This week, the Turtles worked hard to make a display as a class. First, they each took a turn writing their name on paint chips. One morning at circle we asked our friends how we could sort our names. They had great suggestions - by first letter, by which letter was a capital, and by same letters. We asked them how a mathematician would sort the names. They said a mathematician would sort them by number of letters. One friend made a number line for us, from one to ten. Other friends passed out the names. Everyone counted the number of letters they had and put them under the appropriate number. Then, we talked about how we had made a concrete graph. There was so much data for us to interpret! We asked the students which number was the most common for number of letters. We then asked them which number was the least common. Lastly, we gave them a challenge - we asked them to identify how many letters the longest name had (9) and how many the shortest name had (3). We then asked how many MORE letters the longer name had.....and they blew us away when they figured out it was 6!
That morning, students hung up our graph in the hallway to share our findings with the school.
PS: Kindergarten is super!