Math and Literature Story Hours
Education students in the Mathematics and Technology in the Elementary School course at RWU
recently conducted Math and Literature Story Hours for local schools.
Guiteras School
|
We conducted our lesson plan at the Guiteras School in Bristol. There were 24 students in the second grade class that we worked with. The class has not yet covered fractions. We decided to introduce a basic concept of fractions because we thought the students would be interested in learning something new. The Doorbell Rang by Pat Hutchins is a children's book that deals with fractions. Dan read this book to start the lesson. The students really enjoyed this book. After the book was finished we began the math portion of the lesson. We handed out fraction cards and bags with 12 gummi bears each. We had the students divide their gummi bears into two, three, and four equal groups. We were rather surprised at how well the students knew fractions. Sarah improvised and she had the students eat one of their gummi bears. Then she had then to try to divide them into equal groups again. We concluded the lesson by having the students fill out an assessment of the lesson. When we left the school we felt confident that the students were receptive to our activity. |
Bright Ideas
|
The book that we used for our story hour was "The Greedy Triangle". The book starts out with the main character, the triangle. The triangle tells what he can do as a triangle. He can be an ice cream cone, a christmas tree, or even a party hat. The triangle has many friends of different shapes. The triangle gets tired of being a triangle and goes to the Shape Wizard to ask him to give him another side. The Shape Wizard does, and the triangle is now a quadrilateral. He later gets tired of being a quadrilateral and becomes a pentagon, and so in, until he decides he liked being himself (the triangle) the best. The children that we did this activity with are in kindergarten and are five years old. This was a good activity for them because it gave them beginning knowledge of geometry. For the activity we made a huge poster of all the shapes from a four-sided shape to a ten-sided shape, and labled them all. at the bottom of the poster we drew pictures using the shapes we taught them about (ice cream cone, houses, trees, stars). After reading the story we showed the children the poster, and gave them an art activity to do. Each child was given a sheet of constrution paper and cut out construction paper shapes. They used the shapes to create pictures on their paper. This was a great book and activity for children in kindergarten. |
Rockwell School
|
Coming Soon! |