Math Problem Types

Good morning! 

If I were to blog about anything personal this week, it would be one big whining post about how I am simply E X H A U S T E D! 

So instead I'm going to focus on our staff development from Monday, which seems like forever ago.

We had the opportunity to join in with some other schools for a staff development day that provided several different sessions. It was nice to get to choose what we wanted to go to (kind of goes with what they say about letting our students have some choices in their education).

Anyway, I spent two sessions on math. I didn't really choose this. My principal chose for me (Ha!), but I didn't mind. He thought it would be good for me to know what 3rd graders might be facing on assessments so I could better prepare my 2nd graders. As it turned out, there was actually a lot of good stuff for K-2 teachers too so it was a win-win.

One thing that I found the most helpful and easy to implement was these problem types:

These are addition/subtraction problem types for K-2.

Sorry, I realize now I should have cropped the screen shot…but hey, I even had to look up how to do one since I am now working on a Mac so give me a break!

We had a whole activity with sample problems that we had to sort using these problem types. My friend (3rd/4th math teacher) and I totally rocked it out. We even had to send a picture to the presenter to be her answer key because we were so speedy and correct (of course). 

We thought this deserved going to lunch early, but instead we got to be last and there was barely any chicken and no cheese left for my Chipotle bowl…

Anyway, then we had to team up and write some more problems. I was excited to snap a picture of them all because I'm always writing story problems for my Mission Possible Math slides. Here's the picture if you need some more ideas for story problems.

Have a great weekend!