Curtain Group 3-7-12 Sienna, Raven, Ophelia, Bryce K, Phoebe
We used the numbers the girls had determined through the use of rulers and inch graph paper during a previous meeting as our guide for today’s work. Offering a 1:1 correspondence by formatting the scale of one square is equal to one inch, Teacher Amy guided Bryce and Ophelia as they worked on clouds. While working in the same scale, Raven, Phoebe, and Sienna created raindrops.
Raven: “My paper says 3 and 4 for the raindrops.” She refers to the graph paper squares.
Raindrops are three squares long.
Bryce and Ophelia counted 20 and 12 for the clouds.
After they measured with the measuring tape, they cut out the pieces.
Amy: “Your design calls for 55 raindrops. How many have you cut out?”
They count out 18 raindrops.
Amy: “How many do we still need?”
They all shrugged with the answer so Amy introduced them to the technique of using something to represent the raindrops. That way they could count items instead of an abstract idea. This facilitated a 1:1 ratio that is developmentally appropriate. Each girl counted out 10 jewels (the markers for raindrops) to begin with 50, then added 5 because they had counted 55 raindrops in their original drawing.
Raven, with the help of the other girls, counted out the 18 raindrops they had already finished and then they counted together how many jewels remained. This gave us the number of raindrops still to be made: 37.
Raven: “I want to make more. Bryce, do you want to make more, too?”
Bryce: “Sure, yea!”
Raven and Bryce made 9 more. When they got tired, Sienna counted out the jewels to find out the new number that was needed to continue the work. This became the starting point for making the plan for our next meeting.