In choosing the activities for each of my three competencies I noticed that I was drawn to games and instructional routines. I love math routines after having been introduced to a few through a book study at my first school. In that book study we worked through “High-Yield Math Routines” which covers six routines that work for any grade level, while these are not the only ones I use in my classroom they are ones I come back to a lot, my students enjoy them the discussion is rich and engaging and they are low threshold high ceiling activities. My reluctant mathematicians can engage with a number of the day using manipulatives to show the place value while my mathmagical ninjas are beginning to figure out all the ways to multiply to a number, some even beginning to explore the idea of factoring. Every student is able to participate meaningfully in the math routines which for me is huge in reducing math anxiety. I also chose a game for one of my activities because I am noticing that when I add an element of play to the math the stress level decreases, human beings are hard wired to play it’s part of what makes us human so by embracing that my students become more willing to participate in math tasks that seem other wise challenging, multiple problems that build on each other, lets make it an escape room, many short problems to solve lets get up and solve them on post its with the questions taped to the walls and windows around the room.
