Crow is using a good strategy to teach the second grade students about fractions. She told the class the get with a partner, but it could not be a best friend just someone the student could work with. I thought this was a great approach for choosing someone to work with. They are not automatically grouped with another student; they still have a choice of which they can work best with. After locating a partner, Mrs. Crow gave each group two different pieces of construction paper that where two different colors and 12 bears. She explained to the class that when you put the two pieces of construction paper together you have a whole sheet of paper and when you take them a part you are left with only half. Following this explanation she had the students divide their bears evenly so each person in the group would have the same numbers of bears on his/her paper. She continued working with an even numbers of bears until everyone understood how to divide evenly, then she started working with an uneven numbers of bears. I thought this was a wonderful way to teach fractions. It gave the children a visual image of what they were doing. To make sure they truly understood it without the bears Mrs. Crow asked them to do one half of 9 using boxes.
Example: one half of 9 is 4r1.
The students are having a difficult time learning how to round numbers. I thought Mrs. Crow had a great strategy for helping the children to remember when they round up. She drew a picture of a head start and elementary school, and then she asked the students how old they were when they started elementary school. Then she explained to them that children go to head start between the ages of 0-4 and they start elementary school at 5-9. When you are five years old you go UP to a bigger school. This gave the students a good image to help them to remember for rounding.
In teaching both, the special ed and regular ed children, when learning how to subtract with a larger number on the top you need to tell them that the ONE goes UP and the ZERO goes DOWN.
