Clip 5/11: Adding and Subtracting with Money Lesson Part 1D

Overview

The 2nd-grade students in Katy’s class continue their partner work, as she engages each group. (“Have you figured out your whole total yet that you’ve spent? Can you give me another way of how you solved it?

Do you think that you’ve bought too many toys?”) As student pairs evaluate their process, some realize that they need to use subtraction to remove items and come back under their $300 budget. Katy praises students’ diverse solving strategies and suggests relevant tools that might support them. (“That can be one strategy you use, to start with 300 and subtract down. Why don’t you get your whiteboard out and start helping him with the equations?”)

Teacher Commentary

I think it’s really important, learning how to work in those teams and those partners and being able to appropriately discuss things academically. At the beginning of the year, we do a lot with this. In 2nd grade, they need to learn how to be a speaker and how to be a listener. So they might have a card that says “I'm a speaker” or “I'm a listener,” and here I am with my partner. Then you give them something that's non-academic to talk about, because then, later, that helps turn it into something academics talk about. Then they switch, so if you're the speaker, then I'm the listener. We switch roles and we physically switch the cards. That has helped a lot over the years, as well as giving them those sentence stems of “I agree because” or “I disagree because.” Now I can say, “Okay, pull out your Agree/Disagree cards,” and then they know we're learning how to have a conversation.