Problem of the Month - Gallery Walk, January #maths #edleadership

The end of January marked our second school-wide problem of the month gallery walk. The problem of the month we decided to do for January was Calculating Palindromes.

Prior to giving the task to students, we spent time at a staff meeting working on this problem and then discussing our work and thoughts with each other. We had interesting conversations about zero and patterns.

I happened to be in two classrooms while they were working on this activity. Fourth graders were constructing viable arguments about all the possible ways to make twelve using two numbers between 1-11. Coincidentally, fifth graders were working on the same part. I saw many similarities in their work with Part A. Students came up with the same combinations of different numbers to equal twelve. Seeing the students in action was powerful. Most were working with and talking to partners, while others were working/thinking individually. I saw evidence of SMP #1: Make Sense of Problems and Persevere in Solving Them. The area of SMP #1 that stood out to me was inparticular was the following- students were analyzing givens, constraints, and relationships. They were making conjectures about the meaning of the solution. Part A of this problem had a few constraints and it was interesting to hear how students made sense of that.

The area where I saw the most change was in what students wrote on the post-its. This time, the students were commenting on each other's thinking while noticing patterns. Here are some examples of student comments:

"They all equal 12. And in the first column you counted down and in the second column you counted up." (6th grader commenting on 2nd grader's work.)

"It was a great idea and it works if you're trying to find a pattern." (6th grader commenting on 2nd grader's work.)

Here are some additional pictures of student work from the Gallery Walk:

Second grade work (pictured above), showed how students added different amounts using counting numbers 1-11 to get a sum of twelve.

 Second grade work (pictured above) document their thinking with a shared parnter paper.

Kindergarten work (pictured above) show nine ways to make four using cubes.

 Kindergarten conversations (pictured above) in what they noticed.

 Kindergarten thinking on display (pictured above).

Kindergarten used a variety of objects to show different ways to get four.

6th graders worked in small groups on Levels C and D.

After reflecting on our last gallery walk, I realized student voice and input about the experience was missing, so I sent out a Google form for students to fill out about their experience at the Gallery Walk. Here are screen shots of the form for student input: