Seminar: Unpacking Place Value
Program: DINÉ
Subject Area: Math
Grade Level: 2nd
Year of Publication: 2020
Abstract
Once students understand the meaning of the place value parts of a number, they can then progress to manipulating those numbers by performing calculations. In second grade, we focus heavily on addition and subtraction strategies. Students can struggle here because we present them with a very wide variety of solving strategies, and they can become overwhelmed by these options.
As I have learned through seminar discussions with my fellows, Navajo people culturally and historically have an innate but not explicitly stated number sense, but westernized ways of teaching typically do not support those strategies. In response to that understanding, students in my classroom will be allowed to make meaning in their own way, and if they can mathematically justify that meaning it will become part of our class bank of strategies.