Today was the last official day I had my students for math. It was a bit sad for me and it was nice to hear some of them say it was “kinda sad” for them too. In moving into a K-5 Math Specialist position next year, I know it will not be the same experience watching a group of students grow over the course of the school year.  It will be great in different ways, but I am really appreciating all of the amazing work my students have done this year.

So…what to do on the last math day after they just had field day yesterday followed by our PBS bowling field trip tomorrow? It is a tough planning!

I first had them look through their two math journals, one from the first half of the year and one from the second half. As their last writing piece, I asked them to write things they noticed in their work over the course of the year after looking through their journal. I only had time to grab one journal today because the end of the year craziness is kicking in, but I plan on following up with a more detailed post later. This one was so powerful and truly gave me goosebumps….

After they finished that, I asked them to revisit some of the claims they had written over the course of the year and see if they still thought they were true and could be proven or were not true and needed to be revised. This student had written a claim that when you are multiplying fractions, you could multiply the numerator and denominator to get your answer. As he was proving it just worked for multiplication, he stumbled upon the realization that it worked for division as well. He then worked through a few more division problems and it was such an amazing explanation!

He revised his claim…

I promise to follow up with some really amazing work they did on the last day when summer is here and there is a chance to breathe 🙂

-Kristin