This prompt is from the Grade 3 Math book.
I was really interested to see the children's mathematical thinking, ie. how well they were able to collect, represent, and interpret data.
But what struck me the most was their philosophical thinking: how flexible they were with the concept of "pet" and how sensitively they responded to a child who was pet-less due to the recent death of her cat.
Of course then I realized that, because they opened the concept of "pet" up so far, they had much more complex data to represent in their reports... which actually did strengthen their mathematical thinking in the long run!
To begin the activity, you are supposed to give each child an index card.
The teacher guide then says to have the students write their current pet(s) "or the words no pets" on their card.
Each of the children then reads aloud what they put on their cards while the other students take notes, and then all of the index cards are displayed for people to refer back to while they put their report together.
The first question that came up was pet sitting. One child is pet sitting two fish and a snail for her neighbor. Does this count as a pet? We decided yes, but I noted that the children may need to find a way to represent in their data that those pets do not actually belong to that family.
The second question that came up was pets that had passed away. The teacher guide specifically says "current pets" so I said no.
Then the little girl who was (to an adult) pet-less raised her hand and asked about "non-living" pets such as a special stuffed animal. I remembered having a pet stick as a child. And then someone else asked about imaginary pets. Ultimately, I decided, "if it's a pet to you, write it down on your card."
My son Zac, now age 10, wrote down that he had three pets. One rabbit (living), one rock (non-living), and one bird (imaginary). I had no idea he had an imaginary pet bird.
Allowing that little girl to have a pet crayon instead of a dead cat was so warm and kind on the part of the class! And then the children had all sorts of different sections and color coding and keys on their charts and graphs, in order to represent the more complex categories of information.
I have noticed that because we encourage open-ended thinking here, they find a lot of traditional assignments to be too confining. Here someone very calmly decided to give herself a 3 1/2 on the rubric!
We also used this activity as a chance to talk about drawing conclusions, and I read Poofy Loves Company by Nancy Winslow Parker at snack time.
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Immersive Experience
Immersive Experience
Immersive Experience
