Math routines are such a powerful tool for eliciting student ideas and making connections between them. The challenging part for me has always been ending them. Once I ask students for strategies or things they notice and wonder, the ideas are so uniquely interesting that I want to explore them all! However, when each idea can lead down a different path that may or may not be related to that day’s lesson, it is hard to know what to do in the moment. And the last thing I want to do is abandon the wonderful math ideas on the board.

Last week in 3rd grade we did a parallel choral count. Students counted by 2’s and then by 5’s as I recorded. I asked them to look for patterns they notice in either the individual counts or between the two. The lesson that followed was on multiplication, so the skip counting was helpful to lead into that lesson, but as more ideas started to emerge I found myself wondering where to go and what to do with all of these amazing ideas.

If you cannot follow my recording (how have I not gotten better at this after all these years:), here are some of the great math the students brought forward:

• There are some of the same numbers in both counts, but in different locations.
• All numbers in the 2 count are even and every other number in the 5 count is even.
• The 5 count gets to a larger number faster than the 2 count.
• Every number in the 2 count is the same number being added together – doubles.
• In the 5 count, there are always 2 numbers with the same digit in the tens place.
• At the top there is 2 + 5 = 7 and that is similar to the bottom row of 20 + 50 = 70
• Even + even = even, odd + even = odd, and odd + odd = even
• Someone added on that the bottom row is the same as 2×10 = 20 and 5×10 = 50

Every time I am in this situation I think about Joan Countryman’s book Writing to Learn Math. In there she describes math journals as a way to keep math conversations alive. That is exactly what I want to do with these ideas, keep them alive for more discussion. I am also a HUGE fan of math journaling, so I don’t need much of a nudge to use them!

Since we need the dry erase board for other things, the ideas cannot live forever on that board. I wondered about giving each student a copy of this picture to tape in their math journal. Then, when students finish up something early, they could find one of these ideas to explore further. I am thinking prompts like “The pattern I am exploring is…..” and “This pattern happens because….” might help students structure their explanations a bit.

Another idea that is more collaborative could be to replace an upcoming lesson warm-up with an idea from this count. We could display the picture on the board, highlight one of the patterns and ask students to work together to figure out why that pattern is happening and decide if they think it will always be true.

I would love to hear others’ ideas for not losing all the great math there is to explore in routines like this!