Adorable math operations anchor charts & activities for 2nd grade
A few weeks ago, we did some math operating–with math operations!–in our homeschool 2nd grade math class! 🙂
And, ya’ll, I wish we had worked on this much sooner! My kid is a strong math thinker, who struggles with notation or showing/telling me how he figured out his answer. His little brain works so fast that he has a hard time using the right language to explain his thinking. That has been my main goal this year for him.
I knew it was important for him to know and understand the 4 math operations, but I had no idea just HOW helpful it would be in giving him more math language to frame his thinking and ultimately write down his notation in a mathematical way.
Sound familiar? Here’s a look at our week of math operations in our 2nd grade homeschool classroom!
Introducing Math Operations
We kicked off the week by introducing math operations. I wrote the numbers 6 and 2 on the board and asked, “6 and 2 come to our math hospital. There are 4 math operations that we can do with these numbers. What’s one thing we can do to 6 and 2?”
As we listed out the operations, we charted them. We charted the symbol, the name of the operation, the sample equation, and keywords or phrases we use when performing that operation.
Once we worked through all 4 math operations and compared and contrasted them, we read the digital book from my Guided Math Workshop Plans called, “Socks for Knox.”
Each page has a different story problem type. We read the problem and discussed which operation we should use and why. The answer is less important…in fact, that’s why I used very low numbers. I wanted him to think about the operation and not get distracted or caught up in the numbers.
Let’s just take a moment to add that I really, really, wanted my 2nd grader to dress up in his old doctor outfits and pretend like we were performing surgery, but he wasn’t having it. #boys He is definitely my child who outgrew dressing up by age 3. So sad! This would make a super fun classroom transformation project though! 🙂
Math Operations Sort
In Guided Math Workshop, Mondays are mostly whole group days where most of the content is front loaded and introduced. Then, the rest of the week, the kids work independently on the goals and content we learned on Monday. They solve a new problem independently each day, play a hands on game with a partner, meet with a teacher in a small group to discuss their problem solving and work on a technology based game to practice the math skill from Monday. You can read more about those Guided Math Workshop routines here.
This week, our hands-on activity was an operations sort! We used the cards to sort math symbols, equations, and stories into the 4 operation categories: addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.
These math operations sorting cards can also be used to play a memory game with partners during math centers or rotations!
Then, he did a cut and paste sort on his own. And I love that this sort has equations and equations written as a sentence as well.
All of this practice made a HUGE difference in his ability to show his strategies during problem solving. He was able to name the operation he needed to use and write his equation more easily.
You can find all of these 2nd grade math lesson plans and activities and more in my Guided Math Workshop Plans for 2nd Grade!
