Bridges Grade K Advice for Sessions 109-121

We left off in last month’s entry discussing Frog Picture Problems, solutions and the creation of individual problems. If you’re behind, all the blog articles are archived, so find April in the archives where you can review some typical solutions and children’s frog problem creations.

Now how do you get up to 25+ problems they've created solved? In Session 109 the authors suggest you start off by admiring all the problems that have been created. You can sort the problems into piles that require similar operations. Try posting one from each pile on an accessible wall or easel. Go over the problem and invite solutions, with you recording their thoughts in pictures, numbers, and symbols. Note the illustration on page 462 on connecting addition to subtraction. You will probably be able to get in three problems in a session if you keep the number of solution methods to three or four. On the next day you can have the children use chalkboards or white boards to share solutions.

After this session the author has some good suggestions, all of which I have tried. Try doing one problem a day during your opening.

Post new problem, removing the ones done previously, then solve a problem or two in those short time periods you often find before going home, to gym, etc.

 

If you have a buddy class, invite the older students, post all the problems on, say, your white boards and give sticky notes to the buddies. Have them walk around, solve the problems, stick the notes around the problem! Here are some first graders checking over the answers their buddies posted for their problem.

Create a Frog Problems Work Place. See page 467 and Session 111 for an excellent explanation of how to photocopy the problems, present them and create a Work Place.

 

 

If you are flush with time, spend several more whole group sessions solving problems on white boards or chalkboards.

Just be sure to somehow honor every child’s problem by going over it at some point. You can also send home two per day as homework, photocopying them using the Photo Enhance (or similar) setting. Try that if you can’t seem to get them all in.

 

If you are in a state with a Supplement, be sure to look at the new Monthly Planners found around page 20 of your supplement, inserting these sessions at the appropriate times. For example, some states have measurement - duration sessions inserted this month.

 

Session 113, Frog Jump Measuring, is a very popular activity. When I did a similar activity years ago in kindergarten I introduced it like the standing broad jump. I quickly learned that kindergarteners could jump much farther than I imagined possible.

So follow the author’s suggestion of placing one foot at the starting line, jumping forward on the other foot. Measurement is done with popsicle sticks from the starting line to the front of the toe of the second foot.

I promise that you will find Work Place 2P, Frog Jump Measuring to be a popular one! Use your Work Place Menu Cards to control how children get to this Work Place. Keep a list, keep names on a sticky note on the back of the card, or whatever it takes to “ration” trips to this Work Place.

I hope you feel your class has had a productive, enlightening, and fun year if this was your first time using Bridges. I promise next year will be easier! You’ll get more sessions in, know more ways to make your preparation more efficient, plus you’ll probably find that you feel you are a more effective teacher of mathematics!