The CORE is filled with pieces related to discourse, discussions, critiquing and analyzing our work. Let me tell you this can be a scary thing for a kid or an adult. Can you imagine putting your work up in front of a group to critique? You MUST have a community that is built around sharing, discussing and acceptance. The idea is for children to be able to share and learn from their mistakes. It's quite amazing to see the lightbulbs go on as the group analyzes the work.
When we start out our math workshop I usually have the kids start working on a problem while they munch on their snack. On Friday I thought the problem was pretty straight forward...famous last words.
The problem stated:
Sarah is getting invitations ready for her birthday party. She has 10 invitations. She puts the invitations in two piles. One pile has 2 more invitations than the other pile. How many invitations are in each pile?
I share the first few on the screen so we can discuss problem solving strategies. The first four answers were; 3 and 7, 4 and 6, 2 and 8 and 3 and 7. Not as easy as I imagined and the thought process and reasoning was interesting. After each child shares their reasoning the class is asked to comment or question? Our community of learners has grown so much this year - they were respectful and asked wonderful questions. Some of the kids even demonstrated their thinking with manipulatives.
After this I had the groups divide up into their answer they would like to defend. Most of the class was in the group of 4 and 6, while a few kids were sticking with their ideas of each pile at 5 and 5 - you take 2 from the pile, so now it's 2 bigger 7 and 3. Fascinating!!
Each group had the opportunity to share their ideas and to prove their thinking. They were also told that at any time they could change their opinion and move to the other group. I let the 3 and 7 kids go first. They didn't convince anyone to change to their side.
Next the 4 and 6 kids went. They planned to demonstrate their thinking with kids lined up (since it was such a larger group). Demonstrating that with 6 in one line and 4 in the other - there were 2 more kids in the one line, just like the problem. I could see the kids in the other group were getting the idea, but they weren't ready to change their thinking yet!!!
I brought out some small whiteboards, sort of envelope like. I started with a number that wasn't 10. So if I have 6 whiteboards and I put 2 in one pile and 4 in another pile, how many more are in this pile? The kids can see it's 2 more. So I take 8 whiteboards. If I have 5 in one pile and 3 in another pile, how many more are in this pile? Finally I take out 10 whiteboards. I put together different combinations, always asking how many more in this pile? Whew, we finally got to the point.
The most awesome part of it was how the kids in the community responded and reacted to one another. They were respectful and patient. The learning of the entire community was moved along by digging into the misunderstandings of a few. Life lessons were learned about communicating with others, questioning and defending your thinking.
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