Bridges Grade 2 Advice for Unit 5, Sessions 1-22
Dennis Adams | February 27, 2011
If you are on track right now, you’re in Unit 5: Branching into Larger Numbers: Money & Place Value, somewhere about a third of the way into the unit. If you look at the Pacing Guide on page 23 of Getting Started you’d see that this unit starts around the middle of February and goes through about the first week in April.
I know that many teachers using second grade Bridges for the first time can be considerably behind. I’ll stick with my advice from last month. Get to Unit 5 and do all the sessions except possibly 18-20; then make a decision about whether you should go into Unit 6 or 7. One approach would be to finish Unit 5, then go to Unit 7, and when finished you could have your class do as many of the Unit 6 marble rolling activities as could be squeezed in before the school year ends. This is a fun way to end the year.
Recently I went to a local district for a throughout-the-year follow up meeting. Even though the Candy Colors Project sessions are listed as something you could leave out in Getting Started, they are certainly a lot of fun. We worked our way through Sessions 18, 19, and 20 and had a ball! Children never seem to forget math lessons where they get to eat! For the price of 12-15 bags of M & M’s, you get prediction, graphing, and analysis of data activities. Eating the items you’re examining adds to the fun. By the way, in the book it calls for 1 1/2 oz. bags of candy, but I see now they’re 1.75 oz., which doesn’t change the results very much. If a bunch of grown-ups can keep their attention on their work at 5:30 P.M. after teaching all day, imagine how your students will react!
Session 22, Which Makes the Most Sense? will give you a good idea of how your students are handling the task of estimation. You do several estimations together, then send the kids off to work on the problems. As the book points out, this sheet can be an assessment if you ask your students to work on their own, and the Why? question they have to answer on the last two estimations can give you valuable insights into their thinking.
To play Race to 100 & Back you form two teams. As soon as one team spins their way to 100 or more, then both teams start going backward, putting the team that is behind in the lead. That’s a big surprise for some – going from losing to winning!
I know that many teachers using second grade Bridges for the first time can be considerably behind. I’ll stick with my advice from last month. Get to Unit 5 and do all the sessions except possibly 18-20; then make a decision about whether you should go into Unit 6 or 7. One approach would be to finish Unit 5, then go to Unit 7, and when finished you could have your class do as many of the Unit 6 marble rolling activities as could be squeezed in before the school year ends. This is a fun way to end the year.
Recently I went to a local district for a throughout-the-year follow up meeting. Even though the Candy Colors Project sessions are listed as something you could leave out in Getting Started, they are certainly a lot of fun. We worked our way through Sessions 18, 19, and 20 and had a ball! Children never seem to forget math lessons where they get to eat! For the price of 12-15 bags of M & M’s, you get prediction, graphing, and analysis of data activities. Eating the items you’re examining adds to the fun. By the way, in the book it calls for 1 1/2 oz. bags of candy, but I see now they’re 1.75 oz., which doesn’t change the results very much. If a bunch of grown-ups can keep their attention on their work at 5:30 P.M. after teaching all day, imagine how your students will react!
Session 22, Which Makes the Most Sense? will give you a good idea of how your students are handling the task of estimation. You do several estimations together, then send the kids off to work on the problems. As the book points out, this sheet can be an assessment if you ask your students to work on their own, and the Why? question they have to answer on the last two estimations can give you valuable insights into their thinking.
To play Race to 100 & Back you form two teams. As soon as one team spins their way to 100 or more, then both teams start going backward, putting the team that is behind in the lead. That’s a big surprise for some – going from losing to winning!
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