Mr Hammerlund

We give the students an internal math assessment three times a year. While looking at the assessments, I noticed that one of the first grade girls made an interesting mistake. The problem was something like this: 33, 43, 53, ___, ___, ___ She filled in: 33, 43, 53, 36 , 37 , 38 I looked at that for a while and wondered what she was thinking when she answered that way. She can count after all. Then I noticed that if you turn 43 around you get 34 . And then if you turn 53 around you get 35 . If that is what she did, she got the problem right. Too bad you cannot write numbers however you want.

I started playing tennis about a year ago. I suppose I should say that I started taking tennis lessons about a year ago. Yesterday during the lesson I had a lot on my mind. I was thinking about how I would continue to use my class's interest in the book Mr. Topsy-Turvy. The book is silly, and the students really enjoyed it, so I took it as an opportunity to talk about topsy turvy things. In the process it was great to see the kids really working their brains to turn sentences around the wrong way. (If they know the wrong way, then they won't say it that way my theory goes, but I have mixed feelings about it.) I was thinking about the weekend and I was thinking about my tennis game and concentrating on the instruction I was being given. I was thinking about lunch because I was hungry. I had a lot going on in my head. Except for when the coach says in his best English, "Drinking time!", the tennis lessons are all in Japanese, so I have to concentrate more tha...

This is a question I posed to my class this week. Our current unit's central idea is: We are from all over the world. Now we live together in Sendai . I wanted to do more art projects this year with my class (with art being the traditional definition) and I thought that linking Sendai's famous Tanabata Festival to math would be a thought-provoking project for the class. Since tanabata decorations are streamers with a ball on top (I thought they were shooting stars, but apparently they are flowers) my idea was to have the students make it all. One group started by making circles, having mistaken a circle for a ball, or sphere. But it was a really cool pattern. So I reminded them what the project was again and sent them on their way. I went over to the other group (who were protecting their sphere like it was something out of Skunk Works)  where I found them working on good ideas, but they were all working separately. I understand that some  people work better alone,...

Today we were talking about the many different addends for a certain sum. On the whiteboard I put up ____ + ____ = 6 and I had the students come up with different possibilities. I think their answers were along the lines of 3,3 4,2 5,1 6,0 2,4 I looked at the last one and I thought to myself, are 4 and 2, the same as 2 and 4? So I posed this problem to the class: Suppose we are looking at our own class were our equation is ___ + ___ = 8. What are the two addends for our own class? Again I got answers like: 4,4 5,3 3,5 7,1 8,0 My thought was 3 and 5 since we have three second graders and five second graders. But when I started asking the students about why they thought of those number combinations, I was impressed. The boy who said 4,4 was thinking of 4 boys and 4 girls. Someone else said the combination was 8,0 because we were all Grade 1-2 students. I was hoping someone would talk about our nationalities, but maybe it is better that did not happen. Nationa...

While reading  The Elephant in the Classroom , I came across an interesting problem called "The Four Color Problem". In the 1850's an Englishman named Francis Guthrie was put in charge of making a map of England and all its counties. He came up with a solution that you only need 4 colors to color a map so that there are no adjacent areas with the same color. I gave this problem to my third and fourth graders last year, and they solved in in 10 minutes. I should have made more parts to it. This year I tried the same activity (I am going to make some more) to see if they could do it. It was fun to watch them puzzle over it at first, and then run with it when they figured it out.

Our school just got iMove on 5 of our 20 iPads. The Grade 5-6 class made some really cool trailers on them and I was green with envy. After kicking the idea around for a little while, I decided to try it out with my class. The video evolved several times from when I first thought of it. At first I was going to use puppets to make a video of the kids themselves. But I decided against that when I saw how much time it would take them and how much time I would have to leave the rest of the class alone. Then I decided to do a general movie trailer for our class. A kind of introduction for the world. I also wanted to see if iMovie was something that we will be able to use this year. I am happy to say that it was better than I had expected. I am not that happy with the final product, but I am happy with what the students showed they could do, and with a few things I figured out. The project started out by brainstorming words that describe us. As with the class needs/rules , there ...

I don't normally inflate myself or try to point out what I did, but I am going to this time because I want this lesson to stick with me. That was my idea. This morning I was talking with the Grade 5-6 guy, and I looked out and noticed the corn was all smashed. We talked about it a little bit, and I mentioned, in my mind at least I don't remember if I had said it out loud or not, that he should take his kids out and look at it. He did . I didn't. From what I saw it was awesome. His kids were engaged. They had fun. They learned. We did a math assessment - that we didn't even finish. Now, my class of Grade 1-2s would have had a completely different learning experience. After all, I brought out one of my students and asked him what happened to the corn and he said ants ate it. But I think that we could have learned a lot just asking questions and asking, why? Here is the exchange I had with him: Me: Why do you think ants ate it? Him: Because there are ants t...