Recently, I came across some fantastic Seesaw Activities compiled by Carrie Kunert, Beaverton School District Innovation Specialist. WOW! What a wonderful resource for all ages and subjects!

I’d been asked by a third grade teacher to review Seesaw with the students because some seemed to be unsure about the sequence of posting to their journal. Wanting to do something with math, I was excited to come across Carrie’s collection. For the first class, I chose an addition algebraic puzzle. I thought we’d breeze through this and move on to multiplication.

They quickly caught onto the process needed to determine the values. It just took longer than expected to record the steps needed to solve. For the next two classes, I redid the above puzzle, changing it to multiplication but using the same symbols.

I was a bit surprised at some of the explanation, especially since everyone knew the answers. But, thinking about it, how often to we ask children to explain their thinking? It definitely takes practice! Below are a couple examples of those who had no trouble solving; they just found it difficult to put it into words.

Here are samples of students who understood the sequence of events when explaining – that the second sentence MUST be solved before any other values can be determined!

The more I ask students to reflect or explain, the more I realize the importance of doing this. If a child can explain the process, chances are his/her understanding is solid.