My kids can : making math accessible to all learners, K–5

KAREN: Are you saying that we need to multiply?

GLORIA: Shouldn’t we divide? If we did multiply we would get too many.

This was an opportunity to talk about what the students already knew: as
Gloria said, there are 315 cars in all and if we multiplied 315 by 9, we would in-
crease the total number of cars. Jay was approaching the problem differently,
though, using multiplication combinations that he knew to figure out how many
9s were in 315. In retrospect, Karen realized that she could have pursued a dis-
cussion of the differences between these two approaches.
At this point, several of the children wanted to start dividing. Karen asked
them to wait until they had read the entire problem. This was a common behav-
ior for this group of students: They often began computing with the numbers in
the problem before they had a complete understanding of what was required to
find a solution to the problem.
Jay read the next sentence: “For every 3 black cars made, 2 were white.”

JAY: We can write BBBWW, BBBWW.

KAREN: Let’s write that on the chart.

JULIO: We have black cars.

KAREN: Let’s get this sentence [“For every 3 black cars made, 2 were white”]

on the chart and think about it for a bit.

After the new information was noted on the KWC, Karen pulled out some black
and white cubes. She asked, “What do you notice about this group of cubes that
might help us with this problem?”

NINA: There are 5 cubes in the group.

KAREN: Nina, tell us more about that.

NINA:[putting together a row of 3 black cubes and 2 white cubes] Well, there

are black and white.

KAREN: We are going to be looking at and of what number?

TASHIA: We have to figure it out of the silver.

KAREN: Let’s read the last sentence to figure out what we want to know.

[The group reads the question—“How many of each color did they produce?”

— and adds it to the KWC chart under W.]

SETH: We want to know how many of each color car there is.

KAREN: Are there any constraints?

NINA: Yes! Every time we have 2 white cars, we have to have 3 black ones.

TASHIA: And the silver are. [We then added these constraints on the KWC

charts.]

JAY: Can we divide now?

KAREN: OK, now let’s figure out the silver cars.

1

9

2

5

3

5

2

5

3

5

2

3

Planning Guided Math Groups