Good Questions for Kindergarten & Grade 1
Lessons and Open-ended Tasks for Building Number Sense: A New Resource by Carole Fullerton
Good questions engage students in important mathematics. They inspire and propel students in their learning, offering an entry point for all. What better response could there be for our delightfully diverse early primary classrooms?
This new combined grades resource is built around good questions, drawn from each of the strands in the Kindergarten and Grade 1 curricula. Lessons feature sorting and patterning, shape and measurement and number sense (subitizing, counting, estimating and the operations) in an accessible format for teachers of early primary.
At the end of each set of lesson sequences, a collection of more than 200 open-ended tasks is presented to allow for building, exploration, practice and extension, meeting the needs of all learners.
Have fun! Get inspired! Keep them thinking!
Math at Home
To my teaching colleagues and parents everywhere…
We have always been partners in the mathematics education of our children — and now we find ourselves in a time that demands even more collaboration between home and school. Ensuring that our children have meaningful math learning experiences when we are inside and inundated with technological distractions can be difficult.
To that end I am inviting you to explore the following resource for parents of primary aged children. It was written years ago in a partnership between the BC Ministry of Education and a group of respected BC educators to support parents of young children to find and highlight mathematics in their daily lives. From sorting and counting to estimating and measuring, Math For Families has dozens of simple activities that families will love. The resource has also been translated into Chinese and Punjabi.
For more free resources, visit my online store at mindfull.ecwid.com.
And please, stay well.
Carole
NEW Resource! Proportional Reasoning in Grades 4-8
For those who have been patiently waiting (and lovingly nagging!) I am happy to announce the publication of my newest math teaching resource: Proportional Reasoning in Intermediate for Grades 4-8, available now through my online store.
This resource for teachers of Grades 4 to 8 presents more than 250 pages of open-ended lessons, meaningful practice, games, literature connections and a wealth of problem-solving contexts for supporting students to make sense of fractions, decimals, percentages, ratios and proportions. Designed for today’s diverse classrooms, this resource offers a range of tasks to promote proportional thinking through intentional development of mathematical language and the use of key manipulatives. Colour tiles, Cuisenaire rods and tangrams are used to model and make connections within and between concepts.
In the first section of the resource, students will explore three models – set, area and linear – for representing and describing, comparing and ordering fractions. Students will learn to convert between fractions, decimals and percent and to apply these skills to problem situations, including measurement, tax, discounts and data management. Next, students learn to add and subtract fractions, to solve proportions using a range of strategies (involving both mental math and the appropriate use of technology) and then finally to multiply and divide fractions.
Assessment tools are threaded throughout the resource to allow teachers to keep track of student progress and to make instructional decisions.
Proportional reasoning IS the math we do every day. This resource provides an access point for all.
Enjoy!
Maintenant disponible en français!
Finally … French translations of my latest books are now available!
Je viens de traduire mes deux ressources de bonnes questions — “A Year of Good Questions for Grades 2-4” et “A Year of Good Questions for grades 5-8” — afin que mes collègues d’immersion aient des ressources françaises avec lesquelles travailler. Merci pour vôtre patience!
In these new French translations of the English originals, you’ll find more than 200 open-ended and engaging problems for french immersion students from primary through middle school. All are posed in French and explore important mathematical concepts across the grades.
The first book: Bonnes Questions: Une année de bonnes tâches mathématiques pour les élèves de 2e à 4e is suitable for late primary students (grades 2-4) and features operational tasks, measurement tasks and pattern tasks of increasing complexity, posed in French.
The second volume: Bonnes Questions: Une année de bonnes tâches mathématiques pour les élèves de 5e à 8e is perfect for middle school immersion students (grades 5-8), with a focus on proportional reasoning, algebraic thinking as well as operations on integers, fractions and decimals to name a few.
Engaging problems and choice make these volumes the perfect conversation starter for our immersion classrooms, promoting oral language development and mathematical thinking …en même temps!
All are available from my online store.
Carole
New For Primary! Good Questions: A Year of Open-Ended Problems for Grades 2-4
For those of you who have been waiting ever so 
patiently, I wanted to let you know that I have completed a primary companion to the Year of Good Questions for Grades 5-8 resource released this summer.
A Year of Good Questions for Grades 2-4 is the late primary version of this stand up calendar of problems — one for every day of the school year!
Like its intermediate counterpart, this compact but potent book comes with an easel so you can set it up on your desk and flip from one rich problem to the next, posing open-ended questions of your primary students.
Good Questions: A Year of Open-Ended Math Problems for Grades 2-4 is a problem-a-day resource that includes rich tasks ideal for grades 2, 3 and 4. Organized by topic and structured in problem sets of 5, this simple to use teacher resource includes 200 mathematically important questions to engage your students in deep thinking. For only $25, it’s a reasonably priced way to stimulate and promote mathematical conversation!
