DON'T BE PUT OFF BY THIS PHOTO! SECONDARY APPLICATIONS BELOW!
While visiting a co-taught kindergarten class in Denison, IA this week, I saw a creative use of plastic picnic plates. If you have been in a workshop with me, you may know I love using these in my Pass the Plate game. Because they are plastic, you can write on them with dry erase or wet erase markers, so they make a novel alternative to a white board.
Angel Williams uses the sectioned plates for teaching math. Students write a number in one of the small sections, then count out that number of manipulatives to place in the large section. Next, she might ask them to add 2 more, and write the number 2 in the other small section. Again, they add manipulatives. As a final step, students can write the total in the largest section.
My brain is buzzing with additional ideas for the sectioned plates:
- Subtraction (the opposite of above process)
- Compound words (i.e. dog and house, doghouse)
- Prefixes (or suffixes) and roots (i.e. pre and suppose, presuppose)
- Venn diagram variation (similarities in large section)
- Combining elements (i.e. Carbon plus Oxygen)
- Vocabulary (word, synonym, sentence)
- Choice Justification (one answer or idea, one answer or idea, justification for choice)
What can you think of that might have 3 parts and lend itself to these sectioned plates?