Week of iMath Day 1 - Thank you!

Thank you Jo Boaler and the Stanford University team for breathing some math life into my first day of school this year. Typically, my first day of school is filled with community building activities, helping me to get to know my students, and creating an active learning community. However, these activities have rarely been associated with math content. This year, thanks to the youcubed website, I was able to get the students thinking about math while building community and creating an atmospher of learning.

I started the class by reviewing some procedures, i.e. how to enter the class, materials needed, warm-up routine, etc.  Then, I had the students get started on the first warm up activity, "What's Missing" from AIMS educational resources. I really wanted to set a tone of "hard work" this year, so I decided to do some math right away. I'm trying a new warm-up routine this year, so I wanted to get going on it right away. This also provided a quick formative assessment of where students were at in regards to their math thinking and perserverance in math.

After we finished the warm-up, we did a quick name game to get acquainted, and then I went into Day 1 of  the Week of iMath.  We began by creating some group work agreements.  All I asked the students to do was think of 2 things they like and dislike others to do/say when working in groups.  We shared out, and I compiled a list of agreements.  Following the group agreements, we watched the short 4 minute clip on brain development and a growth mindset form the iMath website.  This, although not exciting, set a good tone for the notion that everyone can be successful in math.

The real beauty of the day came during the activity "Four Fours".  Students were asked to work indpendently, or in groups, to find the numbers 1-20 by using four fours and various operations.  Before they began, we brainstormed the different operations they could use.  I was thoroughly impressed when one of my seventh grade students offered factorial and square root.  I then made note of some sentence starter posters that I had created to promote productive conversation, and asked students to use these sentence starters when speaking in their groups.  Then, they were off.  The students worked for a solid 20 minutes on math...the first day.  After we had created our lists, I had the students critique other's thinking and work.

This activity was a wonderful way to introduce group agreements, math dialogue,and creativity in math, while creating the precedent that we're going to be doing math this year, and it can be fun!  I even overheard a student leave the class say, "That was fun!"  I think that's a first!