Operations, measurement, proportional thinking and patterns are featured in this calendar of problems. Each one engages students in thinking flexibly, critically and creatively to solve tasks of varying complexity.
Visit my online store at mindfull.ecwid.com to order.
Let the fun begin!
Carole
Good Questions: A Year of Open-Ended Problems for Grades 5-8
I am pleased to say that — beyond spending every day on the water this summer — I DID manage to create a new teacher resource for my intermediate colleagues.
This time, it’s a stand up calendar of problems — one for every day of the school year!
This compact but potent book comes with an easel so you can set it up on your desk and flip from one rich problem to the next, posing open-ended questions of your intermediate students.
Good Questions: A Year of Open-Ended Tasks is a problem-a-day resource that includes
rich tasks ideal for grades 5, 6, 7 and 8. Organized by topic and structured in problem sets of 5 or more, this simple to use teacher resource includes 210 mathematically important questions to engage your students in deep thinking. For only $25, it’s a perfect back-to-school gift for yourself!
Proportional reasoning, measurement, operations and algebra are featured in this calendar of problems. Each one engages students in thinking flexibly, critically and creatively in the face of important and challenging mathematics.
Visit my online store at mindfull.ecwid.com to order.
Let the problem-solving begin!
Carole
New Resource! Place Value For Intermediate (Grades 3 to 5)
Phew! This one has been a long time in coming… :o)
My sincere appreciation to all of you who have waited for the publication of this book. As you know, I’ve had a pretty remarkable year. I hope you’ll forgive me, knowing that only good distractions delayed its completion!
But I am pleased as punch to announce the release of Place Value For Intermediate: Building Number Sense for Grades 3-5, available now from my online store for $50.
This resource for teachers of Grades 3 through 5 features lessons designed to support deep learning of number. A wide range of both open-ended and directed tasks focus on representing, describing, comparing and ordering numbers to 100 000, as well as explorations of decimal numbers to thousandths.
Measurement experiences make up a big part of this series of tasks. The metric system and all of its place value connections is featured in explorations of linear measurement (mm, cm, m, km), perimeter (cm, mm), area (square cm and square m), mass (g, kg) and capacity (mL, L).
Addition and subtraction of large numbers and decimals are also addressed in this volume. Lessons at the grades 4 and 5 level focus on multiplication of 1 by 2- and 3-digit factors as well as 2 by 2-digit factors using the distributive property (an area model).
Assessment tasks tap into students’ understandings of these numbers and their application in the real world. Being able to see and relate to big numbers and to very small ones, to understand their relative size and to capably use these numbers to estimate is the essence of number sense.
Set up in a developmental continuum intended to facilitate the teaching of combined grades, this 352 page volume is certain to contain material to meet the needs of all learners and to inspire fun and engagement with critically important place value concepts.
When you buy the book online, you also get access to almost 40 pages of digital files and resources, which will be emailed to you as a downloadable pdf!
Thanks for your continued support and inspiration…
Enjoy!
Carole
Math and Literature Resource for Grades K-3
Hello all!
My colleague Sandra Ball and I have completed another resource for primary teachers!
Read A Story: Explore The Math promotes the teaching of important math concepts through the context of great children’s books… The lessons span K-3 and some are even appropriate for grades 3/4 classrooms. Lessons involving number sense and operations, data management, measurement and more are included in this 65 page resource. Scan through the list of titles and corresponding math concepts to sort out which children’s books would be a best fit for you and your students. The complete set of ISBN numbers for each of the stories is included so you can easily share ordering information with your teacher librarian…!
To download, please visit my online store (https://mindfull.ecwid.com) and click on the FREE DOWNLOADS icon.
Enjoy!
Carole
Daily Math Investigations for K-2 – An Alternative to Calendar
Sandra Ball and I are pleased to announce the release of our newest collaboration, entitled Daily Math Investigations: Meaningful Math Routines. The resource is intended to present alternatives to a traditional calendar time – ways to keep our students actively engaged in the learning of mathematics in meaningful, hands-on and developmentally appropriate ways.
In the resource, you’ll find a set of thoughtful tasks that promote visual spatial capacity, number sense, operational sense, data and measurement concepts. Each is presented in the form of both entry tasks and rich routines, intended to keep your youngest students thinking and reasoning mathematically. The complete resource, including a selection of classroom-ready line masters, is available to download for free, by visiting my online store at https://mindfull.ecwid.com. Click on the FREE DOWNLOADS icon to access the PDFs.
We sincerely hope that this resource provides you with practical, fun and engaging ideas for use your primary classroom – ways to ensure all students are doing math every day!
Carole and Sandra
Mathematical Thinking 