Jumping Frogs, Tangrams, & Math - Oh my!

I appreciate all the time in our math class that is dedicated to us exploring manipulatives that we could potentially introduce into our future classrooms.  I learned that I am not so good with tangrams, but I already knew that my spatial reasoning ability wasn't the strongest.  However, it was nice to double the giraffe as a group because I felt more confident trying to solve the puzzle, knowing that my group members were supporting me.

I am still wondering about applying all this stuff to elementary grades.  I understand that this is a middle level math class, but the majority of the people taking it won't be teaching middle school math - we'll be teaching elementary school.  How applicable are some of these manipulatives to younger students?

I plan on thinking about grouping students more carefully after our discussion on the math/lit article.  I liked hearing different takes on the article, particularly the idea about grouping students together that allows each of them to shine by showcasing their ability within the group.

Moving from Assessment to Instruction

My buddy, E, is a gregarious 4th grader.  He enjoys reading and writing fantasy stories.  In particular, he seems to be quite interested in futuristic fantasy stories.  He is a strong reader - both fluent and accurate.  On both of the 4th grade level reading passages he scored in the 75th percentile, while only making 1 or 2 miscues per passage.  He did well with comprehension questions using explicit recall.  However, he struggled a bit with implicit questions.  He was able to find clues in the text with a look-back, but he had trouble self-generating his replies to the implicit questions when first asked.

Based on E's results from his assessments and his interest in futuristic stories, I am thinking about creating a lesson designed to help his comprehension around implicit recall questions using a text he would find interesting.  I'd like to work with him on using strategies to identify important information in the text, while activating his background knowledge to help make inferences.  The lesson would satisfy GLE 2.1.5 -Apply comprehension strategies before, during, and after reading: predict and infer from grade level informational/expository text and/or literary/narrative text.