Commuting and Associating

It isn't Just for the Work Place.

This week was the introduction of some properties of math.  For those of us who don't remember, I always fall back to what the words mean.  I commute to work and I associate with people.  In other words, the order doesn't matter when you add or multiply.  The simple act of commuting just means you change the order while associating means you put numbers that fit together or make landmark numbers. Our first method of trying this out was using Popplet to move number bubbles around.

As this task grew, students were the numbers and the operations signs and they had to move according to my direction, Commutative or Associative Property.  More and more numbers came into play along with our addition signs.  As it came to a close, the children could give some great definitions for compatible numbers, landmark numbers, and the properties covered in this very class.  

The boys and girls were visited by two representatives from Google.  They came to observe what education in the elementary setting looks like today.  Some of their take-aways were all of the group work and desks being put together in table groups.  Things have changed since we were in school.

In this final picture, we employed the use of parenthesis to help us see where numbers associated.  Ask your math experts to explain how this all went down.