Bridges Grade 1 Advice for Unit 3, Sessions 1-10
Dennis Adams | November 30, 2010
Where should you be now? If you’re on track you are close to, or done, with Unit 2. The year I had a student teacher, finishing the last unit exactly the day before school let out in June, I was finishing Unit Two and just starting Unit Three the week before winter break started. Hopefully you’re a little ahead of where I was. There are 21 Sessions in Unit 3, and you have approximately 33 teaching days in December and January. If you should happen to finish before the end of January, just go straight into Penguins.
I will discuss the first 10 sessions in Unit 3 in this entry. If you’ve made Crab and Sea Star problems at the end of Unit 2, solving them is the first thing you’ll do in Unit 3.
I love Ten or Bust!, Session 5, which morphs into 20¢ or Bust! in Session 14. It is a great, yet deceptively simple game. Your higher end students will hopefully be figuring some of the probability involved if they are to draw a third or fourth card, while the ones at the other end of the spectrum may be just trying to add up the numbers. These students may not give a lot of thought at first as to whether or not they should draw another card. When I introduced this game I drew the first card, rather than having a student do it as is laid out in the book. I think it just works better this way to model how it is done. Sit at Work Place 3C for a few days after you put this activity out and observe how the students strategize (if they do.) Consider taking notes on a class list!
Sea Creature Sorting & Graphing. Sessions 8 & 9, is a great way to have the children’s natural interest in sea creatures carry over into an experience in graphing. My suggestion is to start the lesson exactly as laid out in the book. But when you get to the penguin, or the next creature after that, you never know where this lesson might go. Don’t worry - it turned out differently almost every year I did this session. I have even ended up making a three-column graph for this lesson because that is where the children voted to go. After our discussion, rather than me making the final decision as to where the next creature would go, I would use thumbs up and thumbs down to get a group decision. “If you want the penguin to go with the dolphin, thumbs up. If you want it with the crab and sea turtle, thumbs down.” Again, you will want to sit at the Work Place 3F for a while, especially to help with the complicated task of labeling the columns and entire graph. The biggest question I faced was what to say when a child wanted to label the two with columns with titles such as “I Like” and “Hard Shells.”
Sea Creature Sorting & Graphing. Sessions 8 & 9, is a great way to have the children’s natural interest in sea creatures carry over into an experience in graphing. My suggestion is to start the lesson exactly as laid out in the book. But when you get to the penguin, or the next creature after that, you never know where this lesson might go. Don’t worry - it turned out differently almost every year I did this session. I have even ended up making a three-column graph for this lesson because that is where the children voted to go. After our discussion, rather than me making the final decision as to where the next creature would go, I would use thumbs up and thumbs down to get a group decision. “If you want the penguin to go with the dolphin, thumbs up. If you want it with the crab and sea turtle, thumbs down.” Again, you will want to sit at the Work Place 3F for a while, especially to help with the complicated task of labeling the columns and entire graph. The biggest question I faced was what to say when a child wanted to label the two with columns with titles such as “I Like” and “Hard Shells.”
Trying to explain that there should be some relationship between the columns usually goes nowhere. (i.e. “Hard Shells” and “No Shells”) If you see this happening as they are constructing their graph you may just have to leave it be. You also need to sit at this Work Place for the most simple things, such as you don’t glue your first creature in the little title box at the bottom, how to glue a second sheet onto the top of the first when some student creates a graph with a column containing over 6 creatures, and how to clean up the mess! Don’t ever allow this Work Place tub to be put away without having it inspected or you’ll be sorry!
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