove it. The students created a game board and then passed their board to a partner and had to prove whether the numbers on the board were even or odd.

Then I let the cats out of the bag, gave each student a cat, and we sorted them between even and odd.

Once everyone finished, we all came to the carpet to look at the patterns we saw in the sorts. We made the conclusion that you have to look at the ones place to tell if a number is even or odd.