Get To 11 Reflection

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In my literature-based math lesson I decided to read to a small group of students from Mrs. Carrillo’s 2nd grade class. I randomly selected these students and I ended up getting 3 girls and 3 boys. These students were so eager to learn with us so I decided to take their energy out in the common area so we did not disrupt anyone else from learning. Shelby and I read the book titled 12 Ways to Get to 11 by Eve Merriam and illustrated by Bernie Karlin. We found this book in the McCorkle library where the librarian guided us in choosing this particular text. Both Shelby and I thought this book would be appropriate for our read aloud because they were going over “fact families” and adding multiple numbers together! As far as how the lesson went, I felt as though we were very prepared, which helped me feel more comfortable going into things. As the lesson went on, I found out quickly that I needed to be …show more content…
I saw many students starting with two numbers that would add to 11, and moving to 3 numbers, 4 numbers, and even 5! Other groups went searching for the answers using random numbers and adding on. One group even used the manipulative blocks and solved their problems out that way! I had manipulatives available to all the groups, and it was very interesting to see which students and groups gravitated to those and which groups did not. All the groups ended up getting many different ways to get to 11 but others went above and beyond and got even combinations I did not think of, which was impressive! I learned that children are going to start from different points and might even start a problem the way their partner wants to try it and may end up understanding their way better! I also learned that you should not give very many hints because the students will often become dependent on those hints and keep asking for more so they can “win!”