One of the new things you will be seeing with the Bridges math program is Number Corner. There is a lot of learning that goes on in this part of the program. A lot of it is geared to discussing math in different ways. Each month will have a different theme to the various sections. With this entry, I want to introduce you to the basic sections of Number Corner and what kind of things happen in each section.
The most obvious section in Number Corner is the Calendar Grid. We have always used the calendar to work with patterns and to learn the days of the week, months of the year, and things like that. Number Corner takes this to another level. Many times there will be several different patterns going on with each of the days. For example, there may be a bundling pattern and a color pattern happening at the same time.
Another section of the Number Corner is the Calendar Collector. This is just what it sounds like. The class will be collecting different things throughout the months and graphing it. For example, September will see us collecting nickels and pennies. To see how many of each we will collect, we use a spinner. We then put these in the collector pouch and add to the graph. We will then compare how many we collect etc for each of the weeks. This leads us to using math vocabulary such as greater than, less than, most, least, and equal. It will also lead to us figuring out how many cents we collected each week.
The third section of the Number Corner is the Days in School chart. This is made up of a blank hundreds grid and a chart where the student can keep track of how to write the number and word for the number of days we have been in school. This helps us explore grouping and counting by 5s and 10s. This is the one section of Number Corner we have had going since the beginning of the year.
The fourth section to the number calendar is the computational fluency section. Once again, this is something that sounds just like it is. For September, we are working with double ten-frames and beginning to explore how they can help use with adding ten plus a single-digit number.
The final section of the Number Corner is the number line. The students will use this to explore different counting patterns and to work with missing number situations.
I am excited to have this portion of the math program fully up and running now that we are entering into September. There are a lot of areas for growth in math here…especially with discussion and vocabulary. I cannot wait to see how the students grow throughout the year in this area!